Only had about an hour to grab dinner last night, so instead of driving all the way back to my apartment (~20 minutes), I stopped at a small town BBQ place. "Catherine's" is only open three days a week, and consists of a buffet of various southern dishes, including pulled pork, BBQ sauce, fried okra, hushpuppies, sweet potatoes, corn, green beans, rice, some sort of orange brown stuff to put on the rice (I think), swea' tay' (sweet tea - supersaturated sugar water with some brown coloring), mac and cheese, potato salad, coleslaw, and dessert options: banana pudding (with real banana chunks!) and peach cobbler stuff. Did I mention that it's a buffet, and you can come back for as many helpings as you want? Pretty much a perfect situation for dinner on a long work day, preparing for a long cold night of work... Cold air fights rather effectively with threatening food-comas.
It's an interesting place to eat solitarily too - lots of local character to watch. There aren't really any small tables here, just long ones with lots of chairs, so it's rather communal. It's fun to listen to the conversations and try to understand the "southern-ese" with varying success. Usually I can only catch a few words here and there. Highlights from last night:
"And someone baked that lil' child a cake, and he'd never seen one before, so he asked 'what'd you do to the corn bread?'"
"Say something soft and sweet", response: "banana pudding"
... from where I sit now, maybe those aren't quite so interesting as they were last night when I heard them. Shrug.
Other notable objects of southern culture to be found around town include probably my favorite pawn shop ever - "We Buy: Gold - Coins - Silver - Diamonds - Jesus Loves You"
Does it get much better than that?
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