Grits Is Just Little Taters

I live in a weird neighborhood made up mostly of people who are not from around here and southerners who have forgotten they are from around here. For example, their kids have no idea what it means to have manners. They would rather die than say "Yes ma'am," "No ma'am,"or "Thank you, sir." No, that's not right. They don't use manners because they haven't been taught them. Indeed, as your mama would say, "They's ain't been raised right."


And here's another thing that just chaps my ass. Recently, I began an exercise program which involves walking through the neighborhood. Some of the road has sidewalks, a lot of it doesn't. Drivers around here think there is some kind of sport in seeing just how close they can come to you in their SUVs and Lexuses (Lexi?) and BMWs without actually hitting you as they approach the speed of light. On the other hand, these same people will stop and patiently wait for five minutes while a flock of Canadian geese waddle down and across the street. I don't get it.


Okay, you're asking, how does this relate to food? Well, some time during the last century I lived in north Florida and I had occasion to need the shingles on the roof of my house replaced. I hired a guy, Jerry Wayne, to do the job. He was from a very rural area called Madison and he was salt of the earth, poor as a church mouse, cracker. He had some of his teeth, more tattoos than skin and a fine looking mullet hairdo. He was long and lanky, wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off, with washed out, hole riddled Levi's long before they became a fashion statement. He made Joe Dirt look suave and debonair. One day, while Jerry Wayne was on the roof in triple-digit Florida sun, I was out in the yard lamenting what to do about the fire ants that had overtaken the place. Jerry Wayne saw me and decided to see what I was up to. He lumbered over to where I was swatting and cussing fire ants for all I was worth. "Grits," he said. "Huh? Sum-bitch piss ants!" I said as fifty of the little bastards attacked my left ankle. "Grits. Yep, grits will get rid of them piss ants. Them ants will eat grits and then the grits will swell up in they's bellies and make 'em explode. You know, grits is just little taters, and when them piss ants eat 'em, well you know, they's just gone explode." Well, I'll be a biscuit eating, egg sucking dog, I thought, how do you argue with that?

On the whole, I would rather spend a month with Jerry Wayne than thirty seconds with an East Snobber.

Bless Her Heart, She Can't Help It (That She's a Yankee)

Carol and I just got back from a visit to her home town out on the eastern end of Long Island. We were up there for her high school reunion. The number evades me right now, but it is more than five years since she graduated from Greenport High School. There were sixty-four seniors in her graduating class and I have to hand it to them, they do a pretty good job of getting together for their reunions every five years. This year the food was catered by a (relatively recently) married couple in the class. Mary Ann Sledjeski Costello's father owned and operated Porky's Restaurant so she and her husband Tom put together an amazing array of finger foods and hors d'oevres including a fillet mignon on a slice of toasted french bread, crabmeat with dill sauce and poached salmon with cucumber. But my favorite was a dried apricot with walnut and blue cheese topping that was to die for--yummy!

The actual reunion party was held on Friday evening at Founders Landing in Southold overlooking Peconic Bay. It was a long evening as the outsider spouse whose lack of "history" was sometimes painfully obvious. I am sure that anyone who has attended a spouse's reunion can identify with me...the things we do for marital harmony. On the other hand, it is fun to allow yourself to just be the almost invisible and completely insignificant afterthought you are and observe the "process". Here are a few of my observations: Cliques that existed in high school don't go away. Sometimes there are late bloomers that no matter how hard you tried, you could not have predicted how great these people would have turned out and some of the ones who had the world by the ass in high school just haven't been able to do anything with it. And here is the big aha--life happens. Yep, profound ain't it. Good and bad events occur in life that are neither predictable nor preventable, and they make us who we are.

But wait, here is what I really wanted to address in this blog: in a couple of weeks the Cutchogue Volunteer Fire Department is having their annual barbeque chicken dinner fund raiser. According to one of Carol's classmates, they have a world famous "secret" recipe for their barbeque marinade. I understand that Martha Stewart attended the festivities last year, but was not able to get them to share their secret marinade recipe with her. This was said with an absolute straight face, more than a little bit of pride, and complete and total ignorance to the fact that there was a son of the South standing right there in their midst. This is where it gets tricky because no matter how hard I try, I cannot reconcile those two diametrically opposed terms and put them in the same sentence--Yankee and barbeque. Think about it for a minute. See what I mean? The only way I can do it is to say, "Yankees don't know nothing 'bout no barbeque." Chowder? No problem. Pasta? Ok, it works for me. But barbeque? Pllleeeaaassseeee.