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!

If you are looking for sustainable housing in Conway, AR, send me a message through the comment system. We are looking for neighbors who would like to live in an energy efficient, non-traditional, industrially reclaimed structure. Multiple single bedroom apartments are available with plenty of outdoor space (two side decks, one covered rooftop deck), and plenty of parking.

The spaces are located within one mile of Hendrix College and UCA (University of Central Arkansas), and the three times weekly farmer’s market. It is also within one half-mile of Axciom, downtown Conway, and Central Baptist College. Great for people who prefer to walk or bicycle to work or the grocery store. City services include high speed internet and recycling.

The students are back in school, but here in Arkansas, it still feels like July. I’m told that 80F days in August in Arkansas are unseasonably cool, but I’m also told people mow their lawns until December.

Also, the ground is so warm here, it is hard to tell the hot water from the cold water. In fact, the hot water runs cooler than the cold for the first few seconds. We’ve got a faucet that is set up backwards, so I’m constantly trying to switch back and forth to figure out which side is the hot water.

Last night Tyrone and I went to a couple of school gatherings. Even though it has been cooler out, the super humidity is still in effect. I still don’t understand wearing pants and sleeves out into that weather unless it is your mosquito armor.

My fear is that we’re still months away from fall around here. Luckily, fall has arrived in Sweden, and I can watch. One of my favorite crafty blogs, smosch.com, features elegant pictures as well as fun knitting and crocheting projects from Sweden. Everything Sandra does is classy with a little bit of cute. Her latest project, wrist worms, are so cool that they sell out the minute they are posted to her etsy shop.

If you are also yearning for fall, I encourage to visit my friend Jen’s etsy shop, where she has a hat and gauntlets for sale. She is soon to have more.

Finally, I found a shop that sells the newsprint yarn, for $30/30 yards. She frequently sells out. If I get this spinning thing down, I may try to do some of that.

This week Tyrone and I had a visit from my mother, and the french foreign exchange student, Mathilde, that my parents housed 7 years ago. Mathilde also brought her parents along. They are on a 3 week vacation of the mid-west, starting in Lincoln, with a detour to the Arkansas/Tennessee area, and then finishing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

We visited the Clinton Library and the Arkansas River playground area and river market.

We also went to Graceland. Little did we know it was “Elvis Week” and the place was packed!

We also made it down to Beale Street.

The next day we took a tour of the Conway area, visiting a peach orchard and Lake Conway.

The highlight of the entire trip was meeting JR of www.jrenterprises.com.

He was spraying alligator weed on Lake Conway, and brought in his air boat. He asked if any of the ladies wanted a ride. The men were the ones who really wanted a ride though. Pascal and Tyrone both went out on the lake with JR.

Here are some other pictures you can click through.

This weekend we walked across the block to St. Joseph’s school. They were having their yearly fundraiser featuring an extended flea market and “old fashion midway”. We had seen them setting up behind the church for weeks and we were glad to finally walk over.

There were no thrill rides, but there were many “games of chance”. We had no luck with bingo. We also had no luck with “Ham & Bacon”.

How does “Ham & Bacon” work? There is a wheel of fortune marked with all sorts of numbers. You buy a paddle or two for two spins. Each paddle has at least one number on it. All of the booths had different prices. For pork products (and cheese), two paddles for two spins were $1, but for the cake booth, you could get six paddles for two spins for $5.

We spent way too many spins at the “Ham & Bacon” booth then went over to the cake booth and promptly won. We walked by the hat booth they said we should go over and win a hat. Then I put the lemon cake with cardboard doily platter and cellophane wrap on my head as we walked by. There were also raffles and a silent auction going on. We ran into our landlord at the “Cheese and Sausage” booth, where he just kept winning.

Finally, the food was awesome. The BBQ was tasty and the carnitas burritos were so juicy. Sorry no pictures of that, my camera batteries died. We had to take these cake pictures when we got home.

My mother works for a non-profit international exchange student company, AYUSA. She is in charge of the central states region, which encompasses the Dakotas to Oklahoma, north-south, and Idaho to Nebraska, west-east. Sometimes she goes on international trips, sometimes domestic, but she always tries to bring something edible back for her workers.

She was nearing the end of her stay here in Arkansas, and still was coming up empty-handed. She really wanted to find some sort of barbecue sauce, or hot sauce to send. I told her I’d start a company called “Arkansauce” to meet her needs alone. What do you know? It exists!

But we were looking in the local supermarkets, not online.

This is where I’d like to highlight some of the differences between grocery stores in The South, and grocery stores other places. I’ve seen a sign like this in so many stores!

Somewhere in Little Rock, I saw a chalkboard with “CANNED” written in to the place where “can” once was. It was in reference to green beans, I believe. Locals probably read that and think “damn yankees”. Otherwise they only sell can peas, can corn, can green beans, and can gravy down here!

Also, next to the oatmeal are boxes and boxes of grits in designer flavors like “butter” and “three cheese”.

In the end my mother ended up finding some fry bread from Oklahoma and some hush puppy mix from Arkansas to send to her crew. It was a bunch of fun checking out where all the new sorts of food originated. It was funny to see that most of the “soul food” selections were actually boxed in New York City (cue salsa commercial cowboys). Some of my friends have recently been interested in doing a 100-mile-diet during the summer where you can only eat things from a 100 mile radius. I think that would work great down here, where tomato season is already in full swing. Places like Nebraska and upstate New York fare tougher because of the shorter growing season and you really realize you are paying more for the winter heating and health insurance of everyone that touched your produce.