A lot of these are rural Midwestern as well as Southern.
Bonus:
This view may be reckoned a trifle narrow, But it had the driving force of an arrow, And it helped Mary Lou to stand up straight, For she was gentle, but she could hate And she hated the North with the hate of Jael When the dry hot hands went seeking the nail, The terrible hate of women's ire, The smoky, the long-consuming fire. The Yankees were devils, and she could pray, For devils, no doubt, upon Judgment Day, But now in the world, she would hate them still And send the gentlemen out to kill. The gentlemen killed and the gentlemen died, But she was the South's incarnate pride That mended the broken gentlemen And sent them out to the war again, That kept the house with the men away And baked the bricks where there was no clay, Made courage from terror and bread from bran And propped the South on a swansdown fan Through four long years of ruin and stress, The pride--and the deadly bitterness. John Brown's Body, Stephen Vincent Benet
22, and most of them have been brought to me by my Good Lady, who is a native Pittsburgher. But she says that Pittsburgh traits (including accent and special words, like “red-up” and “gum-band”) is a mix of southern and midwest.
Sweet tea
Chicken & dumplings
Cornbread
Hush puppies
Fried baloney
Po’ boy
Makes me…not a Yankee…but..
A Yunzer…n’at.
20
I’m in Cincinnati. I’ve long said that it is the southern most Northern city but also the northern most Southern city.
As a boy in St. Louis our next-door neighbors were from Birmingham, AL. And Mrs. Goodman was a marvelous cook. Then got moved to TX at age 44 and things sort of accelerated. 😂 Even so, I had to look up about a dozen of those names.
Only 19.
What no SOS on the list? Is that a GI thing? I wrote out a SOS recipe and am waiting for the right moment to inflict it on the
Warden.
Re: the excerpt from Brown’s body. “They also serve who stand and wait.” Milton [I think]
9. My Southern relations are upland Southerners, so that may temper things.
My grandfather married a ‘big-footed Yankee’, so was served Scranton-Wilkes-Barre fare until the household included his parents and my grandmother sought to accommodate her in-laws. So, a large country ham was hung in the garage and Tennessee fried chicken made frequent appearances at dinner. My grandfather had a Victory garden during the war, so turnip greens appeared on the table (turnips themselves being fed to pigs in East Tennessee). They shuffled the children around the table as each left home and my mother noticed her father wasn’t eating his turnip greens so she loaded up his plate one evening; the turnip greens disappeared from the menu after that.
Odd. I consider myself so northern that Canada is mentally to the south – yet I scored a 21. New food of the day – Chess Pie?
Ha, 19 & I’m a New England Yankee who wears shorts all winter (at home). Must be the availability of cookbook/internet food recipes.
I scored a 30 and I’m originally from North Dakota— but my family moved to East Texas shortly after I finished 3rd grade. My Mom’s take on Southern cooking: “my God, they fry everything”.
Oddly enough, the invisible line that separates regions wherein one finds sweet tea and where one does not seems to have shifted over the years. Back in the 80’s, one wasn’t offered sweet tea in East and Central Texas. There was just iced tea, and sugar if you needed to sweeten it up. Nowadays, most places have sweet tea also, to the dismay of dentists everywhere…
Shut the barn door, 32.
They didn’t ask how many I liked tho.
How many southern teenagers weren’t dared to go in seedy store and buy pigs feet that had an inch of dust on it? 🤢
15 of which I am absolutely certain. Could be a few more which I know under another name. No sweet tea. Couldn’t stand it when I could drink it, which, as I am now diabetic, I can’t. Learned to cook, btw, from my Mama. She was from Iowa.
I comment, one question. White gravy is also called sawmill gravy. And, do chicharrones qualify as chitlins?
I’ve tried about 21-22 of these foods and like about 15 of them (including cornbread, grits, chicken and dumplings, peach cobbler, tomato sandwiches, deviled eggs, and hush puppies). I also had a great aunt from southern Indiana who introduced me to two foods you couldn’t get anywhere else: persimmon pie and salt-rising bread. Not sure if they count as “Southern”.
Only 7. Reared in Northwest Iowa, My great grandma from Alabama, great grandma from Missouri. I mean Missoura
My mother was known as a great cook.