Southern Cookin’

The South is unashamed of its saturated fats, I concluded on a recent trip to the region, where Erik and I were plied at every turn with pork and biscuits. Erik eats neither, because of his allergy to gluten and aversion to the filthiness of pigs. I ate both, including his share of biscuits.

We traveled through Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina, where for the first time I heard of “Lowcountry” cuisine, or poor people’s food at high prices. We stayed at the Motel 6 to afford meal after meal of expensive starches. In Charleston, I ate shrimp and grits with ham gravy, and more creamy grits the next day with eggs Benedict. Later, at a Nashville honky-tonk, I ate fried pickles. My sister reports that on a trip to Tennessee, she ate bacon five times in two days.

The South’s capacity to charm and appall us might be best exemplified by the two literary sites we visited: Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia and Mark Twain’s boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. (Despite its proximity to Iowa, I concur with my mother that “Missouri is a very southern state.”) At its best, the South was gifted with a wild intelligence. The curator of the Flannery O’Connor house lived on its top floor, where, he told us, little Mary Flannery fought with her guardian angel. She had what she described as a condition the Freudians had failed to diagnose: “Anti-Angel Aggression.” The Sisters of Mercy at Mary Flannery’s grade school had instilled in her a fear of her constant companion: she was told, for example, to sit on only half of her desk chair, so that the angel might have room to sit at her side. Away from school, she spent hours in her house’s upper rooms, pummeling and tearing at her guardian angel’s invisible wings, still unable to remove his presence. Pictured below is the O’Connors’ butter dish:

At its worst, though, the South was an un-romantic tour trap. Erik and I wondered what Mark Twain might write about the industry sprung up around his boyhood house. The first two photos were taken at the Mark Twain Dinette. In the third, I am eating huckleberry ice cream.

(Note: at its real worst, the South was a series of Confederate memorials and tours of “working plantations.” At its other best, the South was biscuits at Nashville’s Loveless Cafe, the source of the picture at the top of this blog, and this picture with Toby Keith in Nashville:)

The real reason Erik and I traveled to the South, though, was to visit his family. Before we embarked on our literary, culinary, and musical tour, we met up with his mother at his uncle’s small-scale ranch in Tennessee. The house looked over acres of woodlands and a river, and the ranch was fitting for a “gentleman farmer:” it had as many farm dogs as cattle and nearly as many motorized vehicles (including a Mercedes SUV and an RV the size of a tour bus with leather upholstery). Fittingly, we enjoyed several days of steak and eggs and bacon for breakfast.

Just when we thought our hearts might stop, we went on to visit Erik’s father in Atlanta. His sweet Brazilian wife, Serise, restored several months to our lives with her daily salads. They consisted of two parts salad greens to one part fresh herbs, plus large chunks of fruit and four or five other vegetables. I made my own “Serise Salad” last night. The version pictured below has endive, arugula, and radishes from my garden, which shot up 18 inches in the two weeks we were gone. It also has spearmint the neighbors planted last year; hard boiled eggs; leftover salmon; nectarines; green beans; and a dressing made with an 18-year-old balsamic, a gift from Erik’s mom. Yum.

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