One of my dogs sleeps in my bed more than I do. That wouldn’t be interesting in and of itself except for the way he sleeps, with his legs and head tangled somewhere in the footboard design. I still don’t understand how animals can sleep this way. Just looking at them sometimes makes my neck ache.
There are lists with which I agree and those with which I don’t. I’m pretty much on the agree train with this one. A lot of the things on this list – corn pudding, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green bean casserole – are inherently Southern, and people around these parts would be peeved if they didn’t make an appearance. That said: as much as I love marshmallows, and as much as I like sweet potatoes, I do not like them together (especially since someone insists on putting raisins in the potatoes before warming the dish, which makes it even worse, since raisins are for fresh eating and Raisin Bran cereal, and have no place in buns, cookies, or mashed sweet potatoes regardless of whether they will be topped with marshmallows or not). The green bean casserole thing is also intensely Southern, but I’ve never liked it. Maybe it would be different with fresh beans and onions, but I’m at the point in life that I’d rather relearn my eating on stuff I actually like and not stuff that brings up bad notions about food. The canned cranberry sauce that glops out on a plate when you open it is an abomination, IMO. That’s why I make my own from fresh cranberries and other ingredients. And my own gravy, because the instant stuff is loaded with salt, making it unpalatable.
I realize it may come across as snobbish, and I know people who love all of these things. But that’s the beauty of something like food: as many things there are to eat in this world – including weird things that some people could never imagine being food – you can probably find someone who absolutely loves eating it. Especially if that someone is Andrew Zimmern.