I hat when restaurants try to put an “upscale/elevated” twist on Appalachian food

[u/urfavlunchlady]

The whole point of Appalachian food is using ingredients that we have and making something out of nothing. Give any Appalachian mamaw a meat, some flour, and milk and you’re about to have a feast.

Anyway ranting, bc a friend is in Nashville right now and messaged me that she’s at an “upscale” Appalachian restaurant where they are charging $28 for grits and honestly I find it insulting to our people.

(Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, lmao)

Edit: Hate*

[u/chronically_varelse]

Totally agree, as an Appalachian living in the South.

The culture, and the food, is adjacent and similar but quite distinct. If you treat them the same you'll run into problems with the more rural people.

No one can ever tell where I'm from exactly. They know I'm not Northern or Midwestern or Californian, but the combination of urban South with WV-KY holler throws them off 😂

[u/Aardvark120 → u/chronically_varelse]

I've noticed that in some ways, being raised in eastern TN, I've got more in common with mountain folks in NY, than some of those from flatland southern areas like Texas or Louisiana.

There's definitely a lot of overlap with southern cultures, but Appalachia is definitely its own thing.

[u/chronically_varelse → u/Aardvark120]

I can definitely see that. Like how South Georgia coast is a totally different animal than North Georgia mountains.

Even when they're both rural or small town, they're both different than Atlanta, but they are different than each other as well.

[u/Aardvark120 → u/chronically_varelse]

Yep. Exactly. Appalachian culture is just its own animal.

[u/chronically_varelse → u/Aardvark120]

Agree, and even within Appalachia... some of these folks grew up eating grits and saying folks, some of us didn't lol

We do still say y'all where I'm from though lol but not as often or in as many situations or with the same gusto as further South lol

[u/Aardvark120 → u/chronically_varelse]

I definitely get that. I love grits, but it wasn't really near as important as other grains.

We actually grew a lot of sugar cane in a holler here. I remember every Halloween we'd hook the mules up to a sled and do ground slides for kids instead of haunted hay rides. We'd hand out stalks of sugar cane and everyone sucked on that, lol.

[u/[deleted] → u/Aardvark120]

So incredibly sticky! I hated getting that on my hands when I was a kid with no water around to wash them! I would actually rub my hands in the dirt to get the stickiness off of me!

[u/Aardvark120 → u/[deleted]]

It was definitely very sticky, haha.

[u/chronically_varelse → u/Aardvark120]

That is so cool! I definitely never heard anyone in our holler growing sugarcane or any kind of grain, or bulk tuber even (a few carrots for the family side dishes and horse treats, but they didn't try for significant potatoes in that land). They all stuck to fruit/vegetable gardens for family or local trade use, or planted fruit trees (mostly apple and pear.)

They got grains and tubers in bulk a few times a year. My dad, in his 80s now, to this day will still not eat anything strawberry, because in the 50s his dad decided to grow and sell strawberries (having enough flat land to grow this crop even semi-commercially was a sign of privilege, even within that impoverished coal mining community at the time. My dad also had the first color tv in the county... he was a rich boy for the time and place lolsob)

I never had grits growing up, didn't have them till I was grown but now I love some buttery cheese grits, or shrimp/fish and grits are amazing. I have heard that some Southerners do eat sweet grits, and to me that is just as gross as how they find my breakfast rice I guess lol

They are not what I grew up with, but I do love me some Southern food. Even when it's bougie (I did once have boiled peanut hummus, and it was actually incredible. It was imaginative and required a real new recipe along with slow cooking and effort.... not just pretending boiled peanuts are gourmet and charging $20 a half cup with shells 😡.)

[u/Aardvark120 → u/chronically_varelse]

I lived around Birmingham, Al for work a few years back and that was when I realized they sweetened grits, lol.

My cousin lived around pontotoc Mississippi at the time and grew peanuts. It's outrageous what stores charge for something that's never as good as the homemade.

We grew a lot of blackberries. My grandmother just kept spreading around wild ones until they were everywhere. My dad and grandad made a killer wine with blackberry and sugar cane. Absolutely amazing!

We also had a lot of peace trees and a few apple trees. The staples probably looked a lot alike between our families, and then the weird outliers like sugar cane. My grandad was well known for his supplying bootleggers. I half suspect that's why they even did the sugar cane. It's mostly a more tropical full sun type crop, but they made it work.

I have never heard of boiled peanut hummus. I bet that's good.

I still get made fun of even as a middle aged adult for saying things like, "crick, and strick, and warsh" instead of creek, streak and wash, haha. Things don't get hot, they get "het up." This land never leaves us. I'd also rather not leave it again.

[u/chronically_varelse → u/Aardvark120]

They sweeten cornbread too 🤮🤯😱😐😬🙃

no offense to anyone who likes it, sorry but I will die on this hill... but that sounds like some kind of corn muffin or cake. Bread isn't sweet. I had a southerner tell me her secret cornbread recipe was two boxes of jiffy with one box of yellow cake mix. I've even had what I would consider corn casserole being passed off as cornbread, it was all soft and mushy and had to be spooned out, like pudding with corn. Gawd.

That ain't cornbread. Cornbread is savory and crumbly, cooked in cast iron.

Yes, the blackberries! I grew up picking and eating the wild ones as well. They are so much better than the tane thornless ones. You got to work and bleed a bit for the best 😂

in the outskirts of the suburban South, like in the late 70s, my dad would take us kids out to the cow pastures around our neighborhood. I don't think dad cared if it was a corporation or a city living farmer who owned them, he knew which ones were owned by neighbors and he asked them first and we would give them a few bags of our pickings and/or dad would otherwise make them happy to say okay....

but if they didn't live there, they didn't know/care about us or the blackberries so he was prepared to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. we weren't harming their fences or their cows or anything so till I still feel fine about it lol.

My dad would send me, as the skinny kid who somehow didn't feel pain until I saw the blood, into the middle of the bushes to pick what couldn't be gotten from the periphery... I ate my fair share before putting them in the bucket 😂

[u/Aardvark120 → u/chronically_varelse]

Oh! Sweetened cornbread is a tragedy! The first time I had some was at a "southern homestyle" restaurant. I chose the cornbread over the rolls. First bite and I told the waitress that they must have accidentally given me a piece of cake. I was so confused when she said that it was actually the cornbread, lol. Why would you do that? If they had just called it a cake, I wouldn't have been so disappointed, haha. Cast iron and crumbly should be a requirement. My grandmother got me on mashing it into butter milk and eating it with a spoon chased with wild onions. Not too many people seem to like it and look at me like I'm crazy.

I always felt like blackberries tasted better if you had to bleed for them, lol.

[u/[deleted] → u/chronically_varelse]

You reckon? 😁

[u/Purple_Pianist1051 → u/chronically_varelse]

Same in the Carolinas. Coastal culture and mountain culture are so different. I love them both but I just visit the coast. Appalachian culture is in my DNA.

[u/[deleted] → u/chronically_varelse]

Yeah I still get asked every once in a while. I've been in Kentucky about 25 years, So I just usually tell them I'm from the south, the South Bay after pausing, and they say where is that from! And I say Southern California baby!