Southern Food Experience

During the final week of the winter break, I went to see one of my friends in Chapel hill, North Carolina. I ate two southern dishes there: barbeque and grits. Before I visited her,  another friend from Florida told me that I should eat those two dishes in the Southern part of America, so I asked the friend living in NC before I visited to feed me them. One evening, she took me to the restaurant which is called “MAMA DIP’s.” (http://www.mamadips.com/) I ordered “Chopped Bar-B-QUE Pork”, which is next to yam in the picture. Barbeque, to me, is an event that a certain number of people gather and grill not only meat but various vegetables, sometimes fish and shellfish, or whatever I want to eat. However,  I realized that barbeque is also a term for a certain dish, which a sort of meat is grilled and covered with sauce;  I double checked what the barbeque is in the AMS295 class. The sauce was a little sweet and sour. The taste was okay.  

Next morning, we went to another restaurant, where I ate grits. This place was connected with a supermarket and was like a local morning cafeteria. As for grits, the main ingredient is liquid and alkali-treated corn called hominy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominy). It’s a little hard for me to describe what it is, so please see the picture below. The one I ate was probably contained butter and salt too since the girts itself has not so much taste. Getting  an advice from my friend, I put some cheddar cheese at bottom of the cup and put black peppers on the top; that was a really good combo. I love it. Only grits is not enough for breakfast, so I had a piece of pan cake and a little salad with it. Because Grits is a really light meal and very suitable for breakfast,  I could see a lot of elderly people around us eating grits after their morning walk. 

This is my southern food experience during the winter break.