Category Archives: the south

Coke and Peanuts

Back when I subscribed to Oxford American magazine, I would regularly threaten (to myself) to cancel my subscription if I saw one more picture of a snake handler in their pages. Snake handlers and alligators were a little too common as OA’s attempt to capture “Southern-ness” occasionally tilted a little too far toward surreal Southern Gothic.

So it is with some trepidation that I feel a need to address the very Southern taste for salted peanuts in Coca-Cola as a snack. This is something I remember from early childhood. We would take a bottle of Coke and a sleeve of salted peanuts. Take a couple of good swigs of the Coke to make room for the peanuts and then slowly pour the peanuts into the narrow top of the Coke bottle. The combination of the sugary Coca-Cola with the salty peanuts is really good. Trust me on this, but don’t ask me to explain why.

I had relegated peanuts in Coca-Cola to a distant childhood memory until this summer when Coach Jimbo Fisher of Florida State dumped some peanuts in his Coca-Cola during ACC media days. The non-Southern press in attendance was flabbergasted and felt the need to address this odd behavior in multiple columns which then led to a deluge of online responses, contradictions, and opinions. We Southerners who grew up with peanuts in Coke as a normal treat were a little bemused by the brouhaha. While I suspect that this tradition is more familiar to Baby Boomers and their parents than to younger generations, I asked a recent class of college-age students how many of them had heard of or had peanuts in Coca-Cola and was surprised at how many hands went up. A few of them opted for RC Cola instead of Coke. I can accept that.

The resurgence of peanuts in Coca-Cola as a topic of conversation in the 21^st century surprised me as much as the emergence of one of my guilty pleasure road treats – fried pork rinds – as a healthier junk food choice (no carbs, high protein, low-fat and a high percentage of the same healthy unsaturated fats as olive oil – go figure).

There is a long tradition of Coke in recipes. “Atlanta Brisket” – brisket glazed with cola – has been around for a while and “America’s Test Kitchen” did a version of it fairly recently. “Coca-Cola Cake” is a mainstay of Southern cookbooks and I have seen a Coca-Cola cake with a peanut glaze inspired by the classic peanuts in Coke tradition.

Bartenders are constantly upgrading the football Saturday stalwart bourbon and Coke into more sophisticated renderings such as the “Reengineered Bourbon and Coke Cocktail” recently featured in Garden and Gun magazine. Even more to the point, I recently heard that a place in Birmingham has a cocktail called the “Tallulah” which is made of Coca-Cola, peanut syrup, and Jack Daniel’s. An investigation is in order.

North Carolina chef Vivian Howard, in an episode of her PBS show “A Chef’s Life,” explored the North Carolina tradition of putting peanuts in Pepsi. I have a lot of respect for Chef Howard and she is a wonderful chef, but this will not do. Howard’s Pepsi and peanuts exploration did, however, lead to what looked like a great recipe of Pepsi-glazed pork belly with country ham braised peanuts. I bet it would be even better with a Coke glaze.

After teaching a Saturday class in Huntsville this past weekend, I hopped in the car to drive to Birmingham for a quick visit. Stopping for gas outside Decatur, I spotted an 8 oz. Coke in a glass bottle in the drinks case. I grabbed it and a sleeve of Golden Flake salted peanuts and headed to the car. I downed a few gulps of the Coke, emptied the peanuts into the bottle, and headed south on I-65 listening to the radio and the pre-game shows leading up to the Alabama-Ole Miss game. It has been at least forty years since I indulged in peanuts in Coca-Cola. I was transported back to football Saturdays growing up and “The Bear Bryant Show” on television each Sunday after game days. Coca-Cola and Golden Flake potato chips sponsored the show (“’Great pair’, says The Bear”).

It was an exhilarating drive.

The Peach Highway and Jimmie’s Peach Stand

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I get a little reflective as the Alabama peach season draws to a close. The state of Georgia, of course, has appropriated all of the peach titles and has done an admirable job of marketing its peaches as if they are something special. But a growing number of Southerners have discovered the rich and considerable delights of peaches grown in Chilton County, Alabama. On a May morning in the French Market in New Orleans a few years ago, I was pleased to hear a local shopper ask a vendor if any Chilton County peaches had arrived yet. He replied that he didn’t have any but that the lady a couple of stalls down had just gotten her first delivery of the season that very morning – “and they sure are good this year.” The shopper grinned like a child on Christmas and rushed to buy a basket.

I have long been a fan of Chilton County peaches but it was only when I moved back to Alabama in 1999 that I became something of a snob about them. The local crop is becoming better known and any traveler on I-65 between Birmingham and Montgomery is bombarded by the billboards promoting the tourist-driven peach shops at exits around Clanton. The biggest billboard of all for Chilton County peaches is the giant peach water tower at exit 212 in Clanton. The giant peach water tower in Gaffney, South Carolina, is older and bigger but each makes its point with kitschy panache.

To truly get a feel for Chilton County peaches, however, you must wander off the interstate and experience the numerous peach stands along Highway 82. When I lived in Montgomery from 1999 to 2002 I frequently traveled U.S. Highway 82 on the way to Tuscaloosa, where my parents lived at the time. Outside Montgomery, traveling northwest on 82, after going past the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail resort and subdivisions in the town of Prattville, the highway turns aggressively two-lane and rural through Autauga, Chilton, and Bibb counties on the way to Tuscaloosa.

As soon as you pass into Chilton County, from either direction, the roadside stands begin to appear. Some vendors come and go and others have been there for years. Sometime around Mother’s Day the stands, which have stood vacant during the cooler months, put up their freshly painted signs and the first succulent peaches of the year make their debut, lined up in full farm baskets and beckoning to all travelers. It is almost impossible not to stop. That moment – when I catch sight of my first peach stand of the season open for business with that sensual peach color and aroma – has become one of the defining moments of the growing season. My heart soars; I have been known to shout.

After sampling most of the stands, one has become my clear favorite – not just for consistent quality but for sheer “ambience,” if that word applies for a humble fruit stand on a lonely stretch of rural highway (and I think it’s the perfect word). Jimmie’s is my hands-down favorite peach stand in Chilton County.

Jimmie’s is located at a fork at the top of a hill where County Road 15 feeds into Highway 82. It’s a simple open wooden structure with display space on two sides facing each road. Baskets of peaches are lined up across the shelves facing Highway 82 and whatever other produce is in season is usually displayed on the other side.

Jimmie’s, which is a family-run stand, only sells peaches that they grow. To drive the point home, one of their peach orchards stands next to the stand and the truck regularly pulls in with peaches and other produce from orchards and parts of the farm farther down the road. A few years ago I asked Mrs. Harrison if they had any okra in yet and was told that they had sold out of okra that morning but if I could wait a few minutes they were out in the garden getting some more now. A few minutes later the truck pulled up and Mrs. Harrison told them to unload the okra first since “that’s what this man is waiting for.”

I now live in north Alabama, but my parents are in Birmingham and I manage to drive the seventy-something miles from Birmingham down to Jimmie’s every two weeks during the season. Usually I buy a basket for myself and fill additional orders from friends throughout Alabama. The car smells amazing on the trip back after the “peach run.”

If you happen to get to Jimmie’s after hours, and if anything was left when they closed up for the night, there’s an honor box so you can buy what you need, leave the money in the box, and be on your way. Honor boxes. You don’t see them much anymore but every time I encounter one it strikes me as one of the most civilized and hopeful things left in the world.

“The Professional Southerner” — and why

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I think I was living in Indiana the first time I was referred to as a “professional southerner.” As I recall, it was around 1994 and I was frustrated because I had been unable to find okra in the produce sections of the local grocers. Someone innocently asked why I ate okra and my shock made me launch into a monologue of the virtues of okra and all the ways in which it could be consumed. But my favorite way was breaded and fried in the particular way my Grandmother Harbison had always made it and I had been craving fried okra around that time of that Indiana summer.

This led to questions about other ways in which okra could be consumed (I told them pickled okra was my favorite Bloody Mary garnish), other foods I like, and other queries about Southern foodways. Someone in the group mumbled, “I never realized you were such a professional Southerner,” and we all laughed but over the years, as I lived and traveled in other parts of the country, I became aware that I was often the go-to guy for issues dealing with the South and what it means to be Southern.

Having said that, I am a proud Southerner but very few people would classify me as a “typical” Southern male with all of the misconceptions and stereotypes that label evokes. But I realized, after traveling and working in different places – and to my surprise, really – that not only was the South my home, but that it was the place I best understood and the place where I felt most comfortable. It was the place I wanted to come back to. My politics, for one thing, are not typical of the South, but they are also not as atypical as some might suppose and I resent the whole “Blue State / Red State” way of thinking because it gives such a divisive idea of what is really happening in our country.

Not long ago, my friend Cindy and I attended a “Piggy Bank” dinner at the Factory of Alabama-based fashion designer Natalie Chanin in Florence, Alabama. The event was to honor Southern food and to benefit Southern Foodways Alliance. The chef for the evening was Vivian Howard who owns and runs Chef and the Farmer, a farm to table fine dining restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina, with her husband Ben Knight. Between the entrée and the dessert, Shonna Tucker, an Alabama-born musician who has recently moved to Florence after many years on the road, sang her striking and original songs. The dinner guests were a wide range of people who shared an amazing communal meal and one of the most convivial and relaxed evenings I have enjoyed in a long time. At the end of the evening, all of the diners stood and sang “You Are My Sunshine” to Vivian Howard, led by Natalie Chanin, one of the most innovative and conscious fashion designers working today.

That night, walking from the Factory to the car, I commented to my friend that “This is one of those nights when I can’t imagine living anyplace else but Alabama.” And I decided that I – who have always detested the idea of blogs and the label of “blogger” – would make an effort to record and share some of the things that make my South so special to me. Plus, I have been told that I “think loudly.” Maybe, by writing this online journal, my loud thoughts will become more specific and defined.