So, I just got back from a week in Georgia... southeastern rural Georgia that is: Statesboro, with a couple stops in Savannah and Tybee Island. Although I flew into the "A", I actually only spent a couple hours there -- just long enough to see the Georgia Aquarium which is AWESOME!!! But I ain't gon' lie, that place made me kind of hungry! All those giant fat groupers, red snappers, and shrimp swimming around, I kept thinking, "that's good eatin' right there." They kept telling me that people in Georgia are serious about their food. That's probably true. I definitely ate some great food there, and it did seem to be everywhere.... a breakfast buffet at the gas station, a meat smoker at the grocery store, lunch and dinner buffets with all our Southern favorites... nice!
The first night we had a cookout with yummy chicken that had been covered in cajun spices. Mmmmm! One of the side dishes was grilled whole onions which were delicious. Maybe they were Vidalia onions! I mean, we were pretty close to Vidalia, Georgia! The grill masters prepared the onions by peeling them, splitting the onion into 4 pieces, putting butter in the middle, then wrapping the whole onion in foil before grilling them until they were soft and fragrant. They were good!
In Savannah, we had lunch at Paula Deen's restaurant, The Lady and Sons. This restaurant is 3 stories tall! It's very popular, and reasonably priced too. The lunch buffet is $13, and includes fried chicken, greens, candy sweet potatoes, green beans, lima beans, cream corn, mac and cheese, biscuits, etc. Everything was really good, especially the fried chicken, greens and sweet potatoes. Next door to the restaurant is Paula Deen's store where you can buy aprons, t-shirts, pots and pans, utensils, condiments, and other food related items. She also sells lip gloss in flavors like pecan pie, peach cobbler, banana pudding, and pumpkin pie. I should have bought lip gloss for everyone because you just can't find those anywhere else!
At the grocery store in Brooklet, Georgia, you could buy freshly smoked meats like rib tips, smoked pork chops, pulled pork, and whole smoked chickens. That's a little more choices than the standard rotisserie chickens that you see in all the grocery stores here. The rib tips were yummy! The Statesboro Walmart also sold collard greens just the way I like them: cut into 1/2 to 1-inch pieces, washed and ready to cook. I don't have any secrets to cooking them, just make sure you throw a smoked ham hock into the pan with the greens, and boil them as long as you can, like at least for a couple hours. They should turn out ok if you do that.
On our last night in Georgia, we ate dinner at Ryan's Buffet in Statesboro. This buffet is HUGE, and it includes EVERYTHING!! Fried catfish, fried chicken, okra, soups, greens, cabbage, black eye peas, red beans and rice, mac and cheese, and about 100 other items. The chicken was just as good as Paula Deen's, and the steamed cabbage was soooo good! One of my catfish was fried a little too crispy, but the other one was really good, just crispy enough. Ryan's also has a dessert buffet that includes pumpkin pie, pecan pie, german chocolate cake, banana pudding, about 4 kinds of cobblers, and ice cream. I had to try a tiny bit of dessert, so I chose the pecan pie which was just right, sweet and delicious. This dinner buffet was also reasonably priced for around $11, that's a pretty good deal!
So, Georgia was pretty cool. I'll probably go back.
