I keep getting asked, online mostly, what is Chow Chow? Well, it's a Southern relish and a mighty fine one.

Chow chow is a relish made with cabbage, green tomato, onion, and bell peppers, red or green or often both. Other ingredients may be added, there are about as many recipes for it as there are people who do home canning down here. Those four are sure to be found though. It uses vinegar and sugar for a sweet-sour taste. It comes in mild and hot varieties.

Chow chow can be used the same as pickle relishes, on hot dogs and burgers and the like. It can also be used in other ways - it's great on beans! I love it on fish. Experiment with it, you can find lots of larrupin uses for it. Mix it in cream cheese for a great dip. Use it to make potato salad!

It is available commercially. If you don't live down South, you can buy it online. Tennessee's Best and Mrs. Renfro's are common brands.
The Amish also make a relish called chow chow, but the ingredients are different.

Howard Johnson's??? How about a catfish dinner with all the trimmings, available all over my neck of the woods.

Arkansas may have severe problems, but knowing from good food ain't one of them.

I make a mighty fine pan of enchiladas. I can also sit, burp, and doze off with the best of 'em!

Mom used bacon drippings for frying cabbage, brussels sprouts, onions, taters, and wilting mustard greens. She put it

in pots of collards and turnip greens and corn. Bacon cooked in pots of pinto beans, navy beans, green beans and butterbeans. Baby limas were cooked with bacon drippings, garlic, salt and pepper. (now I use NoSalt.) Crumbled bacon adorned many dishes.
I cook veggies the way Mom did. Might make dieticians faint and fall in it, but it sure is larrupin!

Eat whatever you enjoy and can tolerate. Set a weight goal so you don't overdo it. Get in contact with a dietician if

you are looking to gain weight while maintaining as healthy a diet as you can. Otherwise, just follow my first sentence and if you want and can eat a double cheese, double meat pizza for instance, go for it!
You are in my prayers.

We went to a Rodeo. In his younger days, Hubby was a bullrider. He had the skeletal system to prove it, too. He did

admit that being crazy was a prerequisite to bullriding. He also made sure neither of our sons took it up.
By the by, attending a rodeo with an insider is a blast. And no, the animals weren't harmed. Only a couple of the people.

Anglo Derived Culture? Like only people with certain ancestries go to church? And then there's food - let this white

Southern woman who even looks WASPish invite you to a supper of hopping john or gumbo (French and African). I'll play some gospel and rock music while you're here (African influences Bigtime - see Sister Rosetta Tharp for instance). Then there's the influences from places like Mexico - I do love street tacos! Ditto Italy, as in Pizza, spaghetti, pesto, etc. I can also eat my weight in twice-cooked pork and spring rolls.
I estimate that the amount of actual Anglo influence in my life is mostly lingual, since English is my native tongue (we won't go into my dialect right now ) The rest is a lovely mix of cultures from at least 4 continents.
By the by, according to the 1850 US Census my great-great-great-grandma, Prudence Woodall, was a Mulatto. Bet a whole lot of magats wouldn't want to know what lurks in their family trees. Heehee!

Oh jeez, words in a row! I prefer non-fiction but will read anything except romance novels, all of which seem to be

variations on the same plot with the same characters. Otherwise, everything from biographies to space opera is found in my library and my to-read list. My favorite author is Mark Twain, and my favorite century to read about is the amazing 1800s!

Ram Jam's Black Betty. If you can sit still while it plays, you need an undertaker.

Oh Lordy! My friend, a tarantula, and me!

It was the 5th grade, and the school was in the Mojave Desert. October, overcast skies, noon recess. Friend and I spot a tarantula out on the playground, no doubt a male looking for a lady tarantula. Now, I am scared of spiders, much less tarantulas, but my buddy got a gleam in her eye, nudged the spider into her lunchbox, and the plot was hatched! There was a boy who had been bedeviling us, and with me as lookout, she slipped into our classroom and put the tarantula in his desk!
Class starts, the boy opens his desk, and promptly lets out a scream that was surely heard plumb to Vegas! The teacher runs up, takes one look, and her scream was no doubt heard from Berdoo to Albuquerque! Pandemonium! Screams and yells and the class bolting for the door! The school custodian had to come and de-tarantula the kid's desk.
Unfortunately my buddy and I gave ourselves away by laughing our fool heads off. Swats in the office and then more trouble at home. It was worth it though!
That boy never bothered us again.