grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Frog Legs? Yes, please.

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Had any good frog legs lately? Deep fried with white cream gravy?

When I was in high school, the Wilson Tavern in Wilson, Arkansas had the best all-you-can-eat frog leg buffet on Friday nights. They were slap yo’ momma good.

Frog legs are a true southern delicacy, and my boyfriend, Steve, could make an impressive dent in that buffet. Sadly, The Wilson Tavern closed, but maybe someone in Wilson still has that recipe?

The Wilson Tavern
During the hot steamy Arkansas summers, hours after sunset, Steve taught me to frog gig. We spent many a hot date trolling ditch banks in a john boat looking for frogs. Romantic, no?

Steve wore a flashlight strapped around his head like a coal miner. It takes two hands to properly gig a frog. The victims were thrown into a burlap sack in the belly of the boat where they jumped and twitched sporadically. With my feet holding down the bag-o-frogs, I watched for water moccasins in the low, overhanging tree branches. Mississippi County ditches were tangled with brush and twisty vines, the perfect hiding place for snakes, and each came with an intricately crafted beaver dam.

Frog gigging was not a sport for the faint hearted. 

Recently at my neighborhood Dallas grocery store, I asked one of the workers to point me in the direction of the frog legs. She responded with a blank stare on her young tree-hugger face, as if I hailed from a far away galaxy.

After a pause she replied, “We have organic fruit from Frog Hollow Farm.”

I returned her stare knowing she wasn’t yet born when Yoda trained Luke Skywalker in that frog pond. Then she added, “And we sell organic wine from Frog Pond Winery.”

OhNeverYouMindHippieGirl. 

Apparently this particular grocery store was a big annual supporter of Save the Frogs Day. I didn’t have the heart to explain to the young grocery clerk that the cute little bright green and yellow tree frogs disappearing from the rain forests in Belize, with zero leg meat, aren’t the same ones we gigged in the swampy ditches of Keiser, Arkansas or ate at The Wilson Tavern. I kept this information to myself, paid for a bag of organic asparagus and politely left.

Soon I’ll be back in Arkansas for a visit. Maybe while I’m there, I will eat a platter of frog legs. They taste just like chicken. Only better.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Kermit, “It Ain’t Easy Being Green”
Brad Paisley, “Mud on the Tires”

Cell Phone Mad Science

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Why do loan documents have to be printed in super gigantic mickey mouse fonts with rescindable language and simple simon sentences, such as YOU MUST REPAY THIS DEBT and THE VALUE OF YOUR HOUSE MAY DECLINE, but cell phone companies can apparently do whatever they please, hiding fees and charges and embedding undisclosed codes within mystery plans that not even a nuclear rocket scientist could interpret, much less the average homeowner who makes payments on a home he can’t afford. It is maddening.
Shouldn’t Dodd Frank be all up in this monkey business? Where are the consumer advocates? Oh yes, the government researches driving and texting, which is terrible, as well as cell phone radiation, but what about consumer billing protection and tricky cell phone lingo? I dare say no one can understand a cell phone statement.
John and I had an hour+ long conference call yesterday afternoon with Stacey from AT&T, trying to add John to my plan. Of course an additional line is advertised for a mere $9.99. But it seems my current super special plan is so secret that it’s no longer available; therefore, we were forced to change our entire plan.
Stacey was a yacker. She explained all sorts of plans until my head was spinning. I tried to get my arms around the difference between anytime, nighttime, and weekend minutes. Would I would be roaming at nighttime or anytime at all? Did we need FamilyMap for $9.99/month to locate up to 2 family members? What was this tracking devise, like a skip trace? I know some people who probably need this feature… There was pay as you go, prepay, and push to talk…? No thanks, we will just keep our current pay out the butt plan. Stacey could be an auctioneer.
Once we agreed on something – I have no idea what but our decision was recorded for security purposes – she was required to run my credit report. Why!? Doesn’t my perfect payment history warrant adding John to the account for $9.99 without a credit check? John is the only person working in our household. They should be tracking him down and begging to add him to the plan. I needed to pop in my night guard – I caught myself grinding and clenching my teeth.
While I was sequestered on this call, I made the bed, loaded and started the dishwasher and stuffed and basted a chicken for dinner. The chicken was smelling mighty delicious by the time Stacey recapped our entire plan for quality control reasons. My last root canal was less painful, and I received hydrocodone as a parting gift. This call resulted in a shiny new mystery cell plan, 4,000 free rollover minutes and a dull headache.
I pray Stacey got all the complicated cell plan changes input before the massive solar flares began threatening world wide electronic systems today. My Facebook sure has been slow this morning.
talya
Musical Pairings:
Blondie, “Call Me”
Jimmy Buffet, “If the Phone Doesn’t  Ring, It’s Me”

Sushi and the Dreaded Freshman 15?

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Everyone should be fortunate enough to experience dorm living. It’s a invaluable rite of passage into college life and adulthood during an important time of personal growth. You learn about yourself sharing 250 square feet with a total stranger, who may or may not be crazy. And you’ll make lifelong friends. Ok so far this is sounding very Dr. Seuss-ish, “and will you succeed, yes you will indeed, 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed…” But it’s true.

I spent my first college semester at Arkansas State, when they were the politically incorrect Indians. Now the mascot has been changed to Red Wolves, which I choose to ignore. Why are people so sensitive? My roommate and I had a great time at ASU, going to football games and parties and sharing clothes. We made many, many late night Taco Bell runs for tostadas. We were absolutely addicted to tostadas. 


At mid-term, I transferred to Baylor knowing only two people, my boyfriend and his brother. I had no girlfriends, and no late night Taco Bell runs, so it was an adjustment. My first roomie was a wacky sorority beee-atch named Candy from San Antonio. She hated me right out of the gate because a) she had been trying to move one of her big haired, tanned sorority sisters into her room, and b) she thought all people from Arkansas were as dumb as root vegetables. Each afternoon she whipped up some knockoff version of lemon icebox pie in our tiny dorm room, stirring it with her finger, as she had no utensils. She proudly gave these pies to all the unsuspecting little pledges. I may have been a small-town country chick from Arkansas, but I knew how to use forks and spoons, I knew about germs and food poisoning, and I knew how to make a real lemon icebox pie -with freshly squeezed lemons, not that fake stuff in the green bottle. I also knew right then and there, as she stirred that pie filling with her unpolished finger, that I would never belong in a sorority. Candy and I parted ways soon enough, and I went on to make great friends who used eating utensils, for the most part. 

Dorm living has changed a bit since the early 1980s. As we moved Kelsey into her dorm room at the enormous University of Texas, where dorms actually have individual zip codes, we noted all the girls had hot pink matching bedding and carpets and beaded curtains with adorable matchy-matchy everything and storage bins and shoe racks from The Container Store. Each girl room was instantaneously transformed from cinder block to barbie dream house. The guys wheeled in 42-inch flat screen LCD Sonys, Playstation gaming systems and huge Alienware desktop computers with boxes full of cords. Each boy room was expensively transformed into Best Buy. Did they attend class via Wii? At Baylor, our electronics were limited to the console television in the common room where we all gathered each afternoon at 2:00 without fail to watch General Hospital. Luke and Laura were hooking up. There was no campus food court. In Kelsey’s dorm, there was a sushi bar downstairs. The sushi-dorm room combo is just inherently wrong.  Everyone knows freshmen eat pizza.


Now Tate is a freshman at the University of Arkansas living at Maple Hill South. It’s relatively new and  very nice per dorm room guidelines. He moved in with his graduation gift flatscreen, huge computer, suitcase of clothes and 3 pairs of shoes. Within one weeks’ time, he decided all Texas students were grouped together at Maple Hill. Is this true? Are the Texas students segregated? Maybe Arkansas folks think Texas people are snooty, like Candy thought I had no shoes and dated my cousins? 

Maple Hill South
UofA
Elevator Sign

We visited Tate last weekend. His dorm room wasn’t as messy as I expected. There were four Glade Air Fresheners in that tiny space, so it didn’t stink. There were a couple of interesting signs posted in the common area, the first beside the elevator – “do not push elevator buttons with you feet or spit in the elevator.” Really? But the buttons are shoulder height. Tate clarified, “Yeah, people are always pushing the buttons with their feet.” And spitting in the elevator? Who does this? Texan Razorbacks apparently. 

UofA Pet Policy



And evidently someone smuggled in their pet piranha along with their XBox one year? Or a squirrel? Or a pet mallard duck? Of course it is Arkansas. Pig Soooie!

talya

Musical Pairings:
Green Day, “Time of Your Life”

Otter: Flounder, I am appointing you pledge representative to the social committee.
Flounder: Gee Otter, thanks. What do I have to do?
Otter: It means you have to drive us to the Food King. 
(Animal House)

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” 

(Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!)

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!