Mar 13 2005
Southern Shoppin’
I love the names of the grocery stores in Florida. My total favorite is Piggly Wiggly, followed by Winn-Dixie (fun fact: the word “dixie” comes from an American mispronunciation of the French word for ten (dix) printed on ten dollar bills in New Orleans in the 19th century) and the Kash n’ Karry. Why replace C’s with K’s? You could spell it correctly and still get the alliteration. And I won’t even get into the punctuation.
At the local K n’ K:
PopTarts and Gatorade are food categories. I had never seen grape PopTarts before. Or chocolate chip cookie dough PopTarts. Fun fact: there are 32 flavors!
There’s a whole section devoted to frying mixes, for “blooming onions” (I think I saw those at the State Fair), for fish, chicken, etc. (anything that can be put on a stick can also be fried), and a great selection of hush puppy* mixes.
When they water the produce, they play “Singing in the Rain.”
You can get pretty much any kind of grits you want.
Top it all off with Cool Whip!
*For such a ubiquitous foodstuff, the origins of hush puppies are uncertain, and in some circles, hotly debated. According to The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink:
“The term appears in print for the the first time about 1915. Although unconfirmed, the common assumption regarding the hush puppy’s origin is that it dates from the period of scarcity following the Civil War, when cooks would toss scraps of corn batter to hungry dogs with the words “Hush Puppies!” But the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins cites a Southern reader’s account that in the South the aquatic reptile called the salamander was often known as a “water dog” or “water puppy”…These were deep-fried with cornmeal dough and formed into sticks, and, so the account goes, they were called “hush puppies” because eating such lowly food was not something a southern wife would want known to her neighbors.”
In case you were wondering, the “puppies” in question in the second explanation are children. Don’t go telling your friends what you had for dinner!
6 Responses to “Southern Shoppin’”
Cool Whip on Pop Tarts… HHmmmmmmmmmmm!
Hmmm … in Mississippi and Tennessee, the going story always seemed to be that they were called hush puppies because they were leftover food typically tossed out to hound dogs to, you guessed it … hush them up.
Wow, thanks for the trip!
Never never never instant grits.
Damn, you have lived a sheltered life, my dear. First you said you’d never been to Pizza Hut and now you say you’ve never heard of Piggly Wiggly or Winn Dixie?
PS – idiots always use K’s instead of C’s. Here’s one for you that you can find in the Midwest– Kum & Go. It’s a convenience store like 7-11. Makes you want to hurl, doesn’t it?
I guess I did have a sheltered life north of the Mason-Dixon. All we had were IGA and A&P and a Wegman’s or two. No Winn Dixies or Piggly Wigglys.
Also my parents hardly ever let us eat junk food, and PH would be in that group!
LOL I’m still laughing about that store’s name!!!