Every New Year's Day, my family gathers for lunch. The meal has consisted of any number of things over the years, but in the past decade or so it's become more and more traditionally Southern. Yesterday, we had ham, greens, blackeyed peas, cornbread, sweet potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and apple crumble. Happy food.

As most of you know, Mister Boyfriend is from Southern California, and he has no idea what to do with most of this stuff. Certainly not the collard greens. Or the peas or sweet potatoes. At lunch yesterday, we explained to him that these aren't the really scary Southern foods. Some of those I don't even eat, although I did as a child. Like pickled pigs feet. My grandmother used to give them to me to gnaw on when I was a wee girl, and I loved them then. I remember that my mother came to pick me up one afternoon and saw me running around with a half-eaten one in my hand. She pitched a fit to my grandmother, took my pig's foot away, and took me home. We were talking about it yesterday, and she didn't remember that incident - but she did remember eating pig's feet when she was a little girl. I don't know when I stopped eating them, but I know I couldn't now - not because of the taste, but because of what they are.

I never have learned to like fatback, although I will cook greens with it. (A lot of Southerners [mostly older generations, I notice] fish it out of the greens and eat it like a piece of meat.) I never learned to like grits, which are so, well, gritty. I've never had the opportunity to try chitlins, which many of the African-American ladies I worked with only cooked at home. They said they were too stinky to bring to potlucks.

One thing I dearly love, though, is okra. Most folks around here eat it pickled or fried. I also love it boiled. I was taught to eat it by my mother's mother, and absolutely nobody I know will eat it this way - not even mom. Okra secretes a thin, gelatinous substance when cooked, which makes it great for slightly thickening soups. When boiled and eaten on its own, it is slimy to a degree that most folks just can't stand. Sort of like the sliminess of raw oysters, only more so. (Note that the recipe I linked even includes suggestions in its preface for removing the slime.) I never really notice the texture, only the taste, which is intense, unadorned okraness. In other words, the taste is pure summer, which is the only time it's in season, and the only time to eat it.

Yes, Steve, I did eat haggis in Scotland, along with all the various sauces for fish-n-chips. Being American, all I'd ever put on fish before then was ketchup, tartar sauce or malt vinegar.