Any Way You Slice It

                 "It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato."- Lewis Grizzard

"Hand it over," I say, tapping my foot in nervous anticipation over and over again on the asphalt in the back parking lot. It could all go wrong at any moment, I think to myself, glancing back over my shoulder.

"Hold your horses, already," my friend Alicia whispers. "If I get caught I'll be in big trouble, you know. I'm supposed to be in there working." She nods to the heavy, metal door behind her.

"Whatever," I tell her, holding out my hands. I can see what it is I'm after poking through the reused white Winn Dixie plastic shopping bag with black lettering. Time is of the essence.

She finally gives it up. I snatch the bag before she decides to keep it for herself. I open my car door and make a hasty retreat.  Not before gently laying my precious cargo on the seat beside me, wondering if I should've turned on the passenger airbag and cranked up the AC.

As soon as I get home, I take the steps two at a time, unlock the front door, slap some peppered bacon in the oven, wash my iceberg, and pull out the hefty two gallon jar of Hellman’s from the fridge. After placing two slices of white bread on a plate, there's nothing left to do but open my bag.

There they are in all their God given, delicious glory -- straight from Alicia's mother-in-law, Amanda's family farm in Hortense -- eight of the most perfect homegrown tomatoes I'd ever seen.

I grab my serrated knife, thank God for His bounty (not to mention the paper towel kind I was about to need to sop up all the juicy goodness), and start slicing.

I just love summer, especially during the month of June in Georgia. What's not to love? Fresh peaches, tomatoes, squash, okra, onions, corn . . . It's a smorgasbord for your taste buds and a bright and beautiful mosaic to your eyes as well. As with Monet and his gardens in Giverny, Southerners are equally inspired by the summer fruits and vegetables that spring forth from every field, farm stand, and family gathering across our region for miles and miles, or wherever our roots call us back to.

See, there are a multitude of definitions for the word "root" in the dictionary, but, for me at least, there are only two that I associate with growing up in Georgia. The first is the part of a plant that grows downward in the soil and the second is the source from where all things come. To Southerners, the two meanings couldn't be more intertwined.

We are to our roots like homegrown tomatoes are to the vine. Connected, nourished, and strengthened through the generations before us. Any way you slice it, it doesn't get any better than that.

Now, I would love to share with y'all a favorite recipe passed down through my Mom that will always remind me of my love for the South, in all its summer glory:

                  
                  AnnieMa's Fried Okra with Green Tomatoes and Onion

2-3 small green tomatoes (For those not in the know, this is a tomato pulled straight from the vine before it fully ripens into all its red, yummy juiciness. This is in no way a bad thing, but something equally as delicious. This means you get a firmer tomato that is perfect for frying and tastes sweeter.)
1 1/2 pounds small okra pods (If this is your first time handling an okra pod, don't fret if it feels as slimy as an old toad fresh out of a backyard pond when you cut into it. This is actually quite desirable seeing as (unlike putting on your swimsuit for the first time after a frosty winter) you need something extra to make it stick -- to the cornmeal coating, that is.)
1/2 white onion
1 egg
White cornmeal
All purpose flour
LOTS of salt and pepper (This comes from a woman who salts her limes before she bites into them and eats hot peppers straight from the jar without something to drink. To NOT season, my mom might say, is for sissies.)
Vegetable oil for frying

Here's how it goes:
Cut okra into horizontal slices. Cut tomatoes and onion into pieces comparable in size to okra slices. Use paper towel to absorb liquid from tomatoes. Mix okra, tomatoes, and onion in bowl; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Beat egg well with fork and stir into tomato mixture and coat well. Add equal parts flour and meal in a plastic bag. Add more salt and pepper (See what I’m talking about!) Add okra mixture and shake to coat well. Add to hot oil in skillet and fry until golden brown. Drain on paper towel and serve while piping hot.

As with all properly trained Southern cooks, i.e. trained from their mother’s apron strings as soon as they could walk, talk and hold on tightly, my mom never measures anything. She knows it by heart. Trust me, it will taste like it came straight from her heart as well, served to you with a whole lotta love! Enjoy!

Writers note:
Many, many thanks to Amanda Moore who always thinks of me when she brings back her gorgeous tomatoes and squash from her family farm. I can't wait to take the girls there one year to go pickin’! Also, thanks to Patty and Kent Capper, owners of the very posh Joseph Jewelers and the coolest bosses in town. Thanks for letting Alicia help me create and then write about some of the funniest adventures ever. Love you guys! Last but not least, thanks to my Mom who has taught me what is means to embrace, own, and pass on my Southern roots. I love you!

Carports and Collard Greens

I love country roads.

They are like the lines you’ve earned on your forehead, all the well-worn wrinkles around your face. They tell a story all their own.

Some country roads are nothing but dirt. Some are filled with gravel. Some go on and on without a destination in mind while others get your right where you need to go.
They have great names like Edna’s Road or Sit and Stay Awhile Street.

I guess I just love the wear and tear, the potholed hominess of them all. They remind me of family, because that is usually what you find at the end of them.

Growing up, we would wind our way up and down these roads, back and forth from Augusta to my grandparents’ house in Colbert. It’s a teeny, tiny town off Highway 72 going up to Athens. If you sneeze, you might just miss it.

Once you arrived at the house, you’d have to find a place on the side yard to park. My grandparents had a carport, but they never a parked a car in it. If you pulled one in there, where would everyone sit and cook and watch the cars go by?

That’s about all we did there, you know. As a child, I really didn’t understand why it was supposed to be so much fun, this congregation of family on a grease-stained slab of concrete more worshipped than Bethlehem. All the grownups ever did anyway was eat and talk, then eat and talk some more, and while they were talking, they were talking about eating. I just wanted to go into “town” and grab a pizza and a movie.

You should always be careful what you wish for. It’s true that you end up really missing something once it’s gone.

My grandmother made the best collard greens. It was one of the first things you smelled walking up to the carport. That and the smell of hot grease cracking in a fryer. See, the grease stains on the concrete in the carport didn’t come from my grandfather’s Pontiac, but from his Fry Daddy that lived a few inches away from the foot of his rocker.

Down here in the South, if you can eat something, you can fry it. So that’s what we did. We didn’t iron, starch, or press the sheets either. Why bother when we were just going to use it to cover the lunch dishes on the dining room table so the flies wouldn’t get them before pulling it back off again for dinner?

I haven’t been back to Colbert for a while. My grandparents passed away many, many years ago. I still think of them often, usually when I smell or taste something that brings me back to that small speck of time on that carport all those years ago. Especially if it’s fried okra, collard greens, sweet cornbread or vinegar based barbecue.

There are some memories that are not relegated to a faded photograph hanging in a frame or a letter saved in a shoebox. Some are sensory. They can replicate a past experience with one bite. They are to be savored, enjoyed and passed down to generations to come. Cooking was the centerpiece that brought my family all together. It still does.

My mom and her sisters still get together a few times a year at the beach house. It’s not the same little house they grew up in down by a winding country road.  It’s a new little house off a causeway on a barrier island off the South Carolina coast. The two places couldn’t be more different, but the smells, the food, the laughter, and the stories coming from the kitchen when they are all together are exactly the same.

It’s funny how we are always in such a hurry to get down the road a ways, but I think everyone gets to a point where they don’t have any other place they’d rather be . . . except maybe gathered under a small carport or at a small beach house filled with family and a pot on the stove full of collard greens.

So, now let me share one of my memories with you. This recipe is ridiculously simple but taste divinely complex. It smells so good slow cooking in the oven. It reminds me of the carport, my mom’s family and those lazy days of cooking, talking, eating, and watching the cars go by.

                                                        Aunt Shirley’s Apple Cider Pork

1 large Boston Pork Butt
3 cups apple cider vinegar
Red pepper

Sprinkle the pork with red pepper, cover with vinegar in a Dutch over, and bake in a 300 degree oven for eight hours.

As Aunt Shirley will tell you, the amount of vinegar might need to be tweaked according to
the size of the pork, so like any proper bathing suit cover, you just want to make sure it covers enough of your butt.

Aunt Shirley recommends mashed potatoes from scratch. I don’t know how to operate a mixer that has more parts than a small aircraft carrier, so don’t tell her, but I always cheat and buy the pre-made ones at the store.

Also, the leftover juices make excellent gravy. Now I was born in raised in South so I know better than anyone not to tell someone else how to make their gravy, but I never, ever cheat with a bottle of brown gravy. Aunt Shirley would definitely have my hide on that one! Enjoy!

Saint Simons Island 101

I've learned a lot since I moved here to the island, my husband's hometown, more than eight years ago.

· I've learned you can fry an egg on the hood of a white car in 105 degree heat just as easily as you can on the hood of a black one.
· I've learned you have to break for families of deer, slow wandering egrets, and shy turtles when pulling in and out of your driveway.
· I’ve learned fiddler crabs can and will slip through the tiniest crack in your garage door, then sit, stink, and stay awhile before you can find them.
· I've learned never to trust the Doppler Radar when going out on the boat. Even if it says there’s a scant 10% chain of precipitation, take a rain slicker, a few flairs, a grounding device, and be prepared to have your clothes hang off your frame fifteen pounds heavier than when you hopped on, and you’ll also feel fifteen degrees chillier.
· I’ve learned that even though most people consider John Freda Anti-Frizz Serum to be God’s gift to both man and woman, He and John obviously didn't think we would care a thing about it down here in little ole Southeast Georgia.
· I’ve learned that having a bathing suit season that lasts nine months out the year is not always a good thing.
· I’ve learned that loving a Gator may be a sin, but being a Bulldog is a way of life.
· I’ve learned that Brunswick stew is in itself a major food group, and though it may take you ten minutes to get a table at a restaurant, it's only because you know the ten people you've stopped and hugged hello along the way.

This may seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to what my children have learned growing up here.

· They’ve learned that you can find live starfish in the tidal pools on East Beach after low tide, sand dollars if you dive deep enough past the break of the waves, and bio-luminescents in the brackish rivers after a good, heavy rain.
· They've learned that tubing the Altamaha is a lot of fun once you realize you're not really gator bait. And no, even though you share their space and even peacefully coexist, it's still not a good idea to dangle your feet over the dock while one of them is staring at you.
· They've learned that riding a bike means having the freedom to explore even though they might have gone through five boxes of Sponge Bob Band Aids to get there and that it's all worth it in the end because of the miles and miles of bike paths that allow them access to nature at its most pristine, kind of like a modern day Christopher Columbus.
· They’ve learned that there is no sense in hurrying to get somewhere. It’s what you see and do along the way that makes up who you are.

How lucky they are, to grow up here.

Unlike my girls, I didn't grow up on a beach. I dipped my toe in this existence, the salty, warm seductiveness of it all, from time to time and it would feel like coming home. It wasn’t until I moved here that I could see it for what it is. It’s a pliable, changing, cyclical place that moves as naturally and as reliably as the tides; not a place born of concrete and rigidity where a way of life is set in stone only to be abandoned and forgotten when something new or better comes along.

It’s a place that calls for our footprints to make a mark on its surface before disappearing as if we were never there, but we don’t care. We know we will get to come back and re-create our experiences again and again and again as if it was for the very first time.

It’s a place that encircles us with a warm caressing breeze. Not like a blanket that protects us from harm, but quite the opposite. No, it’s more like a whisper of warmth against your skin which stirs something in you, pushes you out of your shell, teasing you to be free of the everyday worries that confine you.

It’s a place where our beaches lay out like a giant welcome mat to seek out all that is wild and wonderful about our world while its rivers and marshes spin out around us and bind us all together at its core.In the end, I’ve learned how lucky we all are to live here, in this place.

 And, most importantly, to have the privilege to call it home.

The Fiber Club

It seems, to me at least, that down here in the South people really like to talk about their ailments. It’s a one-upsmanship of sorts. All you have to do is visit any Waffle House (if you can stand that “Welcome to the Waffle House” song some smart aleck sets to repeat on the juke box) and you’ll inevitably hear a comeback like this one:

“Gum disease,” someone will scoff while gnawing on his breakfast steak. “Yeah, well that’s nothing. My bunions are acting up, my cholesterol is through the roof, and on top of that I haven’t slept in four years on account of having to keep getting up to pee.”

This type of banter is not just reserved for roadside diners either, let me tell you. Here’s a typical morning at my parent’s beach house on Harbor Island, SC. I want you to imagine that Folgers’s commercial; the one where the family wakes up at Christmas to the smell of coffee and the lights twinkling on the tree as the family gathers round. Well, we wake up to the clink of spoons in a glass. I’ll go into the kitchen looking for a cup of coffee, only to find myself in a forty-five minute discussion about intestinal health over the morning Metamucil. It goes something like this:

“You know, Gary . . .” My Aunt Pam, bless her heart, is standing at the breakfast bar in her big, fluffy bathrobe, and I do not know why it bothers me so badly, but she won’t get out of it ‘til after noon. “I found this powder that’ll clean you out for two months straight.”

“No way.” My dad is clearly skeptical, being a physician and all. I can’t help but roll my eyes at him but I cut him some slack because at least he’s dressed. “Where did you hear about it?”

“From an infomercial,” she tells him smugly, as if this information has as much validity as if it came straight out of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dad’s still not biting, but he remains on course, taking a hefty slug of the chalky, orange stuff in his glass. After all, this is a man whose motto is “It’s all about the bulk, baby.”

“You know, Gary,” she counters, because her arguments generally have the same longevity as her bathrobe. “It’s like your car. You gotta change the oil every so often so it runs right.”

I love my Aunt Pam, bathrobe and all. She is a true Southern belle, meaning she’s as syrupy sweet as molasses and tougher than a two dollar steak at the same time. I don’t think I have ever met anyone that can clear out a dining room faster by discussing the length and solidity of a little ole hangnail on the top of her big toe.

As a child, I used to cringe at these dinners, counting down the minutes until I could be excused even if it meant I had to scrub the pots and pans, oven and floors, then take the dog out before having to weed and mow the lawn. I mean, how long can a bunch of grown-ups talk about cysts, co-pays, corns, and colons? It’s like they go to bed one day full of hope and health and endurance for a long, productive life and the next day they wake up only to find the pills in their medicine cabinet have quadrupled and can’t help but start pulling out their X-rays.

I was trying to explain this fascinating phenomenom over lunch at Brogen’s North with my friend Alicia but got a little distracted. It went down something like this:

“You just ordered soup,” stating the obvious like I am prone to do.

“I know,” Alicia tells me pulling out a brown bottle from her purse. “My stomach’s been messed up for weeks.”

“Mine too,” I say, grabbing the brown bottle smack out of her hand. “Probiotics, huh? Lactobacillus gasserit? Bifidobacterium bifidum? Does it work?”

“Who knows,” she answers before tossing back a pill with a big sip of iced tea. “My mailman’s daughter’s first grade teacher’s niece recommended it.”

“Well, let me know how it goes.” I hand her back the bottle. “How’s your hubby been doing these days?”

“He’s got that stomach flu that been going around,” She tells me, pushing her soup out of the way. “How come when a guy throws up, he has to do it really loudly? So he knows that I know he’s actually sick?”

“Tell me about it,” I say. “If Charlie comes down with something, he’s laid out like a MD80 on a Chicago O’Hare tarmac in the middle of a blizzard. If it’s me, I still have to pack the lunches and get the kids on the curb for carpool.”

“Speaking of which,” she says. “How’s Charlie doing lately?”

“Oh, his back is killing him and he can’t feel the entire right side of his left foot. He’s still mad at me for leaving my suitcase out in the middle of the room.”

“Really?” she suddenly perks up. “After my last sinus infection I can’t feel the top half of my face.”

“Oh, that happened to my mom’s best friend’s sister’s mother-in-law,” I tell her, signaling for the check.

“What did she do?”

“I think she just had to learn to live with it.”

Oh, well. It’s official. I am now a member of the Southern Family Fiber Club, a group in which I swore I’d never seek membership. It was inevitable, I guess, since I’m a Southerner to the core, not to mention, with my family, I came by it honestly. But as my Aunt Pam would say, I shouldn’t go off half-cocked with my feathers in a ruffle just because I finally figured out every dog has a few fleas.

What in the world is she talking about, you might wonder? Beats me. You’ll have to ask her yourself. Just be prepared to stay on the phone for a coon’s age and pray she hasn't had her annual check-up anytime recently. I guess at least now I’ll have something to talk with them about over the morning Metamucil.

Holy Frappe, It’s Hot Down Here

I just can’t help it, but when I like something I can’t quit talking about it. It’s like those mini Sarah Lee frozen cheesecakes; if something makes you feel better, why not share it. At this particular time of the year, when most people curse the 110-degree heat index, I fall in love with the South all over again. This might have something to do with the fact that I get to go up to Lake Winnipesauke in New Hampshire for a month, so it's kind of like cheating. But I just can’t help it. I get homesick before the wheels of my Yukon hit Highway 17.
Now granted, it’s beautiful up there, no doubt about it. I mean absolutely beautiful. It’s just that you really, really have to like being outdoors all day because that’s all there is to do. My husband’s immediate enthusiasm is not so much because he actually can see the bass in the water before he catches them, but more for the fact that “shopping” means hitting the Moultonborough Old General Store for penny candy and a 10-cent dill pickle out of an old wooden barrel. And if you’re really in that shopping mood, there is a whole line of John Deere coffee mugs, lunch boxes, and t-shirts. So the bottom line or bottom dollar, so to speak, is that he can save some money by having me sequestered up north for a month, more isolated than a member of the OJ Simpson jury. Only you won’t find me in a fancy hotel with up-to-date movie rentals and room service, but in a fifty year-old “cabin” with carpenter ants as big as my foot.
Here are two examples of a typical summer Saturday outing:
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Up there:
Gas for the Yukon: $79
Pass to Mount Washington: $2
Phenergan needed for winding roads: Not included
Xanax needed to subside sheer panic seeing as a skinny piece of twisted metal is all that is between you and 6,000 feet: Not unless your doctor prescribed it.
LL Bean winter down jacket in July (because, with the wind chill factor, it can feel like 20 degrees below zero): You’re on your own.
Tether that they tie you to: Well, at least it’s included in the price.
Total: $81 and a severe case of wind burn.

Down here:
Babysitter: $30
Lunch with girlfriends at Coastal Kitchen: $40
One pair 7 For All Mankind jeans and Theory skirt: $545
Total: $615 and one angry husband.

So the way I see it, it’s why I married him. He is, after all, a pretty smart guy.
Now, I know y’all watch the Animal Planet and find the wild animals scurrying around in the woods endearing. You might even daydream about communing with them in their natural setting. Well, been there, done that. One of the selling points for going up every year was being able to sleep with the windows open, snuggled under one of those Indian blankets, breathing in the fresh mountain air. Sure, until two foxes decide, in the words of Marvin Gay, to “get it on” under your windowsill, making a sound eerily similar to a pack of dying dogs. Not to mention the fact that pets and small children are not allowed outside at night in fear of being, well, mauled by any number of animals like coyotes, mountain lions, and fisher cats. What’s a fisher cat, you ask? I didn’t know either until I dined under a stuffed one at Buckeye’s last year, its fangs bared above my head like it was ready to attack my entrée of moose meatloaf and fried dough.

Oh, and I haven’t gotten to the bears, yet. There is nothing more annoying than hoofing it up to the trash shed, only to find out one of them has ripped into all the trash bags while you slept, making last night’s dinner of spaghetti and meatballs look like a three foot pile of road kill.
Once you have figured out that anything outside must be bungeed down tighter than my husband’s wallet on a shopping spree at Saks, you have to learn the language. I have traveled through several different countries and managed to get around just fine, but up there . . . I don’t think I would ever survive without my “translators,” i.e. family.
See, the letter “a” is replaced with the letters “er” and vice versa. As in, “Hey Laura, you want a margeriter?” or “Hey dub, what’s the matta?” Everything is “wicked,” which up until now I assumed was an adjective reserved just for witches, like “It’s wicked hot out here” or “Hey, that’s some wicked good chocolate.” It’s not only the accent that’s different. Up there, a bulkie what we call a bun, and what they call a bun is we know as a roll. A frappe is their version of a milkshake, and jimmies are what they call sprinkles. It kind of makes your head spin.
I do love New Hampshire, I really do. There is just something so simple and uncomplicated about the locals and how they live their lives. It’s infectious. See up there, it’s not about putting on airs; it’s all about the mountain air . . . which, I hate to admit, really does smell better.
But the one thing my yearly trip does remind me of is how much I love the South and all its complexities. Actually, these complexities, or paradoxes, if you will, are what make this place we live in so special -- this place where opposites are a way of life.
See, down here we eat slow and talk fast. We’ve “never met a stranger,” but we’re fiercely loyal to where we come from. We put pepper jelly on our cream cheese, shrimp in our grits, and Tabasco on our oysters. Our air smells both salty and sweet at the same time. Its scent stays sticky on your skin and lingers leisurely in your soul long after you first inhale it.
I guess it’s true, what they say. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. I just know that no matter where I go, East, West, North, or South, my heart will never wander far from here or from all the many reasons I will always call it home.

You can contact Laura, read her blog, and catch up on her past articles for CI at www.lauraleighpackard.com. She hopes to hear from you soon.