When one speaks of greens (as I do below) one must also speak of hot peppers in vinegar*. "Hot Peppers in Vinegar" means just that - a jar stuffed full of sport peppers or chilis and then covered in white or cider vinegar. The jar must have a flip top so as to shake the vinegar over whatever food you're blessing with it - which in my case are greens, blackeyed peas, and rice. My grandparents kept a homemade batch on the kitchen lazy-susan all the time, and I never really liked it when I was young. Now I do, and I buy it from the store. Or at least I used to.

This stuff is common rice in southern markets. It's impossible to not find it at a grocery store for a couple of bucks. It's in the section with the po' people food. (Lots of good stuff there.) Up here in the tundra, peppers in vinegar do not exist. At all. (And neither does Zatarain's Creole Mustard, but that's hard to find even as far north as Arkansas**.) I've kept an eye out for both of these at various markets around town, and the closest thing I found was a $15 bottle of highly decorative artisinal peppers in vinegar at a local gourmet chain. It was next to the lemon-tarragon vinegar and rosemary-garlic vinegar and other lovely whatnots. Not far away was a 5 ounce jar of Creole Mustard for $7. (You'll notice the link lists it at $3 for 12 ounces.) One night I stood in the middle of the extensive ethnic food aisles at Cub Foods and loudly asked Mister Boyfriend why there wasn't an aisle for Southern People. An off-duty grocery stocker turned around and sweetly asked me what it was I was looking for. After I told her, she looked at me with great amusement and said, "Do you know where you've moved to?"

Yes, yes I do. I dearly love the Yankees, but they can be a little spice-shy. Years ago, a Minnesotan friend once served me chili that had no chili powder in it. Her spice rack mostly consisted of onion flakes and some long-dead garlic powder. It's not that bad most places I've dined around town, but my quota of spiciness is apparently above most non-Southern people's***. Back home, I'm a lightweight. Up here, I keep ordering chili and then asking for hot sauce to dump in it.

So I eventually called my parents and begged, and they sent me a lovely box with two big jars of mustard and a bottle of proper Louisiana Hot Peppers in Vinegar labeled "For the Poor People of the North." We've been luxuriously smearing mustard on sandwiches for the past few days, and I had a proper bowl of blackeyed peas for lunch today.

*Scott does not share this opinion, so apparently all Southerners don't feel this way. I don't care.
**There is also apparently no such thing as a hushpuppy up here either. Fried fish is always cod (which is fine with me) and comes with french fries and slaw. No pups. This has somewhat cured me of any hankering for fried fish, since the pups are half the point as far as I'm concerned.
***I took some visitors from upstate NY to a Greek place a few weeks back and they were commenting on the spiciness of the food. I didn't tell them that I had just been thinking that hey, another couple of peppers and it'd be about right.