Fictional Character

Thanks to my friend Eileen for sharing this image from the Oxford American, a terrific publication that's always filled with good things. In fact, it's the magazine that sits longest near my reading chair. And if you want to stroll around town wearing a teeshirt that says Fictional Character, go right ahead. Be forewarned, you might be followed by a writer, observing your every gesture.

(fictional character t-shirts from Zazzle.com)

Related post: Oxford American, anyone?

Oxford American anyone?

Just when I'm thinking I have way too many magazines to read, I open my Best of the South 2009 issue of the Oxford American. Filled with more things than I can take in. It's always been the kind of magazine I dip into and come back to, but it was hard not to read straight through this issue.

Like one of my favorite food writers, John T. Edge, on cheese. And there's even a pimento cheese recipe "inspired by Mary Hartwell Howorth." I go along with his recommendation on Duke's Mayonnaise, but not sure about the chives. Ditto for dried sage. But hey, I've got a pot of chives growing so maybe I'll throw in a few for good measure. Even without the recipe, the piece is full of goodies. Goat cheese from Elkmont, Alabama?

Then there's an ode to pecan pie. (I seem to be fixating on food this morning.) Aha! A crust made with butter, and a tip to keep it flaky. And I loved the essay by Marion Field, "Ode to the Perfect Coat." Wow.

You can read the entire piece by Thomas Swick online, right here. It's all about writing, from a former editor now turned freelancer. Here's a quote:

I've formulated what I call the three rules of freelancing: If you're friends with an editor, you'll get the assignment. If you know an editor, you'll get a response. If you don't know an editor, you're basically playing the lottery.

And this, about the perils of freelancing in the age of email:

No longer do you check the mail once a day; now you can check it once a paragraph.

From an interview with one of the current issue's contributors, George Singleton, in response to the question "What else should our readers know about you?"

His response?

"I may have the largest privately owned dog graveyard in America. There are at least twenty dogs buried behind my house."

Now there's an answer I don't believe I've ever heard from an interviewed writer before.

Guess I'll be renewing the Oxford American.

Eating Our Way Home

I've just returned from a journey home. Traveling the Mississippi Delta with my sister was like stepping back in time, to a time we actually never realized existed. Stay tuned for more on this topic, with pictures.

What I love about going back to Mississippi is eating the food of my childhood. Here are a few things we sampled, in no particular order, during my three-day visit:
Shrimp and grits, onion rings, cheese dip, crab dip, Diet Dr. Pepper and Nabs, brown butterbeans cooked in fatback, turnip greens cooked in fatback, cornbread muffins, cornbread sticks, fried okra, okra with tomotoes and onions, ice tea, redfish cooked in "Wooster" sauce, melba toast with butter, Mile High Coconut Pie, yellow squash cooked with onions (and fatback), Rendezvous Sausage Platter.
That's about all I can even bear to remember right now without jumping back on an airplane and going back for the Two Sisters fried chicken we missed in Jackson.

On the way back to New Jersey, I had lots of airplane time to read and was glad we'd picked up the latest Oxford American at Turnrow Books in Greenwood (more on that later also, maybe with pictures). One of my favorite things about returning to the South is sampling and remembering the food. And my absolute favorite food writer in the world is John T. Edge. If you've never read his books and essays, you're missing something almost as good as actually being there. I've reviewed his books including this one about DONUTS.

In the summer 2008 Oxford American, Mr. Edge writes about Middendorf's, a place our family never missed when we traveled from Mississippi to New Orleans: "...for three generations women have worked with cutlass-tipped knives, shaving fish into vellum filets that... emerge from the fry vats...tasting like the lovely and raspy offspring of a bag of Lays and a net of channel cats."
Now, you can't get much better than that. And I don't just mean the catfish he's just eaten.

The last time we stopped at Middendorf's it was too early in the morning to eat catfish but we were showing my Yankee offspring what it is I love about the South and did the tourist drive-by of this nearby market:

Yes, that's a sign advertising coon meat, which I have never knowingly eaten and don't intend to, and alligator meat which I suspect I have eaten, well disguised and not lately.