Saturday, May 31, 2008

Southern Girls



We have a new coffee shop, called Roaster 2 Cup Euro Caffe, which may soon be Bruce's. Martha mentioned it the other night at Chicks but I hadn't been there yet. As you might guess, Bruce is the owner. He is roasting all his own beans every day and told us you can't be doing anything else food wise while doing that because the coffee will pick up the flavor.



Today Kate and I decided to get together and went there to give it a try. While we were in there, Amy popped in so the three of us got to chat. Kate is in the pink, Amy in the blue.



The coffee shop is comfy, with some cushy seating, and a nice selection of magazines. This is one of my favorites - Scientific American. Oddly enough, that plays into my weekend plans. I'm going underground tomorrow to attend a roundtable lecture by scientists who discovered ancient bacteria embedded in salt. I'm excited about talking to them. And, no, I'm not being funny. I'm really looking forward to it.

But, back to the topic at hand. Amy, Kate and I are all southern girls. Kate is from Georgia and Amy from South Carolina, while I'm from Kentucky. We decided today we're going to start our own little club for southern girls and those with southern ways.

Topics of conversation today were:
1. how can people possibly not know what cheese straws are - it's scandalous, I tell you
2. the horror of no derby pie on Derby Day - none of us have quite recovered from that
3. how can people not know their history -  i.e. "where are your people from?"

We didn't get much further than that, but went away with the task to come up with a name. Of course, we thought about GRITS (Girls Raised In The South) but that's been done. We considered the Sweet Potato Queens, the Ya-Yas and some other things, including our own twisted Junior League, but decided we need to come up with our own name.

I was sharing this with Greg at dinner and he asked what southern girls would say about food.  My response was, "butter, heavy cream, cheese or gravy - or some combination - can improve almost anything."

It's comforting to talk with other southern girls. I do miss my own kind.

And I do declare, those southern men are a special breed as well. I didn't fully appreciated them until I wasn't around them. But, that's a-whole-nother topic for a-whole-nother time.
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