Cold Plate Southern Meals

Last week I came across one of those headlines about the South that makes me roll my eyes way, way, way back and groan till Tom responds to my plea for attention. It read,

“Why Do Southerners Like to Eat Cold Food During the Hottest Days of Summer?”

Do I really need to duh this out? No. Just DUH.

Does any real person ask that question? Isn’t the answer in the question?

Maybe I’m so far in this thing that I can’t imagine that it wasn’t some AI title. I’ve pretty much never eaten hot food in summer; I live that headline, so I can’t imagine it’s being asked.

Pretty much every night this month we’ve had cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions in a vinegar dressing. Cold green beans, boiled shrimp, or, like last night, tomato sandwiches — with bacon, leftover from breakfast, so, well, cold.

Among the three of us, Tom, Momma, and me, we go through one whole watermelon a week. Every single night there’s watermelon, black olive, and feta salad with a little tahini peppered on. Half the melon gets juiced — melon, ice, and a blender.

I’d also have a blender pitcher of gazpacho going constantly (a chopped-up egg sprinkled on for protein), but Tom hates onions. I sacrifice.

Sometimes, if there’s company, there’s chicken salad and crab-with-a-K salad in rotation, too.

Momma calls a meal like this a “cold plate.”

There are cold boiled peanuts — you know it’s not peanut time quite yet, so these are frozen from last year. I know the magazines all go on about hot boiled peanuts, but icy boiled peanuts are the best.

Okra is just coming on now. Nothing’s easier or more crisp than refrigerator-pickled okra. In the mid to late summer, paired with okra is eggplant - purple, round, lavender, and Japanese skinny ones. Last summer, I made two pounds of baba ganoush a week.

We grow most of what I’ve talked about ourselves. Our garden isn’t pretty — cardboard flaps on the ground, the tomatoes clamber everywhere, and the okra is too close together. But keeping it going keeps Momma going. In fact, last night as I was writing this, she called me out to help her carry stuff in. This evening she’ll watch Making It Grow while she snaps some green beans — that’ll be supper tomorrow.

A cold plate looks easy. It is if you don’t count the growing, picking, scratching and sweating, the washing dirt off and peeling.

There’s no recipe book for this stuff — it’s too simple, and there’s certainly no need to ask why we love it. It’s the warmest food I know.

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