After entertaining guests from Nebraska and France, as well as meeting other people outside of the south, I must tell you about the unique foods here.

At first, Ty was very excited about all of the catfish. He still is, and if he could, he’d order it twice a week. Being from Nebraska, the only way we’d have fish was lightly breaded and pan fried, but the cornmeal breading brings a whole new level to golden brown and delicious.

There were some unexpected turns, too. If traveling in the south, be sure to order an “unsweetened iced tea,” otherwise you’ll get something close to lemonade without the lemons.

The vegetable selection really impressed us. We needed a field guide when trying out the “home cooking” places to identify purple hull peas, turnip greens, mashed squash stuffing, green tomato relish, fried green tomatoes, fried squash, fried okra, speckled butter beans, black-eyed peas, and buttered turnips. The turnip greens were a wonderful find. They are somewhat bitter, but they serve a hot pepper sauce on the side that peps them up. As a leafy green vegetable, it is also an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acid.

We ate at Lucinda’s BBQ between Hendrix College and downtown Conway, and they had buttered turnips as a daily special on the menu. We’ve been pretty adventurous with our ordering, so we decided to get them.

It was like forgetting to ask for unsweetened tea all over again. Yes they were warm and buttered, but they were sweet! Where was the savory bitterness of the greens? I’ve looked up some recipes on the internet, and none of them contain sugar, either.

Good news though, the okra is fresh and in season!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under The South, double-takes, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.