Southern Food

This month's Bon Appetit is devoted to southern food.  Apparently there is a movement in this country to adopt the food of the south just as we seem to be adopting certain aspects of the politics and religion.

I prefer the food to the more conservative elements of Southern culture.

But, the food is not new to this Northerner.

I wish I could read in those pages an essay on my own Father's love of grits and black eyed peas.  I wish someone had written the memoir of Dad's experimentation with spices and heat.  It would be interesting to read why a man from North Dakota and California developed such an interest and affection for a cuisine so far from the one he was raised with.

As it is, I guess, I have to write it myself, but I am at a loss. 

I don't know what sparked Dad's affection for gumbo and grits.  He didn't pass it on.  Yes, I would love to perfect fried chicken, but I really don't much love grits.  I like black eyed peas fine, but prefer southwestern style beans.

Maybe it is exactly the distance between white-bread-in-milk and Gumbo by which Dad measured his life.  I know there is a distance between brownies and bourbon chocolate brownies that occasionally keeps me on track.  That little bit of difference.  That little bit of the unusual.

Anyway, I don't mind reading about southern food.  Sometimes I hanker for a gumbo...if I am allowed to skip the okra.  Let me skip the bread in milk as well.  I am going to think about Dad's love of southern food and see how it plays out for me.