Yankee vs. Dixie Food

Guest blogger  Berkley Clayton is at it again. His post below is not approved or sanctioned  by this Yankee, but I did have editorial rights on the photo's posted below, It's my blog  :-)

When I was growing up the 1960’s and early 1970’s we almost always ate Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner at my grandmother’s house.  Sometimes there were a lot of us and sometimes it was just our nuclear family and my grandmother. 

I know that our “northern friends” tend to have different kinds of food for Thanksgiving and Christmas than people in the South do.  My half Yankee wife, seems to think that all you should have on the table for Thanksgiving is a turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce made from real cranberries, (none of that canned jelly stuff) some type of sweet potato or yams, stuffing made from white bread dried in the oven, then cut into cubes, and pumpkin pie for dessert..........

When I first started dating her..........

I spent holidays with her folks in South Florida and had the items mentioned above for Thanksgiving.  Christmas was more flexible, (ham) but basically the same.  All very traditional you know.  She would say, “none of the “country food” you eat in Tallahassee!!”  My father in law always had pickles and olives out on the table especially around Christmas time.  I never had that when I was a kid.  The only pickles that I knew anything about came out of.........

..... a jar and you bought them at Winn Dixie.  Mostly I remember “hamburger chips pickles” and that was it.  What were black olives and the nasty tasting green Spanish olives with the pimentos stuffed in them?  I never ate one until I was grown. 

The first time she was at my folk’s house for a large holiday celebration such as Christmas, she was aghast......

that we had macaroni and cheese, potato salad, squash casserole and other non-traditional “holiday” food items.  I remember one year Mama made............

...... banana pudding instead of pecan or pumpkin pie.  My wife said this is picnic food and you eat this all year long.  To which I replied “yes, but it is good.”  The year we had collard greens on the table really set her back. I tried to get across to her that no matter what one eats for the meal itself, it is still Thanksgiving.  She did not want to hear it. 

Two of my friends from work are Cubans and one of the best Thanksgiving dinners I ever had was when all of us and our kids got together and had southern and Cuban Thanksgiving together.  The Cubans, being Americanized ate the same stuff everyone else eats on Thanksgiving, but they brought along Cuban food that was usually eaten at Christmas.  We had fried turkey, croquetas, platanos maduros (fried plantains) and black beans and rice.  It was great!  Even my kids ate it.  We did have dressing, but no pumpkin or sweet potatoes.  And most especially, we did not have potato salad!!  All in all it was still Thanksgiving and I like Cuban food.   My wife was o.k. with that being that it was not that “redneck food”............

..... I eat!! 

Fish is another thing I have noticed about people from up north being picky about.   My wife is from Ft. Lauderdale and she will not eat fish unless it passes the “smell test”.  My son and I have gone out in the Gulf via the landing at the state park on the Econfina River and caught redfish, speckled trout and mullet.  We bring it home and clean it, even skinning it, leaving just the filet, and my wife won’t eat it.  After a big sniff she says ‘that smells fishy” and won’t touch it.  She never had problem eating the fish her brothers used to catch when we were down there.  I have yet to figure out the difference between fish caught in Ft. Lauderdale and the fish caught here.  As for mullet,

that is trash fish.  “You people up here don’t know what good fish is.”  “Anybody that will eat mullet will eat trash.”  She won’t eat mullet cooked any way, shape, form or fashion.   Any seafood place in this area worth its salt serves mullet, fried, broiled or blackened as a staple on a seafood platter.  Not my wife, bless her heart, she gets a hamburger.  I call her a fish snob.  She just laughs and doesn’t eat fish.     

As for Yankee food, I do like a nice corned beef sandwich from a deli.  There is not a good one here where I live and I wish there was. To get a good deli you probably have to go to South Florida.  There are lots of great Jewish delis down there.  (Especially Wolfies and Wolfies Rascal House on Miami Beach. 

 I think both are closed now though.)  The corned beef is/was the best!!!!

- Berkley Clayton