Okra Quotes

This is Popkenchurch. Popkenchurch is when you buy fried chicken and Cajun rice from Popeyes, biscuits from KFC, and fried okra and corn on the cob from Church’s.

Know inside yourself that you're strong. It's the only weapon that matters, and no one can teach that to you.

Usually when I’m stressed, I’ll eat everything not nailed down. Only small children and family pets are safe. And okra—I won’t eat okra under any circumstances.

I spent that many years thinking I was alone. Then you prance into my life, nearly giving me a paroxysm, and now you deign to tell me there are more.

Okra is essentially a squid that grows in the ground instead of swimming in the ocean.

I might not know every step of my journey, but standing still wouldn’t accomplish a thing. Sometimes you just had to take a step, whatever the direction, and see what happened.

I have a policy about that word "soul." It is strictly prohibited except in cases of converstations having to do with okra recipes or Marvin Gaye.

It was funny how we thought education to be the great gilded key which would solve all problems, eliminate all poverty and disease, eradicate differences between social classes, and bring the children of okra-planters up to par with the children of emperors.

Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and recognized and guessed and supposed, all the skills of the imagination. Language itself is a continuously imaginative act. Rational discourse outside our familiar territory of Greek logic sounds to our ears like the wildest imagination. The Dogon, a people of West Africa, will tell you that a white fox named Ogo frequently weaves himself a hat of string bean hulls, puts it on his impudent head, and dances in the okra to insult and infuriate God Almighty, and that there's nothing we can do about it except abide him in faith and patience. This is not folklore, or quaint custom, but as serious a matter to the Dogon as a filling station to us Americans. The imagination; that is, the way we shape and use the world, indeed the way we see the world, has geographical boundaries like islands, continents, and countries. These boundaries can be crossed. That Dogon fox and his impudent dance came to live with us, but in a different body, and to serve a different mode of the imagination. We call him Brer Rabbit.

rise up fallen fighters unfetter the stars dance with the universe & make it ours

You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can't say Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers. In that first week at the Creek, the cafeteria served fried chicken, chicken fried steak, and fried okra, which marked my first foray into the delicacy that is the fried vegetable.

I hate milk. Coats your throat as bad as okra. Something just downright disgusting about it.

You children, you forget that no matter how high the okra tree grows, it's never mightier than the hand that planted it.

We surf-fished in the breakers catching spottail bass and flounder for dinner. I discovered that summer that I loved to cook and feed my friends, and I enjoyed the sound of their praise as they purred with pleasure at the meals I fixed over glowing iron and fire. I had the run of my grandparents’ garden and I would put ears of sweet corn in aluminum foil after washing them in seawater and slathering them with butter and salt and pepper. Beneath the stars we would eat the beefsteak tomatoes okra and the field peas flavored with salt pork and jalapeno peppers. I would walk through the disciplined rows that brimmed with purple eggplants and watermelons and cucumbers, gathering vegetables. My grandfather, Silas, told us that summer that low country earth was so fertile you could drop a dime into it and grow a money tree.

Fate didn't always speak up when called.

Imagination can be your best friend, you know.

Harvest Time When Daddy's garden is ready it is filled with words that make me laugh when I say them -- pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn sweet peas and sugar snaps, lettuce and squash. Who could have imagined so much color that the ground disappears and we are left walking through an autumn's worth of crazy words that beneath the magic of my grandmother's hands become side dishes.

Cinnamon and sugar and a second chance....how could that not be sign?

He threatened to, and I quote, ‘Beat my ass until it roped like okra.’ Never heard that shit before.

Have you forgotten me? by Nancy B. Brewer The bricks I laid or the stitches I sewed. I was the one that made the quilt; a drop of blood still shows from my needle prick. Your wedding day in lace and satin, in a dress once worn by me. I loaned your newborn baby my christening gown, a hint of lavender still preserved. Do you know our cause, the battles we won and the battles we lost? When our soldiers marched home did you shout hooray! Or shed a tear for the fallen sons. What of the fields we plowed, the cotton, the tobacco and the okra, too. There was always room at my table for one more, Fried chicken, apple pie, biscuits and sweet ice tea. A time or two you may have heard our stories politely told. Some of us are famous, recorded on the pages of history. Still, most of us left this world without glory or acknowledgment. We were the first to walk the streets you now call home, Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you? Listen, my child, to the voices of your ancestors. Take pride in our accomplishments; find your strength in our suffering. For WE are not just voices in the wind, WE are a living part of YOU!

Fifteen is an appropriate age to test for seasoning. It is not a complicated ritual, but it is an unusual rite of passage and not for the fastidious. It's a prick of a finger. It's five drops of blood. It's drizzling the blood onto sinigang- a heady soup of tamarind broth, with a savory sourness enhanced by spinach and okra, tomatoes and corms, green peppers for zest. Lola Simeon prefers stewed pork, and so that was chopped into the broth, a perfect medley of lean meat and fat.

This is why we do it all over again every year. Fueled only by the stuff they drink from the air and earth, the bush beans fill out their rows, the okra booms, the corn stretches eagerly toward the sky like a toddler reaching up to put on a shirt... We gardeners are right in the middle of this with our weeding and tying up, our mulching and watering, our trained eyes guarding against bugs, groundhogs, and weather damage. But to be honest, the plants are working harder, doing all the real production. We are management; they're labor.

● Cabbage ● Cactus (nopal) ● Cauliflower ● Celery ● Chayote squash ● Cucumber ● Eggplant ● Garlic ●     Greens: beet, collard, dandelion, mustard, spinach, kale, chard, turnip greens, spinach, watercress, bok choy, arugula, etc. ● Tomatillo ● Tomato ● Green beans ● Kohlrabi ● Leek ● Lettuce: endive, escarole, iceberg, romaine, “baby” greens, etc. ● Mushroom ● Okra ● Onion (all types)

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Here it is also possible to suggest that there are more than a few similarities in dishes of African origin throughout the hemisphere, notably the preparation of composed rice dishes; the creation of various types of fritters and croquettes; the use of smoked ingredients for seasoning; the use of okra as a thickener; the abundant use of leafy green vegetables; the abundant use (some would say abuse) of peppery hot sauces; and the use of nuts and seeds as thickeners.

When Kokwa told the story, he didn’t merely use words; he used the sound of his voice, the movement of his hands, the light in his eyes. He told you the story with his whole body, and you understood it the same way. None of that was captured on paper; only the bare words could be written down. And reading just the words gave you only a hint of the experience of listening to Kokwa himself, as if one were licking the pot in which okra had been cooked instead of eating the okra itself.

He almost weren’t sensible in his excitement. He was joyful. It ain’t a clean proposition when you decides to mount thirteen fellers and declare a war on something rather than somebody. It occurred to me then he might be slippin’ and I ought to maybe take my leave when we got back home before he got too deep into whatever foolishness he planned next, for he didn’t seem right. But in them days I didn’t linger on any subject so long as I was shoving eggs, fried okra, and boiled partridge down my throat. Besides, the Old Man had more bad luck than any man I ever knowed, and that can’t help but to make a person likable and interesting to be around.

The paper version of the story was curiously disappointing. Jijingi remembered that when he had first learned about writing, he’d imagined it would enable him to see a storytelling performance as vividly as if he were there. But writing didn’t do that. When Kokwa told the story, he didn’t merely use words; he used the sound of his voice, the movement of his hands, the light in his eyes. He told you the story with his whole body, and you understood it the same way. None of that was captured on paper; only the bare words could be written down. And reading just the words gave you only a hint of the experience of listening to Kokwa himself, as if one were licking the pot in which okra had been cooked instead of eating the okra itself.

Fresh seafood stock made from shrimp and crab... It's hot and spicy- and at the same time, mellow and savory! Visions of lush mountains, cool springs and the vast ocean instantly come to mind! She brought out the very best flavors of each and every ingredient she used! "I started with the fresh fish and veggies you had on hand... ... and then simmered them in a stock I made from seafood trimmings until they were tender. Then I added fresh shrimp and let it simmer... seasoning it with a special blend I made from spices, herbs like thyme and bay leaves, and a base of Worcestershire sauce. I snuck in a dash of soy sauce, too, to tie the Japanese ingredients together with the European spices I used. Overall, I think I managed to make a curry sauce that is mellow enough for children to enjoy and yet flavorful enough for adults to love!" "Yum! Good stuff!" "What a surprise! To take the ingredients we use here every day and to create something out of left field like this!" "You got that right! This is a really delicious dish, no two ways about it. But what's got me confused... ... is why it seems to have hit him way harder than any of us! What on earth is going on?!" This... this dish. It... it tastes just like home! It looks like curry, but it ain't! It's gumbo!" Gumbo is a family dish famously served in the American South along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. A thick and spicy stew, it's generally served over steamed rice. At first glance, it closely resembles Japan's take on curry... but the gumbo recipe doesn't call for curry powder. Its defining characteristic is that it uses okra as its thickener. *A possible origin for the word "gumbo" is the Bantu word for okra-Ngombu.*

I want to plant a garden, Dewey,” I said. “Can you tell me the best place on the hill to do it?  I keep trying to remember where Nana had hers, but none of the soil looks good enough to me.” “What you want to grow?” he asked. “Nothing much. Tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, some summer squash. Whatever the season isn’t passed for.” “I’ll come up tomorrow and string you a spot,” he said, “if that works for you. You might have to do some serious clearing afore you can plant, though. Almost too late for planting tomatoes, but the rest ought to do fine. You can have all the tomatoes you want from my garden. I always get more than enough.” “Thanks. If you have green ones, I’ll take a few tonight. I’ve wanted to fry some ever since I got home. Remember how Nana used to serve us fried green tomatoes and squash?” “Made the best cornbread in the county,” he said. “Her cornbread was like eating cake.

But your lolas took offense at being called witches. That is an Amerikano term, they scoff, and that they live in the boroughs of an American city makes no difference to their biases. Mangkukulam was what they styled themselves as, a title still spoken of with fear in their motherland, with its suggestions of strange healing and old-world sorcery. Nobody calls their place along Pepper Street Old Manila, either, save for the women and their frequent customers. It was a carinderia, a simple eatery folded into three food stalls; each manned by a mangkukulam, each offering unusual specialties: Lola Teodora served kare-kare, a healthy medley of eggplant, okra, winged beans, chili peppers, oxtail, and tripe, all simmered in a rich peanut sauce and sprinkled generously with chopped crackling pork rinds. Lola Teodora was made of cumin, and her clients tiptoed into her stall, meek as mice and trembling besides, only to stride out half an hour later bursting at the seams with confidence. But bagoong- the fermented-shrimp sauce served alongside the dish- was the real secret; for every pound of sardines you packed into the glass jars you added over three times that weight in salt and magic. In six months, the collected brine would turn reddish and pungent, the proper scent for courage. unlike the other mangkukulam, Lola Teodora's meal had only one regular serving, no specials. No harm in encouraging a little bravery in everyone, she said, and with her careful preparations it would cause little harm, even if clients ate it all day long. Lola Florabel was made of paprika and sold sisig: garlic, onions, chili peppers, and finely chopped vinegar-marinated pork and chicken liver, all served on a sizzling plate with a fried egg on top and calamansi for garnish. Sisig regular was one of the more popular dishes, though a few had blanched upon learning the meat was made from boiled pigs' cheeks and head.

As for me, I went inside, walked up to my bedroom, and fell on the floor. What…just happened? Staring at the ceiling, I tried to take it all in. My mind began to race, trying to figure out what it all meant. Do I need to learn how to whittle? Cook fried chicken? Ride a horse? Use a scythe? My face began to feel flushed. And children? Oh, Lord. That means we might have children! What will we name them? Travis and Dolly? Oh my gosh. I have children in my future. I could see it plainly in front of me. They’ll be little redheaded children with green eyes just like mine, and they’ll have lots of freckles, too. I’ll have ten of them, maybe eleven. I’ll have to squat in the garden and give birth while picking my okra. Every stereotype of domestic country life came rushing to the surface. A lot of them involved bearing children. Then my whole body relaxed in a mushy, contended heap as I remembered all the times I’d walked back into that very room after being with Marlboro Man, my cowboy, my savior. I remembered all the times I’d fallen onto my bed in a fizzy state of euphoria, sighing and smelling my shirt to try to get one last whiff. All the times I’d picked up the phone early in the morning and heard his sexy voice on the other end. All the times I’d longed to see him again, two minutes after he’d dropped me off. This was right, this was oh, so right. If I couldn’t go a day without seeing him, I certainly couldn’t go a lifetime…

I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlmann, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph. I don't feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie's face when you pass on the pate. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards. Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice- again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet. I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Idk. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend. Spicy isn't so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily's sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn't admit to liking. I'm allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but I'm never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado's bland oiliness, okra's slickery slime, and don't even get me started on runny eggs. I know. It's mortifying.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Glutathione exists in certain food such as asparagus, acorn squash, avocado, cantaloupe, grapefruit, okra, orange, peach, potato, spinach, strawberries, tomato, watermelon, and zucchini. A few vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, and parsley not only supply glutathione but also stimulate the production of glutathione in the body.

Of course, I myself had ordered the barbecue and links and ribs from the guys at Pink Pig- ten pounds of just the smoky brisket itself- and, of course, nothing would do but for Mama to serve them on her silver-plated platters somebody had given her when she and Daddy got married. But every single other dish on that huge table was Mama's handiwork. There were the collards she'd mentioned, but also her red cabbage coleslaw, and barbecued pintos, and big bowls of okra and tomatoes, and corn pudding, and potato salad made with potatoes boiled in water spiced with Texas Pete, and baskets of jalapeño cornbread, and not only two pans of her rich banana pudding but also two sticky cherry cobblers. Must have been twenty different items on that buffet- enough to feed double the number of guests.

Grace rolled up her sleeves and joined the group in the kitchen, where Gladys, Pablo's wife, had worked all day directing many other women who kept food pouring out the front and side door, onto a long series of folding tables, all covered in checkered paper table cloths. While some of the women prepped and cooked, others did nothing but bring food out and set it on the table- Southern food with a Mexican twist, and rivers of it: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, chicken mole, shrimp and grits, turnip greens, field peas, fried apples, fried calabaza, bread pudding, corn pudding, fried hush puppies, fried burritos, fried okra, buttermilk biscuits, black-eyed peas, butter bean succotash, pecan pie, corn bread, and, of course, apple pie, hot and fresh with sloppy big scoops of local hand-churned ice creams. As the dinner hours approached, Carter grabbed Grace out of the kitchen, and they both joined Sarah, Carter's friend, helping Sarah's father throw up a half-steel-kettle barbecue drum on the side of the house. Mesquite and pecan hardwoods were quickly set ablaze, and Dolly and the quilting ladies descended on the barbecue with a hurricane of food that went right on to the grill, whole chickens and fresh catfish and still-kicking mountain trout alongside locally-style grass-fed burgers all slathered with homemade spicy barbecue sauce. And the Lindseys, the elderly couple who owned the fields adjoining the orchard, pulled up in their pickup and started unloading ears of corn that had been recently cut. The corn was thrown on the kettle drum, too, and in minutes massive plumes of roasting savory-sweet smoke filled the air around the house. It wafted into the orchards, toward the workers who soon began pouring out of the house.

Every culture had dishes that prized the simple and traditional over showy flavors and elaborate presentations. The things that my not seem worthy on first look, but over time become an indispensable part of your life. If you grow up in an immigrant culture, there are going to be foods you eat that other people just don't get. Not the universal crowd-pleasers-the fired chickens and soup dumplings-but the everyday staff. We Southerners, for instance, love grits, boiled peanuts, and fried okra but nobody else understands. For Chinese people, it's things like rice porridge, thousand-year-old eggs, or tomato and eggs. Simple things that don't impress at first look, but instead offer nuance: strange textures and sublime flavors that reveal charm over the years. The things people left off menus, only to find an audience during family meal. (159) Whether it's food or women, the ones on front street are supermodels, Big hair, bit tits, bit trouble, but the one you come home with is probably something like cavatelli and red sauce. She's not screaming for attention because she knows she's good enough even if your dumb ass hasn't figured it out yet. The best dished have depth without doing too much. (160)

with a sad smile she would recount the time our grandfather was so displeased with our grandmother’s okra stew that in a fit of temper he threw the pot out the window into the deep, fast-running waters of the Bosphorus.

Whether you grow your own transplants or buy them, here’s what you should plant outside as transplants and what you can grow from seed. Seeds Transplants Bean Basil Carrot Broccoli Chives Brussels sprouts Cucumber Cabbage Dill Cauliflower Lettuce Celery Okra Collards Parsley Eggplant Parsnip Kale Onion Leek Pea Pepper Pumpkin Spinach Radish Swiss chard Turnip Tomato Watermelon

The work party is also a strong tradition in the South. It was a hard life as a small farmer, and when it came time to plant or harvest, neighbors often came together. While the men worked the fields, the women would prepare an enormous meal: okra, squash casserole, potatoes, collard greens, and maybe even a chicken or two if times were good. At noon, the first sitting (called dinner) would begin on a long outdoor table, with men eating and women rushing back and forth with the food and sun tea. After the meal, the women would take the plates away and cover the food with a tablecloth to keep the flies away. At the end of the day, they’d just take the tablecloth away, and supper was ready to eat! Waste not, want not: that’s an idea even modern Grits can learn from.

Certain vegetables will grow up trellises (wood, metal, or string). Certain plants need to have trellises to grow. Vegetables That Can Grow up Trellises Cucumber Pumpkin Squash Vegetables That Must Grow up Trellises or Lattices Pole bean Garden pea Vegetables That Need Stakes Eggplant Okra Pepper Vegetables That Need Cages Tomato

These vegetables all have a glycemic index of less than 20 and should be your go-to veggies: Asparagus Bean sprouts Beet greens Broccoli Cabbages Cauliflowers Celery Cucumbers Endive Lettuces Mustard greens Radishes Spinach Swiss chard Watercress These vegetables have a glycemic index of 60 or less and can also be eaten frequently: Beets Brussels sprouts Chives Collards Dandelion leaves Eggplants Kale Kohlrabi Leeks Okra Onions Parsley Peas Peppers Pimento peppers Pumpkins Rutabagas String beans Turnips

Some of the best sources of insoluble fiber are berries, beans, lentils, okra, spinach, cocoa, sweet potatoes, whole grains (which we’ll talk about momentarily), apples, walnuts, and almonds.

Foods rich in prebiotic fiber include tubers, rutabagas, parsnips, radishes, roots, the chicory family (such as radicchio and endive), okra, artichokes, pressure-cooked beans and legumes, leeks, asparagus, onions, basil seeds, flaxseeds, and more. In addition, two of my preferred sweeteners are Just

Memorize this list of foods that you should eat liberally: 1.​All green vegetables, both raw and cooked, including frozen. If it is green, you get the green light. Don’t forget raw peas, snow pea pods, kohlrabi, okra, and frozen artichoke hearts. 2.​Non-green, non-starchy vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, mushrooms, onions, garlic, leeks, cauliflower, water chestnuts, hearts of palm, and roasted garlic cloves. 3.​Raw starchy vegetables, such as raw carrots, raw beets, jicama, radish, and parsnips. They are all great, shredded raw, in your salad. 4.​Beans/legumes, including split peas, lima beans, lentils, soybeans, black beans, and all red, white, and blue beans. Soak them overnight, then rinse and cook them, add them to salads and soups, make bean burgers, sprout them, and eat bean pasta. 5.​Low-sugar fruits, one or two with breakfast and about one more each meal. 6.​Try to have berries or pomegranate at least once a day. Frozen berries are the most cost effective.

Stewed arame and deep-fried tofu. Okra croquettes. Kikuna leaves dressed with sesame and miso. Kurama-style sardine. Hirosu tofu ball in broth. Pork belly simmered in Kyobancha tea. Fresh tofu curd with sour plum paste. Oh, and Kioshi's rice-bran-pickled cucumbers. Nothing too extravagant. If anything, the highlights are probably the firmly cooked Goshu rice and the miso soup with ebi-imo taro. Anyway, enjoy the meal. Oh, and make sure you put a good sprinkle of sansho pepper on the soup--- it'll warm you right up.

Everything on this platter is hamo eel or ayu sweetfish: two essential parts of Kyoto summer cuisine," explained Nagare. "Starting from the top left: miniature hamo sushi rolls. One teriyaki-style, and one shirayaki--- without any seasoning, that is. Next to that, in the small bowl, is shredded hamo eel skin, pickled and served with okra. On top of the bamboo grass leaf are two little ayu, caught in the Katsura River--- salted and grilled. In the glass sake cup is a delicacy known as uruka--- basically the salted entrails and roe of the ayu. Similar to shiokara, if you've had that. The deep-fried dish in the middle on the right is ayu fry. They're sprinkled with sansho pepper salt, so you can enjoy them as they are. Bottom right, on the perilla leaf, is hamo no otoshi: boiled slices of the eel, served with pickled plum paste and myoga ginger. Bottom left, meanwhile, is hamo no hasamiyaki, which is seasoned with white miso and fried between slices of Yamashina eggplant.

I heard that your legendary ruk, Kadara, is here, Prince.” “Ghastly beast,” Hasar muttered halfheartedly into her okra, earning a half smile from Sartaq.

Among the Indian foods we commonly order are samosa (stuffed bread pocket), urid dal (bean curry), moong dal (lentil curry), pilao (a rice dish), chana masala (garbanzo beans), alu gobi (cauliflower), upma (wheat and vegetables), khichuri (lentils and rice), tel baigan (eggplant curry), and bhindi bhaji (okra and onions).

She finished just after him, scooping out fried corn and an okra-tomato-corn medley on his plate.

When Daddy's garden is ready it is filled with words that make me laugh when I say them- pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn sweet peas and sugar snaps, lettuce and squash. Who could have imagined so much color that the ground disappears and we are left walking through an autumn's worth or crazy words that beneath the magic of my grandmother's hands become side dishes.

There's a Nigerian adage that says 'no matter how long an okra plant grows it can never be taller than its owner'.

the notion of “spheres.” In principle, these three levels—ordinary consumption goods, masculine prestige goods, and rights in women—were completely separate. No amount of okra could get you a brass rod, just as, in principle, no number of brass rods could give you full rights to a woman.

I heard your legendary ruk, Kadara, is here, Prince.” “Ghastly beast,” Hasar muttered halfheartedly into her okra, earning a half smile from Sartaq. “Hasar is still sore that Kadara tried to eat her when they first met,” Sartaq confided. Hasar rolled her eyes, though a glimmer of amusement shone there. Kashin supplied from a few seats down, “You could hear her screeching from the harbor.” To Chaol’s surprise, Nesryn asked, “The princess or the ruk?” Sartaq laughed, a startled, bright sound, his cool eyes lighting. Hasar only gave Nesryn a warning look before turning to the vizier beside her. Kashin grinned at Nesryn and whispered, “Both.

That dog can’t do one trick,” Bull observed, lighting a cigar in the front seat. “Okra has too much pride to do tricks for mere human beings,” Mary Anne stated officiously. “His mind is on spiritual matters.

Oh, God. I have a policy about that word “soul.” It is strictly prohibited except in cases of conversations having to do with okra recipes or Marvin Gaye. My mom doesn’t observe these simple, commonsense restrictions. She says, “I want you to get rid of anything that might be bothering you.

Today was his shopping day. Naina had always done the shopping on Wednesdays. To deviate from that routine now would be wrong. First things first, he checked the fridge and the cupboards, organized just the way Naina had liked them to be, by which he meant not at all. Just as he suspected: he needed okra and mung beans. He loved mung beans, regardless of what Rohini said. He had never cooked much when Naina was alive, except in the last few months of her life, but he knew a few recipes by heart. They kept him going. What did he need with “nutritionally balanced” at his age, anyway

he works for the Czar’s Okhrana,” replied Maldehyde sitting in his winged-back chair. “The Czar’s Okra?” I asked confused. “Secret police,” replied Charlotte sitting down, “not secret vegetable.

The dining room overflows with love-made dishes-smoked turkey, collards, mac and cheese, okra and tomatoes.

One did not have to bring back eggs, but one should bring something back of approximately the same value. One could even bring money—there was nothing inappropriate in that—provided one did so at a discreet interval and above all, that one did not bring the exact cost of the eggs. It had to be either a bit more or a bit less. To bring back nothing at all would be to cast oneself as an exploiter or a parasite. To bring back an exact equivalent would be to suggest that one no longer wishes to have anything to do with the neighbor. Tiv women, she learned, might spend a good part of the day walking for miles to distant homesteads to return a handful of okra or a tiny bit of change, “in an endless circle of gifts to which no one ever handed over the precise value of the object last received”—and in doing so, they were continually creating their society.

I watch a young woman haggle with almost every seller. Finally, she buys smoked fish, okra, tomatoes, habaneros, and red bell peppers. She will go home to her tiny, sufficient apartment with one soot-stained kerosene stove in a corner and make food just enough for herself and eat less than half of it and fall asleep on her bed and be glad to be alone and unbothered.

okra, spinach, and cilantro in little heaps across the countertop, each shade of green as distinct as each vegetable’s identity.

Artichokes Avocados Bean sprouts Beans, green Bok choy Broccoli Brussels sprouts Cabbage, green Celery Cucumbers with skin Grapes, green Green peas Kiwi, green Leafy greens Lettuce Limes Melons, honeydew Okra Olives, green Peppers, green Snow peas Watercress Zucchini with skin Red Beets Blood oranges Cabbage, red Cherries Cranberries (fresh or frozen without sugar) Grapefruit, pink or red Grapes, red Onions, red Peppers, red Plums, red Pomegranates Radicchio Radishes Raspberries, red Rhubarb Rooibos tea Strawberries Tomatoes Watermelons Blue/Purple/Black Aronia berries (grown throughout North America and Europe) Black currants Black mulberries Blackberries Blueberries Boysenberries Dates Eggplants Elderberries Figs, purple Grapes, black or purple Huckleberries Kale, purple Marionberries Olives, black Plums, black Prunes Purple heirloom carrots Purple yams or potatoes (remember these are starchy—and these must be pigmented all the way through in order to count in this category) Raisins Raspberries, black Yellow/Orange Apricots Cantaloupe Carrots Ginger root Grapefruit, yellow Kiwi, golden Lemon Mangoes Muskmelons Nectarines Oranges Papayas Peaches Peppers, orange and yellow Persimmons Pineapples Pumpkins Squash, summer and winter Starfruit Sweet potatoes and yams Tangerines Turmeric root

The waiter arrived with our entrées. Because we'd "ordered light," there were also only two of these. A firm whitefish with crispy skin that glistened under the light and shattered between my teeth, nestled atop a smooth, creamy carrot-ginger puree, luscious with just the right amount of butter (a lot). Roasted carrots, yellow and purple and orange but always caramelized on the outside added pops of sweetness and texture, and candied ginger was sprinkled on top, providing some spice and some chew. I was sad when it came time to move on to the second entrée, but it cheered me right up. A pasta that had clearly been made here, thick strands that were tender but with a chew to them, bathed in a sauce of coconut milk and garlic and ginger and chiles. I could've slurped this pasta down all on its own, forever, but the buttery chunks of shrimp and crunchy bits of okra scattered throughout made for most welcome diversions. Okra seeds popped with relish on my tongue.

Harlan, Cody, and I stand there and gaze at it all. The glistening fried chicken, the potato salad, and fried okra. The biscuits still steaming in the oven. A ramekin of honey butter and another of ranch dressing set off the meal. The chess pie and the Blue Bell ice cream are just begging to be devoured.

To this day the historical extent and importance of slavery in any given area in the Americas may very nearly be gauged by the extent and importance of okra, particularly by the degree of acceptance among whites.

Nineteenth-century Southern cookbooks almost invariably included receipts for okra.

In short, okra had come to be completely accepted by the Virginia gentry by the early nineteenth century.

The Mason-Dixon line can almost be said to be the Okra Line, that is, historically: As a rule, Southern writers gave receipts for okra, even when their works were published in the North. Northern writers did not, with the exception of those of Philadelphia, an anomaly explained by the early presence of West Indians who came to very nearly dominate the catering business in that city.

We began with two buttery sweet edamame and one sugar syrup-soaked shrimp in a crunchy soft shell. A lightly simmered baby octopus practically melted in our mouths, while a tiny cup of clear, lemony soup provided cooling refreshment. The soup held three slices of okra and several slippery cool strands of junsai (water shield), a luxury food that grows in ponds and marshes throughout Asia, Australia, West Africa, and North America. In the late spring the tiny plant develops leafy shoots surrounded by a gelatinous sheath that floats on the water's surface, enabling the Japanese to scoop it up by hand from small boats. The edamame, okra, and water shield represented items from the mountains, while the shrimp and octopus exemplified the ocean. I could tell John was intrigued and amused by this artistic (perhaps puny?) array of exotica. Two pearly pieces of sea bream, several fat triangles of tuna, and sweet shelled raw baby shrimp composed the sashimi course, which arrived on a pale turquoise dish about the size of a bread plate. It was the raw fish portion of the meal, similar to the mukozuke in a tea kaiseki. To counter the beefy richness of the tuna, we wrapped the triangles in pungent shiso leaves , then dunked them in soy. After the sashimi, the waitress brought out the mushimono (steamed dish). In a coal-black ceramic bowl sat an ivory potato dumpling suspended in a clear wiggly broth of dashi thickened with kudzu starch, freckled with glistening orange salmon roe. The steamed dumplings, reminiscent of a white peach, was all at once velvety, sweet, starchy, and feathery and had a center "pit" of ground chicken. The whole dish, served warm and with a little wooden spoon, embodied the young, tender softness of spring.

To our surprise and delight, dinner was stupendous. Served in our room at the low polished wood table, it exuded a freshness and artistry we had not seen since leaving Kyoto. The sashimi- sea bream, squid, and skipjack- tasted as clean as a freshly sliced apple. Rusty-red miso soup had a meaty fortifying flavor enhanced with cubes of tofu and slithery ribbons of seaweed. The tempura, served in a basket of woven bamboo, shattered to pieces like a well-made croissant. Hiding inside the golden shell was a slice of Japanese pumpkin, a chunk of tender white fish, an okra pod, a shiitake mushroom cap, and a zingy shiso leaf. Pale yellow chawan-mushi also appeared in a lidded glass custard cup. With a tiny wooden spoon we scooped up the ethereal egg and dashi custard cradling chunks of shrimp, sweet lily buds, and waxy-green ginkgo nuts. In a black lacquer bowl came a superb seafood consommé, along with a knuckle of white fish, tuft of spinach, mushroom cap, and a tiny yellow diamond of yuzu zest. A small lacquer bucket held several servings of sticky white rice to eat with crunchy radish pickles and shredded pressed cabbage. A small wedge of honeydew melon concluded the meal.

You’ve got East Texas, which is Creole, with the field greens and okra. In West Texas you have the Hispanic influence and the chiles. North Texas, you had the cattle drives. In the south and the Gulf, I wanted to give the sense of a true Southern fishing camp. Then in Central Texas you have the Czech and German influences.

If goodness was like mint... ..."It'll spread if it ain't hedged," her ma explained, then told her how mint roots roam under the soil and send up shoots inches, feet away, making more roots, and those roots then roam, send up shoots, making new roots. "And up comes more mint. If I don't wall it off, mint will take over the garden. We'll wind up with no corn and cabbages, no beans and tomatoes, no peppers, no goosefoot, no squash, no okra.

Vivian Weaver took us from pot to pot in her kitchen, lifting lids, stirring and tasting as she went along. There was seafood gumbo, fried fish and fried chicken, dumplings, butter biscuits, cornbread, fried okra, black-eyed peas, green beans, and bread pudding.

....Blue frowned at the scene before them. Someone was behind an azalea bush, pointing the beam of a flashlight up at a dark figure on the roof of the house. Something like confetti was drifting through the air as the figure spun in circles and waved its arms. " What is this place?" "It's the Okra Lane Home for Seniors " "Somebody's twirling around on the roof." "Yes." Granny Eve sighed. "That's your great-grand-mother.

The hunger for the world is bigger than the world itself and no dinner of mutton cutlets and okra is going to feed it.

Eat foods rich in flavonoids and antioxidants, such as vegetables as spinach, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, celery, okra, artichokes, asparagus, green leafy vegetable and fruits as blueberries, strawberries, peaches, apricots, kiwi, mango, plums, Bosc and Asian pears and red delicious apple. Vegetable juices such as carrot, beetroot and apple are a simple way to ensure an adequate intake of antioxidants that help fight the inflammation that causes gastritis. Increase your consumption of fish such as tilapia, trout, herring, wild salmon, cod, sardines, anchovies, small mackerel, flounder, haddock, hake, catfish, sole. Fish has anti-inflammatory effects

Hadley Beckett from Nashville, Tennessee, who had a Bachelor of Business Administration degree but had dropped out of culinary school. Lover of fried okra and hot chicken and sweet tea. Henceforth those things wouldn't be used against me as insults. Henceforth other chefs- of the too-big-for their-britches variety- wouldn't look down their noses at me for calling it powdered sugar rather than confectioners sugar.

We burst through the doors of Parthenon like Greeks through the open gates of Troy. Five minutes later we were seated at our usual table in the garden section despite two flights of stairs, which Andrea insisted on climbing, and the heat of late afternoon. The owners had finally gotten rid of the chairs that were bolted to the floor, and I sat so I could watch the door and the two women on the right, who were the only other diners willing to brave the garden section in the heat. We ordered a heaping platter of meat, a pint of tzatziki sauce, and a bucket of fried okra, because Andrea really wanted it, and waited for our food

Mediterranean Vegetable Stew INGREDIENTS for 4 servings 1 (10-oz) package frozen okra, thawed 10 pimiento-stuffed olives, chopped 1 lb sweet potatoes, cubed ½ tsp turmeric 3 garlic cloves, minced 1/3 cup raisins 2 cups vegetable broth 1 carrot, sliced 2 ripe tomatoes, chopped 1 onion, chopped 1 cup canned tomato sauce 2 zucchinis, cubed 1 eggplant, sliced ¼ tsp crushed red pepper ¼ tsp paprika Goat cheese for garnish DIRECTIONS and total time: approx. 35 minutes Heat olive oil on Sauté and stir-fry onion, zucchini, eggplant, garlic, and carrot for 5 minutes. Stir in turmeric, paprika, red pepper, and raisins for 2 minutes. Pour in the remaining ingredients, except for the cheese, and seal the lid. Select Manual and cook for 8 minutes at High. When ready, release the pressure naturally for 10 minutes. Top with goat cheese to serve.

Wherever okra points its green tip, Africa has been: ‘nuff said.

DJ, let Trisha look. She's really good at this doctor thing," Ashna said and Trisha Raje grinned at her as though she had just dropped the deepest curtsy in front of her. DJ picked up the colander filled with okra and moved to the fryer. "As I've already mentioned, my hands are fine. I hope yours are still worth as much as they were last evening." Definitely a petty bastard. That made her tilt her head in confusion again. Apparently, you needed no memory at all to get through medical school. Or maybe it was he who needed to have his head examined for remembering every word that had come out of her mouth like some fragile, egotistical half-wit.