The Cleaner Plate Club

Really. I so, so, SO want to do this.

(Do you think my feelings about chicken nuggets disqualifies me?)

You gotta love Jane Brody. The rest of us may be confused, or overwhemed, about all-things-health-related. But Jane’s not. She’s sharp, clear-headed, and not influenced by spin. As a result, she cuts through all the health noise and gives us real information that we can actually use.

Today, in the Times, she tackles what we drink.

Should we talk about beverages for a moment? Do we need to? We all know that what we drink impacts our health, right? There has been so much research about things like soda that studies like this are now given a major “duh” factor. That’s why there are so many critics like these about.

There are some folks who have offered fun-to-read approaches to the subject. If you only have time for one link on the subject, check out the recent post at One Man’s Blog. Be sure to watch the whole Marshall Brain video, especially if you, like me, don’t generally think twice about substituting apple juice for soda.

Amid all of this talk, we’ve now got Coke and Pepsi releasing vitamin-fortified soda. They’re not calling it soda anymore; they’re being promoted as “sparkling beverages,” part of the whole “functional foods” category (which I will rename, in my quest for truth in food marketing, as “Food We’ll Spend Billions to Convince You is Healthful, Though You’d Really be Better Off Eating an Apple”). Chow recently tackled the subject by posting reactions to a New York Times article (no link to the original article here, because you’d have to pay for the article, and I’d rather you save your money for better food) on the subject.

But along comes Jane, cutting through the spin in her frank, get-real kind of way. Her article in yesterday’s New York Times begins:

What worries you most? Decaying teeth, thinning bones, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, cancer, obesity? Whatever tops your list, you may be surprised to know that all of these health problems are linked to the beverages you drink — or don’t drink.

Hoo boy. She also notes that 21% of Americans’ calories come from beverages. Twenty-one percent! She doesn’t just talk about soda, either. She also tackles my beverages of choice, which include MASSIVE DOSES OF MORNING COFFEE and a big ol’ glass of red wine with dinner (her conclusion? I’m okay, as long as I don’t overindulge…although my uses of ‘MASSIVE DOSES’ and ‘big ol’ suggest that, perhaps, I’m not doing so well).

Anyhow, I’m going to take one more swig of my coffee and then? I’m gonna’ pour myself some water for a change.

Here’s a conversation that I can only imagine happening in the South:

Me, to waitress: Gee, we all love this cornbread so much! But what are these dark pieces that are scattered throughout. Is it meat?

Waitress: No, mam’n. That’s crackling.

Me: Oh, crackling! I see. Hmm. What is crackling, exactly?

Waitress: Oh, it’s just stuff that we add to give it flavor.

Me: It’s not a kind meat, though? It looks sort of animal.

Waitress: No, mam’n. It’s skins.

Me: Oh, okay. Potato skins.

Waitress: Not potato, mam’n. It’s pork skins.

Me: Pork skins! Aha! So it is meat!

Waitress: No, mam’n. Just crackling.

All of which illustrates the unique role of pork in Southern cooking: it is so ubiquitous that it almost ceases to exist.

For example, BBQ? Always pork (no need to ask). All those great pie crusts? Made with pork fat (they call it lard, but you and I know the truth). Simple veggies like collards? Flavored with fatback (such a satisfying word, fatback). Others, like beans? Cooked with salt pork or bacon. You’ve got country ham and red eye gravy, as well as specialties like pickled pig’s feet, chitterlings, and livermush. In fact, one thing I learned is that there are two secrets to Southern cooking:

1. A good cast iron skillet
2. Pig parts

Which is why, I suspect, I’ve had a difficult time coming up with too many great southern recipes for you. Although I am a meat-eater, I just don’t enjoy cooking with pork. I don’t know what it is. I’ve done it maybe once or twice in the last couple of years, and always squeamishly. Maybe it’s my mother’s repeated, graphic, and ever-stern warnings about trichinosis that I remember from childhood. It might be that ham has always been the one meat that for me most resembled the live animal it came from. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard radio programs and read a few stories that basically told me this.

More recently, it might be this op-ed from Nicolette Hahn Niman that did it for me (it made me much more likely to buy Niman Ranch meats, by the way, despite reactions like this one from non-meat eaters).

So, I asked my mother in law and her southern pals for some traditional recipes that don’t involve ham. Now, let it be said that my mother-in-law does not cook. You have been told elsewhere on this blog about her aversion to smells and messes. Few of her friends cook these days, either. They are all retired from cooking. They once cooked — every single one of them put dinner on the table for their families, for decades. I suppose that after I have raised my own kids through college and beyond, I am free to judge them for not seeing the joy in creating meals from whole foods. But in the meantime, I will simply let it be known: they are now living in a take-out world.

That said, I nobly tried my best at getting some southern recipes that do not involve the pig. Many times, I steered the conversation toward cooking, typically generating a non-response. The closest I came was one woman who says that she now uses Goya ham-flavored seasoning in her southern recipes. Which sounded great, until I did some research and learned that a major ingredient is MSG, which— despite its new Japanese name and highbrow comeback as a “fifth flavor” — remains something that I’m just not yet comfortable with.

If any of you have suggestions for how to get that meaty, brothy flavors for a porkophobe like myself, let me know. In the meantime, here are a few of the things I ate this week, with links to recipes, none of which require pork or MSG (southern food purists have probably already clicked off the page; if they haven’t yet, they surely will now. I’m so sorry, especially since I love southern cooking oh-so-much). I haven’t made them yet, but now that I’m back to my own kitchen, maybe I’ll give a few of them a try.

Squash casserole

Fried okra

A huge mess o’ Collard greens - note that it was near-impossible to find a decent collard green recipe that didn’t involve bacon fat or ham hocks or salt pork. But here you go.

Corn Bread

More corn bread

Black-eyed peas - another tough one to find pork-free. This recipe uses chicken.

Blackened catfish

She-crab stew - try the second one if you want one from scratch

Tomato Pie (I’m particularly charmed by the “Lazy Slut’s” version listed)

Green beans I almost gave up looking for a southern green bean recipe that didn’t involve bacon. Finally I came across this one. It’s not exactly southern, though it does come from Southern Living Magazine, so I’m counting it.

Cheese grits - okay, so this is more of a grits casserole, but it looked good and came very well reviewed

Did I mention cornbread?

I’ll end with a couple of quotes that illustrate that none of these recipes are truly Southern in nature, precisely because they don’t involve pork:

Ham held the same rating as the basic black dress. If you had a ham in the meat house any situation could be faced.
- Edna Lewis, late Southern Chef

All Southern regions can affirm the importance of this gift of the hog.
- Charles Reagan Wilson, the Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi

(in the south) the pig is the supreme provider of meat. Every part of the pig is used. Cured pork products like ham and bacon are ubiquitous. Pork fat (lard) greases the cornbread dish, bacon fat adds “that certain something” to the fried chicken, pork is essential for greens, red beans and rice, and other typical southern dishes.
- Life in the USA

Everyone breathe a sigh of relief. The plumber/handyman came. Garbage disposal no longer clogged. Trauma passed. Phew.

Now, at last, I can tell you what I made with my gorgeous, fresh-from-the-earth Sapelo Farms vegetables. Instead of cooking Southern, I opted to use their recipes. They steered me toward recipes on their their web site, which are handily sorted by ingredients. Some are old family recipes that have been handed down over the generations — and since they are a long-time farm family (”We’ve all got dirt in our blood,” said Betty Ann), you can bet that they’re wholesome and good.

I had to modify them slightly, either because I couldn’t find the right ingredients here, or because I had different quantities. If you want their original instructions, just follow the links:

Recipe #1: Fennel and Citrus Salad
1 large fennel bulb, cleaned and sliced, plus a bunch of the fronds (the leafy stuff)
3 large, very juicy oranges
1/4 cup olive oil (use the good stuff)
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel oranges, slice fennel, add olive oil and salt and pepper to taste (I didn’t use any, actually). Serve over salad greens. Yes, that’s the entire recipe.

Here’s the fennel sliced up (note that it looks like dill and onions. The dark green stuff are the fronds, and the whitish stuff is the bulb):

Here’s the salad when it’s done, but before it was mixed over lettuce greens:

The verdict: Very good. The oranges took the edge off the anise flavor of the fennel, and they blended very well. If I were to make it again, I would slice the fennel bulb slightly thinner, and I would chop the fronds a little finer — I just think the texture would work better. But I would definitely make it again.

Recipe #2: Leek and Goat Cheese Tart
This recipe came from Aunt Ginger, apparently. They say “it’s very straight-forward, very delicious and it travels very well.” Note that I had enough leeks for 2 pies. But I’m cutting it in half here:

one pie crust
3 very large leeks
2T Olive Oil
slightly less than half of one of the small heavy cream containers (about 4 TBSP)
1/2 tsp salt
Several shakes of pepper (their recipe called for white pepper, but we didn’t have it)
A bunch of crumbled goat cheese (I used one and a half of those small tubes of goat cheese per pie; recipe calls for 3/4 cup).

Bake crust at 425 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. In the meantime, clean and chop leeks (Note about cleaning leeks: I wash before I chop, peeling back the layers as I go, because dirt gets pretty deep in the layers, but then I also give the chopped leeks a good rinsing). Saute leeks in olive oil 8-10 minutes or until tender. Stir in cream, salt and pepper and cook 4-5 minutes or until thickened (Note: it never got super-thick for me, perhaps because there was too much water on them when I started sauteeing?). Sprinkle 1/2 cup of goat cheese on to crust, top with leek mixture and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes, until golden and bubbly.
(Note: I expected it to turn out like a quiche, with the leeks kind of suspended in something egg-like. It’s not like that, though. It really is a tart — layers and layers of leeks, but flavored with the goat cheese. Also, my goat cheese was too close to the oven, so I had to smear the top layer instead of crumbling it; yours might look a little different).

Here are the leeks sauteeing with the heavy cream:

Here’s the sprinkling of the cheese:

And what the pie looked like when finished (at a very funny angle, so I could show you that it’s not a quiche):

The verdict: I heart leeks. I heart goat cheese. I heart this recipe. Would be great for a brunch, but also worked well for dinner.

Recipe #3: Braised carrots

1 large bunch of carrots
Several pats of butter (recipe calls for 4T for each pound and a half)
salt and pepper to taste (I used just salt)

Wash carrots and slice into disks which are all the same thickness. Place carrots flat in a single layer in a saute pan. Top with butter and enough water to cover carrots. Cook carrots over medium heat until all the water has evaporated. Add salt and enough water to keep carrots from sticking. Continue to cook carrots until they are wrinkled and well browned.
Add water as necessary to keep carrots from burning or sticking. Cooking carrots in this way reduces them to the taste of nothing but concentrated carrot. It may take a while for fat carrots (mine were probably about a half-inch, and it took about 20 minutes — but hold out for them to get brown and wrinkly, since otherwise, you’re just dealing with cooked carrots). When almost done, allow all the water to cook out. Note: their recipe calls for parmesan cheese to be sprinkled on top. I didn’t think it required it, and the carrots turned out so sweet that I frankly couldn’t imagine it. If you do it, I’d use a good quality parmesan. But you might want to try it first without the cheese.

Verdict: Yeah, baby, yeah! These were terrific, and I am someone who DOES NOT LIKE cooked carrots. They go beyond cooked carrots to a different sort of place. They were sweet — almost dessert-sweet, with a richer carrot flavor, and a far better texture.

Here are the carrots starting to cook:

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of them as they got closer to done, but you can see them on the plate below. Because here, my friends, is the dinner all together…almost all of which had been in the ground the day before:

You’ll note that it’s all on styrofoam. Hard to feel too virtuous about that…except of course I am the one that broke the garbage disposal, thereby making it impossible to rinse dishes. Otherwise, ain’t the whole meal pretty?

And the best thing? MY MOTHER IN LAW LOVED IT. Not only did she say she loved it (she would do that no matter what; she’s that kind of person), she actually took second helpings. She rarely takes second helpings. She didn’t come right out and say, “Ali, my broken garbage disposal was all worth it.” But you know, I almost think she thought it.

(Merrie, by the way, was asleep by the time the meal was served; no testing on her this time. But I could have set aside oranges, raw carrots, and plain lettuce for her, just in case she didn’t care for the prepared foods. She might actually have liked the tart if she was in the right mood, too).

Yay for Sapelo farms — for letting me come and take pictures and ask too many questions, for their tasty home-grown treats, and for sharing their great recipes with all of us!

(I’ve also got some Bok Choy; we’ll see if I’ve got time to make something else before I go. Though as I type that, I can just hear my mother in law screaming “Noooooooooooo!”)

Umm. Oh. Oh dear.

Sigh.

I had this:

I wanted to create something wonderful out of it. I was so excited.

My mother-in-law? She is not a believer in this whole farm-fresh foods thing.
She tries. She wants to support me. She just doesn’t understand. Farms are dirty, after all. They track mud. They are extra effort. And maybe even more expensive.

Carrots? You can buy them at the grocery store. Why pull them from the dirt yourself? And did you know about takeout, Ali? And all those just-heat-and-serve meals? They’re really easier.

But she tries. And she let me cook dinner. In her gorgeous, brand-new, oddly odor-free kitchen. She bit her tongue, allowed me to have my way with her appliances, and left me alone. She doesn’t like messes. She doesn’t like smells. So this was a big effort on her part.

And a short while later, I had this:

That would be a clogged garbage disposal. Or maybe a broken one. But it’s one that sprays green liquid around the kitchen when you turn it on. It’s one that doesn’t drain. It’s one that looks really ugly. And is going to start to smell really ugly soon, too.

Do not ever, ever, put the green leafy tops of carrots in the garbage disposal. Promise me. Okay?

The plumber comes tomorrow.

You’d never know the farm was there, if you hadn’t gone looking. But I went looking today.

Actually, I went looking last week, before coming down here. I thought that as long as I was on the road, I might as well check out some of the local produce. So I went to Local Harvest, typed in the zip code of where we were staying, and got a list of local farms. Well, “list” is a stretch. There was one.

I’m going to give Sapelo Farms the “Most Unlikely Farm” award. It earns this honor for a few reasons:

1. It’s here at all. “Here” is Glynn County, GA, on the coast, about halfway between Savannah and Jacksonville. It’s always been beautiful, but in the last few decades, it’s become much more of a resort destination. Although farms were once plentiful, you can probably guess what happened to most of them: Either they were purchased by developers, bulldozed, and turned into schmantzy houses for retirees and second homeowners, or they were converted into the shopping centers and gas stations that service those folks. But Sapelo? It’s the last holdout. They’re still going after 60 years and three generations, even if they sometimes chase away developers with shotguns (um, literally, I think).

2. The Location. Sapelo Farms is literally wedged between I-95 and a Pepsi plant. It’s one-tenth of a mile from a huge RaceTrac gas station. It’s a stone’s throw from a Wal-Mart, a Home-Depot, a T.J. Maxx, and the new Lowes-Target shopping center about which locals are getting excited. You would never expect a farm to be there, but there it is.

3. It’s run by two women. Yes, I know there have been women farmers forever, and women have always had a vital stake in food security, and women are by nature food-providers and all that, but still. It wasn’t what I expected, and I thought it was mighty, mighty cool. More than that, these women are a mother-daughter team (Mom: Betty Ann. Daughter: Gabe). And they get along. They even seem to like one another.

Sapelo Farms is a CSA (25 members, with a waiting list, and they’re hoping to go to 40 soon). They also sell to non-members like me. They’ve got 200 acres and a huge variety of vegetables and herbs — as chemical-free as possible, though not certified, because the climate isn’t conducive to organic — as well as eggs. They also make their own goat cheese, and they milk cows, but because of federal restrictions, they aren’t able to sell those things to me. And because it’s warm down here, their growing season is a blissful 11 months of the year. Their customers include mostly wealthy retirees from the resort communities, but also some moms like me, who once ate everything, but since the kids have come along want some less horrifying alternative to the produce-it-cheap-and-poorly food industry.

I dug this farm. I DUG it. It seems like a little magic hiding place amid big box retail stores and car dealerships and, beyond, brand new million dollar mansions. I could hear the highway, I could imagine the golfers hanging out at the nearby Cloister Hotel just a few miles away, could picture Wal-Mart carts being pushed and gas pumps being filled nearby. But here, dogs napped lazily next to rows of leafy greens, Gabe pulled real food fresh from the dirt, roosters crowed, goats bleated, and my heart felt light.

At the same time, I felt sad, because all those other farms that used to be nearby are gone. They’re just gone. I asked Gabe and Betty Ann who else was farming nearby, and they shrugged their shoulders. There’s a small herb farm that sells to restaurants, a few small scale gardens, but that’s apparently it. Sapelo Farms gets calls from farmers markets that are a hundred miles away. They beg Sapelo Farms to come and sell produce. These farmer’s markets are desperate, because there’s literally almost no local alternative to the ConAgras of the world.

It’s hard for Sapelo, though. Every time they go to get feed for their animals, they’ve got to drive 80 miles. Any time they need a vet, they drive 80 miles. Any time they want to find anyone who’s doing anything even remotely similar to them, they drive at least that far. As much as I feel like a stranger in a strange land, they must feel even more so. I hope they stick around — because when a farm goes, it goes forever. And I’m thinking we need a farm like this far more than we need yet another Lowes.

I took home heaps of vegetables and herbs (no eggs left, sadly), and I will be whippin’ up some mean recipes for the family. It’s time I put my mother-in-law’s new kitchen to the test. Will pass on my findings. In the meantime, here are some photos.

This is Betty Ann:

This is Gabe:

These are some the fabulous-looking vegetables I took home:

Here are some other things I saw while there:

I’m feeling a little out of my element. It’s got nothing to do with being South of the Mason-Dixon, either.

Reason #1:
When I woke up this morning, I found my daughter bellied up to the counter with a giant bowl of Disney Princess Fairy Tale Flakes cereal. This cereal? I had already read about it in an article by Michelle Simon and on this blog. I remember rolling my eyes when I learned of this pink fairytale bliss, thinking “well, THAT’S something that is never going to enter our world.” The universe has a funny way of teaching me to never, ever, say ‘never.’

(What did Merrie think of it? She loved it. Of course she did. IT TURNS THE MILK PINK).

Reason #2:
I have been watching television for the first time in a long time.

Do you remember those middle school assignments where you had to pretend you’re an alien who wants to learn about life on earth, but have only a TV to teach you? That’s a little bit how I’m feeling down here. As many of you know, I don’t have TV channels - not even basic broadcast. We’ve got a DVD player, a 1-movie-at-a-time Netflix account, and a bunch of old kids videos. But we don’t see commercials these days, and we haven’t for a while.

Note: whatever you do, don’t think — do NOT think — “oh wow, she must be so strong to not have television.” Sometimes people say that to me when they learn I don’t watch TV — you’re so STRONG! — but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. What I am, rather, is weak. I’m so, so weak. When I have TV, there is always something I’m willing to watch: Howie Mandel doing strange, Dr. Evil-like dances on a morning talk show; 19-year old ingenues battling for a slot as America’s next top model; how-tacky-can-your-neighbor-make-your-family-room-in-a-single-weekend remodeling shows; Dr. Phil delivering tough love Texan style…I am content to watch them all. ALL).

I’ve been as fascinated by the commercials as I’ve been entertained by the husbands-who-don’t-help-but-are-caught-using-undercover-video-surveillance-and-then-reamed-out-in-front-of-live-studio-audiences. I’m noticing a couple of trends. None of these will come as great insights, they’ve all been covered elsewhere before. But because they have struck me anew, I will list them here:

a. Lots of unhealthy foods being advertised, and heavily. Especially Toaster Strudels.

b. We like our food plentiful and cheap. Surely you’ve heard, for example, about the $5.99 Mega Breakfast specials at Denny’s? I have. About six times this morning alone.

c. After you’ve eaten your Mega Meat Lover’s Plate, you’ll be able to “get into your skinny jeans in no time flat!” by taking out a membership at one of about eight million gyms advertising on TV.

d. While we prefer our food cheap, we are willing to pay lots for other things: big cars and big homes, especially (there is a channel here entirely dedicated to local real estate; do other places have this? I have seen so many “great rooms with soaring ceilings!” “upgraded tile flooring!” “free-flowing floor plans!” and homes with “old world sophistication and contemporary panache!”…and they all start to look alike after about 2 minutes, and they all make me realize how many of us are living in communities where people have exactly the same amount of money as we do, and are in the same lifestage, and so we never get a sense of our role in the larger community…of our town, our county, our state, our nation, our world…but that’s a topic for another blog).

e. Whatever nutrition we’re not getting from our toaster strudels, we fortunately can now get from bottled water. Protein water! Fitness water! Water that will make John Stamos take notice of me, even mid-paparazzi photo shoot!

f. If all else fails, there are always pharmaceuticals. (I want to shout common sense at all those commercials for prescription drugs that respond to diseases that, while real, perhaps for some of us — could have been avoided in the first place…Bone loss: “Take walks! Eat more yogurt and leafy greens!” Diabetes: “Less soda! And ditto on the walks!” Constipation: “More fruits and vegetables! Less cheese!” Erectile dysfunction: “Try parsnips!”).

There’s a kind of schizophrenia at work here (I don’t mean schizophrenia in the clinical sense, because yes, I know that schizophrenia, the disorder, is more complex than a split personality, I know that it actually involves delusions and thought disorders and disorganized behavior. I mean the non-clinical, bastardized version of the word, and I will be oh-so-happy to replace the word with an appropriate synonym if someone can suggest one).

Eat too much! Join a gym!

Drive everywhere! Work out like a fiend.

Eat Toaster Strudels! You can get your vitamins from your water now!

Eat! Eat! Eat! Take a Slim-Fast hunger control bar. Then take pills.

It’s wack. It’s JUST. PLAIN. WACK. Especially when the CDC is shouting (into the wind, it seems) about how the vast majority of Americans are — still — not eating their fruits and veggies.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I do believe there’s a rerun of Three’s Company showing, or at least a commercial for Toaster Strudels, that I must watch right about now.

So, the girls and I are flitting around the South, eating all kinds of things that we shouldn’t, poking the dead jellyfish we find washed up on the beach, blinking a little too much from the sun to which we’re apparently no longer accustomed.

Blair is at home - no wife, no daughters, no dog. What is Blair doing? He is eating the same food, meal after meal after meal (after meal). After he returned from dropping us off at the airport, he made himself a big pot of stroganoff, which he has eaten for 4 of his most recent 5 meals. Since he makes a tasty stroganoff, and he makes it in under 20 minutes, I thought it was worth sharing.

(I know, you were expecting a good recipe for something like chicken fried steak, or turnip greens. You’ll get a Southern recipe or two. I promise. Just not tonight - I haven’t yet found the right, simple, won’t-COMPLETELY-clog-your-arteries-in-one-sitting Southern recipes. I’ve found plenty of recipes, but they’re either waaay too complicated, or they’re just so unhealthful I can’t share with a clean conscience….or they involve pimentos).

Blair Stroganoff
(the quantities in this recipe makes a whole lotta’ stroganoff - at least a couple of meals’ worth)

1 lb meat (he used ground turkey this time)
1 red onion, chopped
1 small zuchinni
1 red pepper
1 lb mushrooms
1/3 cup white wine
16 oz sour cream
salt and pepper to taste.

Brown the meat. In a separate pan, sautee the onion, then add the zuchinni, red pepper, and mushrooms. Combine with browned meat. Douse with white wine, heat, then add sour cream. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice or pasta.

Not a meat eater? Then check out this recipe for Portobello Mushroom Stroganoff, which is getting all kinds of rave reviews from readers.

Now, it must be said that sour cream is packed with saturated fat, so you might want to use fat-free sour cream, which is made from skim milk. We don’t use the fat free, generally, mostly because…well, I have a nagging fear that it just won’t taste as good (try it, though. Tell me how it is).

Last time Blair made this, we used part Hood brand sour cream, and part Nancy’s organic sour cream, and we did a blind sour cream taste test. Nancy’s kicked butt. Hands down, it was much sweeter, much smoother, much creamier.

Blair has 4 meals to go before he leaves for the airport himself, and there’s still plenty of stroganoff left in the pot. Will he eat anything else between now and when I see him? Perhaps not. Good thing the man makes a tasty stroganoff.

Greetings all, from Southern coastal Georgia, where we’re visiting my mother-in-law for a week. The kids and I arrived today; Blair will join us on Wednesday night, after some can’t-miss meetings. This means I had the privilege (cough) and pleasure (cough cough) of being the lone parent flying with two youngsters.

(The short story: schlep too many bags. Wait in long line. Jiggle baby on hip to shush her. Chase Merrie. Scold Merrie. Switch baby to other hip. Jiggle more. Dig for ID. Dig for crumpled boarding passes. Schelp more. Remove shoes. Remove belt. Chase baby. Open laptop. Lift bag. Drop boarding passes. Fill baby bottle. Spill baby bottle. Anger flight crew by being late. Anger fellow passengers by having two miserable kids for two hours. Anger children by not having snacks. Eat too many Delta-issued cookies. Need to pee for 4 hours straight. Give up hope. Want to cry by the time flight ends.)

But that’s all water under the bridge. That’s the proverbial spilled milk. I’m not going to cry over it, no I’m not. What I’m going to do is SOP UP SOUTHERN EATING LIKE CORNBREAD SOAKS UP GRAVY.

Okay, I might not sop it all up. Take, for example, a recipe for “Hanky Panky” that I found in one of those spiral-bound church fundraiser cookbooks that are so popular down here:

HANKY PANKY

1 loaf party rye
1 lb hot sausage, bulk
1 lb Velveeta cheese
Cook sausage. Add cheese until melted. Cool Spread on bread. Broil until bubbly.

I mean, Hanky Panky! No, thanky, thanky! I’ll pass, too, on the Likker Puddin’, congealed salads, and dessert torte crafted from Ritz crackers.

And, sure, okay, this is not a state known for its organic, local farms (it is, rather, the state from which the reviled Fieldale Loophole raised its ugly head back in 2003).

But people: the butter beans. The collards soaked in vinegar. The boiled peanuts! They’ve got succotash, Brunswick stew, pecan pie, vidalia onions…There’s honest-to-goodness regional cooking in these parts, which in a world of Clif Bars and Lean Cusine frozen dinners seems pretty darned welcome. Bring on the real food! Bring on the traditional eats! Bring on the platters and platters of finger-lickin’, belly-fillin’ comfort!

I’m not staying deep in the heart of Southern cooking, mind you (in these parts, there are now more golf clubhouses than there are traditional cafeteria-style kitchens). But real Southern cusine? It can still be found. I’ve tasted it. And I dig it.

It’s almost enough to get me to start humming a Ray Charles tune. (you know the one. Yeah. THAT one. You want to start humming it now, too, don’t you?). In fact, I might. Right now. As I head to sleep. Now. Weary, so weary, from the day’s travels…

With apologies to Kate, who despises bananas (keep reading, Kate - I’ve got an idea for you below), I’ve got a few other quick notes on the subject:

1. Each time I have been notified about a comment on a banana post, I’ve recieved a Google ad that says

Banana Guard Must Have
Banana Guard will fit most bananas. 9 Colours , Only £3.97 Buy one now.

Now, I thought I knew what a banana guard was, and I didn’t think that Blair needed one. But after about 16 times seeing this ad, my curiousity got the better of me. So I clicked the link, wondering what color banana guard might look best on my husband of nearly 9 years.

And you know what? It’s an actual banana guard. I don’t mean a “banana” guard. A banana guard. So now I’m thinking that this is either an unfortunately-named product, or a really brilliantly-named one.

2. Adding to the all the strange banana synchronicity, Chiquita yesterday was fined $25 million for paying $1.7 million to a Colombian terrorist group. ‘Nuff said.

3. It’s worth noting that while I was poking around the web looking for banana recipes, I stumbled across a site that has some really weird ones. Anyone for baked Lettuce, Bananas and Curry? How about Brussels Sprouts and Bananas? Lake trout with bananas and vinegar? If anyone’s feeling brave, let me know how these taste.

And finally, with a nod to Kate, I’ll tell you that the previous banana pudding post can be made without the bananas. Do everything but add the bananas, call it vanilla pudding, and you’ll be just as delighted with the results. Promise.