Dorie’s Different Reality

For the past couple of years, and I suspect many more years before than documented, Mississippi ranks #1 in obese people. I’m not going to rant about diet and exercise today. I noticed that rounding out (grin) the top ten in the list of states with big people, all of them are Southern or there’s rural culture, like Kentucky and West Virginia. Texas is on there- it was part of the Confederacy, with all that yummy Tex-Mex food to boot. Indiana puzzles me. I know there’s a lot of Appalachian folks who moved there for better jobs. They also have all that good Amish/Mennonite food. The farm people work it off; not so easy in the suburbs.

I do know about Southern food. When people talk about my Missouri-born mother, invariably they’ll remember what a cook she was. Is there such a thing as an intuitive cook? She never used cookbooks. When she was younger, she’d worked in restaurants. In St. Louis back then, the black gentlemen from the South were the cooks. I think she watched and learned. She had the knack for how to make a good thing better. Like say you have a big bowl of fresh picked green beans. A magazine like Cooking Light would call for steaming them, perhaps with some sort of lemon sauce on top. Oh hell no. My mom would take those green beans and boil them limp,with some chopped ham, or sometimes salt pork. You never tasted anything so good in your life! So let’s say you had a mama, or an auntie that could cook like that. Dinner will be fried chicken, mashed potatoes, doctored up green beans and perhaps a pie for dessert and sweet iced tea  or Coke to drink.  Down South, It’s hotter than Hades in the summer. Like they’ll get up from the table and jog the meal off????

Down on the other end, Colorado has the thinest people. Let’s blame the altitude. New Englander’s are represented- Masschusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut. Lobster, Baked Beans and Anadama Bread? Sorry, I’m stereotyping I know. Fanny Farmer ran the Boston Cooking School…mmmm Boston Cream Pie! Maybe because it’s cold up there, people move around more?  Hawaii has lean people, lots of Oriental cuisine- they do that Ironman triathalon thing there. Also noted are the Western states Montana, Arizona, Utah and Nevada (with all those buffets!!!) I’m going to guess that it’s because there’s always a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables in season;easier to make a salad. Maybe beef is cheaper and there are more barbecues.

I heard “the money expert” on MSNBC saying that right now is a terrible time to go to Europe. The exchange rate is awful. Be patriotic- go Southern and try the food!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.