I am trying to put together a gift for a coworker that has been temporarily working with us in South Mississippi. I’d like to include items that are available here but not where she is from(Iowa). Any suggestions?
I am trying to put together a gift for a coworker that has been temporarily working with us in South Mississippi. I’d like to include items that are available here but not where she is from(Iowa). Any suggestions?
Comments
Not really “grocery,” but the proliferation of boiled peanuts.
Boiled peanuts maybe?
Grits- I used to send them interoffice mail to a coworker who moved from the south to NJ
Pimento cheese?
Pickled pigs feet
Pecan pralines
The good flour to make biscuits.
I have a hard time finding good pecans (or sometimes any pecans) up here. My uncle from Missouri often sends boxes of pecans as Christmas gifts and it’s awesome.
Purple hull peas. I have yet to seen them in almost a decade since leaving the south.
Boiled peanuts
Cheerwine
White Lily flour. It’s a different kind of soft wheat that grows in the south, the north grows hard wheat.
A local cajun seasoning brand or BBQ sauce from the area
Cheese straws
Cheerwine, Pimento Cheese, Grits, Cheese straws, Moon Pies, local BBQ sauce
Cheerwine it’s soda only available in the south as far as I know
Not groceries but found in a grocery store.
BC powders or Goodies headache medicine.
Technically you can get them outside of the south but you have to really look and get lots of blank stares when you ask for them.
Explain that they are taken orally and followed with a coca-cola chaser.
Country ham
My grocery store sells big buckets of chitlins.
Cheer wine, white Lilly flour. Are the only two I can think of but there may be spice blends or brands of tea you can only get in the south. In the last 20-30 years there has been a push to have the same kinds of grocery’s in major grocery stores.
Andouille sausage has become more available nationwide, but there are other Cajun and Creole meats that are not, such as Tasso “ham”.
Okra is available up here but nothing like the south.
As a Midwesterner who lived in the south for many years and then moved back north, I gotta giggle seeing the comments of southerners mentioning products that I can easily find at Walmart and meijer. Maybe 15 years ago they were harder to find but not now. I can find my favorite chips and all the hot sauces and bbq sauces ect. Grits ect.
Actual things I can’t find: craft beers from breweries I loved, regional sodas like Grapico, conecuh sausage, bbq sauces or biscuit mix from local/regional restaurant chains.
I saw frozen frog legs in North Carolina walmart. Haven’t seen them yet in Ohio.
Milo’s tea
Conecuh sausage
Real grits, rather than instant ones.
Pimento cheese (but that requires refrigeration, so maybe not)
Duke’s Mayonnaise
Wickles Pickle relish
Chow-chow
Remoulade sauce
when I lived in Illinois I could never find grits that weren’t instant. I’d hit up three different grocery stores and still the only thing I’d find is minute grits. Send her home with some nice stoneground grits.
Beer cheese??
If you don’t mind it being super location specific—Ale-8 which is a Kentucky staple, though I believe you can find it in TN, too.
Sausage and cheese kolaches
Duke’s Mayonnaise. IYKYK
White Lilly flour
It really is the best for making biscuits
Fresh jumbo Gulf shrimp rarely makes it north of the Arkansas and Tennessee Rivers and rarely if ever west of I-35. You can get it elsewhere, but the good stuff stays pretty close to home.
That flour you use to make proper southern biscuits. Really hard to find in New England.
Pickled Okra. Virginia ham. Good grits (not the instant kind) the good ones often come in cloth sacks. Alligator jerky. Authentic Cajun seasoning blends. Crawfish boil. Tasso Ham. Dukes Mayo. Field peas. Lots of these are still available elsewhere. But they speak to the South.
This should really be titled “What grocery items are available in the south but hard to find in the north”. Most of the things people mentioned you can find others are rare and some aren’t even a “southern thing” at all