People are always curious about what other people eat.
As a teen, I always envied young people in South Carolina because I knew they could marry at 12, legally drive a car at 14 and had unlimited access to fireworks all year long.
But when I found out later they often ate grits with sugar and milk, I was not jealous of that. We always had grits with either butter or red-eye (ham) gravy, but South Carolina saw the dish as a corn cereal.
It’s actually not in the Bible, but if I had written it there would be a sentence that said: “Breakfast shall be eggs from a chicken, meat from a hog, a side of grits and a biscuit.”
In all fairness, I used to have a South Carolina friend who habitually called grits “Georgia ice cream.”
And there are variations to my breakfast rule.
As a child I visited my grandmother’s home at Marietta, Ga., and found it odd to eat scrambled eggs for breakfast, along with pork brains.
Fishy business
Began my newspaper career as a reporter east of Raleigh, where fish by the millions come up the coastal rivers in the spring to spawn and be caught in large
numbers.
The meat is eaten and also the roe, the fish eggs stripped out of the females. Restaurant signs would advertise “Roe and Eggs” for breakfast, delicious.
Soon went to Alaska, where salmon roe was a delicacy. Outdoor buddies taught me to enjoy roe and meat from female salmon, thought to be milder tasting than the male “buck” salmon. So all males we caught were tossed into the bushes for the bears, thought not fit for human consumption.
Back home in Murphy in the early 1970s, we caught lots of white bass and walleye. I ate the roe from them, too, but got a lot of stares because it is not a local tradition.
Southern barbecue
I grew up near Lexington, self-styled “Barbecue Capital” hosting a huge festival each year. So my remarks will be colored by that fact.
Eastern North Carolina also had claims for best barbecue, not true in my opinion. During my time there I was harsh in my criticism, which was not appreciated.
We often assume that barbecue means pork, not always the case. Found that young goat is a favorite with both black and white diners in Alabama.
Wife and I were walking out of a big flea market there and witnessed a fine country scene.
A young couple were dragging two young goats toward the parking area, pulling ropes around the animals’ necks. The goats were resisting as much as possible, bracing backward against the pulling.
An old couple, just arriving, began laughing at the sight. The old woman cackled loudly, “They know they gonna get bar-be-cued.”
More on the menu
In a rural Florida restaurant we saw “tomato gravy” on the menu and sampled it, not impressed. They also offered guava jelly for my hushpuppies.
I walked right into a joke with a Murphy friend when we started talking about strange foods.
“Do you put cow manure on your strawberries?” he asked.
Thinking it was a gardening question, I said yes, of course, good fertilizer.
“Must taste awful,” he grinned. “I put lots of whipped cream on mine …”
Wally Avett can be reached at 837-5531 or wallyavett@gmail.com.