that would take some real skill to give him one grit LOL

I love grits! and all the other breakfast foods mentioned!and I love waffle house too! They can do amazing things to the basic hash brown!

In Ohio, my husband and I were dining out one Friday night. While enjoying some wine, we overhead the server taking the order of a lady at a nearby table.

We weren't paying particular attention until we heard her exclaim in exasperation and with a definite Southern drawl..."no hush puppies?...well, what on earth do you serve with your fish?"

Father loved boiled okra, and would eat pick it up by the stem end and eat it. Looked so slimy, cooked in the butter and so yucky.

Now I LOVE BOILED OKRA

Another as a youth I so disliked: would you believe fried green tomatoes? yep!

I still dislike soggy fried green tomatoes, mine has to be crispy and green, not green with a tint of red.

Now I have my fried green tomatoes perfected and love to cook them. Everyone loves my fried green tomatoes.

We are from CT but now live in rural TN. Do you know what dry land fish is, if not guess what mushrooms. Here they do not do grits at all. There thing is biscuits & chocolate gravy. Almost all their food is fried in lard, you buy it in a 5 lb. bucket. They have fried pickles, fried ice cream & the list goes on.

I agree, fried green tomatoes done right are some fine eating and fried okra is mighty fine also. And okra in some soups and stews are a must.

Years ago there was a ditty in Readers Digest about northerners and grits. The man orders a breakfast from the menu at a popular southern restaurant, but tells the waitress tthat he doesn't want the grits that come with it. The waitress retorts, "If you didn't want grits, why did you order breakfast"??

Grits are ok, but I wouldn't go out of my way for them. But serve me some slabs of fried mush, and I will love you forever!

Love turnip greens, but will skip on the collards!

I like my grits dry, with s&p on top of the serving.

I love boiled okra too, with a little butter. When I was a child, my Grandmother often served us what she called a "big bite" meal -- fresh garden tomatoes, boiled okra, mashed potatos, ham and cornbread. It's still one of my favorite meals in the summer with home grown (ok, farmers market locally grown) tomatoes. I also love freshly picked young turnip greens in the fall (with cornbread, of course).

Mary, I grew up in rural TN. Never heard of some of these things! Where are you? I grew up in Crossville.

I got a nice batch of fresh baby okra at the Hong Kong market too and my husband wants it boiled, I am divided between that and smothered with onions and tomatoes. Either way it is great stuff.
I do love good crispy very green tomatoes. Soggy ones are just nasty. Biscuits especially cat head biscuits and chocolate gravy is very Southern.

I am not a greens person never have cared for them.

Chocolate gravy and biscuits is my cup of tea!

Love hoe cake/johnny cake with a good ole Southern lunch. Especially with whatever is in your refrig for good fixings

for a great soup.

I used to live in Colorado when we first came to the US in mid 70's. I didn't like American food at all. There wasn't much taste to it. So, I thought...

Then, we moved to Houston. Most of my friends were Southerners and Cajuns. I fell in love with southern food immediately. So much taste to it and cooked with various seasonings, much like our asian food.

I love all the food you just described. Another food I crave often is fried liver & onion. Not many places offer this dish any more. Luby's is the only place I still can order it. Of course, I can make this simple dish but it's easier just to hop over to Luby's. Besides, I have a friend that likes liver & onion too and we often go together to Luby's.

I lived the first 38 years of my life in NE OH and NW PA. Then we moved to Louisiana. I LOVE Southern food (except for grits) -- crawfish , boiled shrimp, gumbo, etouffe, fried okra, red beans & rice, hush puppies, fried green tomatoes. . . . And I never liked BBQ until we moved to Texas. Also I learned to love great Mexican food when living in Texas. We're in central FL now -- no crawfish, good BBQ brisket, or good Mexican (I cook my own good Mexican at home!) Southern cooking beats OH/PA cooking. Unless you want good German food, which we have found in TX and now in FL. (And I cook it.)

Texas is the best for world cuisine, Houston ranks as one of the best. You can travel within a 5 mile radius and eat from all over the world! Never mind that you can find great tex mex on every corner!

lol..dh turns his nose up but i love them..in fact i had them for breakfast the other morning...i treat it like hot cereal and use butter and brown sugar, lol...

My ex-hubby and I drove to Louisanna one year, and I loved every stop along the way. There is an amazing rest stop in Missouri that I really enjoyed, the ladies were so southernly friendly!!

We stopped at a barbecue shack in Georgia because there were locals and sheriff cars there, so we figured the food had to be good, and it was!!

In Louisiana, we had crawfish....we ate on newspapers and the shells went into pails through a hole in the table.
Gumbo, I had to have the muffaletta! Had I known about fried beans and rice, I would have had it. Crab, I think it was the dungenese.

And don't forget the Zydeco music!!

It was awesome. Since hubby lived in NC and TX for a number of years, he loves Tex Mex, and I make it. The only thing I make are enchiladas, tacos and taco salad, fajitas. We both love it.

Drew or anyone else who makes Tex Mex, if you've got any recipes that you'd like to share, I would just love them.

Fried okra is one of my favorite foods, but that's the only way I like it. Dad is from Texas and Mom was from Virginia, so southern cooking is all I know.

My mother used to make green tomato pickles that were fantastic. She would can a bunch of them each year. I'm sorry I didn't get her recipe for them, and after she passed, I couldn't find it in her recipe drawer. I've never had fried green tomatoes, but I'm sure I would like them.

I love all greens. Mom grew and cooked the usual greens, plus dandelion leaves, beet tops, radish tops, etc. Last year, my cousin recommended Margaret Holmes canned goods--the mixed greens are wonderful, with just the right seasonings. I've never liked canned greens, until I tried that brand.

I'll take all the green you guys don't like and you can keep the okra! I'll will eat it fried, but just occasionally.

Terilyn, you will never believe what I thought the last sentence in your post said. I read it as, "Never mind that you can find great sex mix on every corner." Whoa!!

I was at my local Farmers Market Sunday, buying some corn and tomatoes. The person ahead of me had a large bunch of beets. She asked the shopkeeper to cut off the tops. The keeper said, gladly, I can sell the tops to someone else. I never realized you could eat beet tops.

beets, never for me. once was enough, sorry!

Oh I am with you Glenda I have never liked beets in any fashion.
Now turnips I love.
We sure do have tex mex at every corner and don't forget parked in the parking lots too lol.

I do love good tex mex, Jasdip I have a good casserole recipe I will post in today's list.
I can't eat liver, my mom made liver and onion gravy but I just had the rice and gravy no liver.
Another thing I love is crispy fried chicken gizzards, don't care about the fried livers or heart, I used to eat the hearts when I was young.

One thing Daddy loved, every time we butchered a hog, he or grandmother made fresh hogs head cheese, nope not for me.

Jasdip y'all need to do that trip again and hit this area too! I would cook what ever you want lol

Love fried okra. I can eat grits but they have to be cooked right, no mushy, watery stuff for me. I love Morel mushrooms too. Haven't had them in years, though.

Kathsgrdn...I can tell you why you haven't had morrels in a long time. The last time I hunted them about 8 yrs ago they were selling for $65/lb on the wholesale mkt. No telling what they are on the retail mkt now.

I never met a type of greens that I didn't like, whether it was Collards, Turnip greens, Spinach, swiss chard, beet tops, turnip tops or dandelions....Oh yes, fiddle head ferns too.

I like to cook my grits sort of dry and lumpy, then top with butter, Salt & pepper and dig in, but I have also been known to eat grits with milk and sugar as a hot breakfast cereal. Now as far as cheese grits goes,,,I can't decide if they screwed up the grits or wasted some good cheese, but you can keep that mess.

Now what can I say about Okra? I like okra in soups & stews but I can't stand that yukky mess when they make boiled okra. I love fried okra, but my real favorite is to open a can of okra, drain it, then dump the can in a can of stewed tomatoes and heat that up. Jan doesn't care for it this way, but thats fine cause it leaves more for me.

Now for beets. I have never found a way of fixng beets that I didn't like, and believe me, I have had them in ways that most of you have never heard of. IfI am in a hurry I just open a can and heat them up, but I prefer to make Harvard beets or sometimes I slice cold beets into 1/4" wide julien strips and put them on a chef salad.
Or dump a can of beets with the liquid in a wide mouth gallon jar, all an equal amount of sliced onions and 2 dozen hard boiled eggs and a cup of vinegar. 2 crushed cloves of garlic, some fresh dill weed and add water to cover. Let stand in the refrigerator at least 9 days (the longer the better). Serve the eggs with saltines as a snack and when the eggs are gone, put another two dozen hard boiled eggs in the jar, add vinegar to cover and let stand again.

Now if you want to eat breakfast as the society folks of New England did in the 1800's make "Red Flannel Hash". I have to recipe to make it from scratch but the simple method today is to open a large can of Corned beef hash and put that in a saute pan. Open a can of beets and drain, then cut the slices into small cubes and put that in the skillet. Add 4tbs of milk or cream and 2tbs of butter and saute until it is all warm and slightly browned.

Prior to 1840 the early colonists did not eat many potatoes, preferring beets instead. They grew a variety of beets that are ugly as a mud fence but produce bulbs as large as sugar beets, (abt 2 to 3lbs each). They then cooked the beets as we cook potatoes. Boiled beets & fried beets were common, but they also made mashed beets like we make mashed potatoes or baked beets which were served with butter & honey on top and for a real treat, they made a beet pie or a beet custard.

raven, our school custodian always brought his homemade head cheese at Christmas for us to enjoy!

And he wouldn't take NO!

I did take a bite in teachers lounge, no chew and quickly dodged into the restroom, so as not to hurt his feelings.

No way could I eat it.

I love fried green tomatoes but unlike Glenda I like them with a hint of pink on the tomato. They have so much more flavor than ones that are totally green.

Don't like beets, turnips or any kind of "greens" except spinach.

Grits are good but I like them best when fixed with cheddar cheese.

I like okra in veggie soup but not boiled by themselves. I love them fried crispy. I use Paula Deen's recipe.

I have eaten the Terra chips which have a beet chip in them and I do like those. I might like they shoestring fried with seasonings, I would try it. I love the sweet potato chips, fries, baked, I have not found a sweet potato I didn't like.
I do like spinach raw in salad and I like the dip and in some wilted dishes so I guess I do like one green but not boiled. My husband does like some greens and I tried making him some, stunk up the house and apparently they were terrible but he did try to eat some so I wouldn't be hurt. I told him to please go throw the stinky mess out. He was relieved. Lol, never again!

I do like cheese grits, I make cheese grits souffle very yummy. I will eat regular grits sweet or salty but prefer thick not runny mushy.

Mushrooms I like pretty much any way. I also love Morrell, I had them growing wild where we lived in Denver area, I had baskets of them, but I had to chase people off the property all the time it was awful. I also had a ton of asparagus that grew wild there and the artesian creek was loaded with watercress. I chased one family out one day that had 2 full garbage bags full of food stolen from the property and they had parked their car in my driveway blocking mine. No shame, I had to call the police to get rid of them.
That is what the high prices cause.

Lazypup, congratulations! You've reached your goal. My mouth is watering for beets! Love them too. What an interesting little history about beets to go along with its many ways of preparing them.

Ok - I'm from the west coast of Canada and haven't heard of half the stuff you guys are talking about. However, you can serve beets to me anyway you want to and I will eat them but, mushrooms - yechh.

And fried food?? not on the west coast. It would interfere with our granola eating, coffee drinking ways. -)

OT - I had to order something by phone today and turned out I was talking to Tallahassee, Florida and oh my she had the cutest accent.