Nothing says Southern like grits and add shrimp; you’ve got the Low Country! If the Southern lifestyle isn’t right out your back door, we have a few ideas for a staycation that’s fun, filling and truly Southern… my dear!
Watch movies and have a pile of shrimp and grits! Doc Bill’s recipe is below and it’s good!
Movie night with the family?
Forrest Gump has always been a special kind of guy. He and his friend Bubba have plans to take over the shrimping world and conjure up all types of recipes after leaving the Army. Let Forrest’s adventures capture a taste for the south and your heart.
Glory is a favorite for civil war buffs. It follows Captain Robert Gould Shaw as he commands an all-black regiment. The team climbs the ladder from manual labor around the base to actual war front – leading the assault on Fort Wagner.
Gone with the Wind features a sassy southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara, as the south enters the civil war. She and her crew leave their plantation during Sherman’s march to the sea. Scarlett manages to fall in love with someone just as stubborn as she is – but will their love make it through the war?
Eve’s Bayou is a tangled tale about a family in Louisiana in the 1960’s. The family’s father, Louis, has a soft spot for beautiful women; one of the sisters, Cecily, is entering puberty, which leads her down a road of trouble with her father. The other sister, Eve, begins having difficulty recalling her memories, and after a visit to her aunt, a gypsy, she discovers she has the gift of second sight. The family soon falls apart after misunderstandings, trouble and mixed visions cloud the truth.
Fried Green Tomatoes is a story about two friends, Idgie and Ruth, who come together after the devastating death of Idgie’s brother, who is also Ruth’s boyfriend. The two stick together through thick and thin in Whistle Stop, Alabama, including domestic violence, murder and the best bar-b-que in Alabama.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil centers on the mysterious murder of Jim Williams, an eccentric local celebrity. After the reporter, John Kelso, takes an interest in the man, Jim’s lover, Billy, mysteriously ends up dead. While covering the trial, Kelso meets what seems to be every infamous person in Savannah.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a touching tale of two children, Scout and Jem, raised by their lawyer father, Atticus, in the Deep South during the Great Depression. With a local legend about a strange neighbor and racial struggles in the town, Scout soon learns who to trust, right and wrong and that things are never what they seem.
Driving Miss Daisy is a charming tale of an unlikely friendship. After she is deemed too old to drive by her son, he hires her a driver. At first, she is reluctant, but eventually they become close friends.
The Green Mile details the past of Paul Edgecomb, a Louisiana man who used to serve as a death row correction officer. He recalls a specific inmate, John, with an interesting power. The memory of John and his time on death row haunts Paul his entire life, as he forever wonders about his mysterious and supernatural inmate.
Terms of Endearment follows a Texan mother and daughter with a love/hate relationship who are both searching for love. The two have bumpy romantic relationships. When Emma is struck with cancer, her mother begins to pick up the pieces of her life that Emma’s husband had broken.
The Notebook is a touching love story about Noah and Allie. The couple falls in love, but are separated by Allie’s parents and their social difference. The two are separated, and after Noah seems to ignore Allie, she moves on and gets engaged to another man. After the two re-unite, Allie realizes her love for Noah is still alive, and she must chose between the fiancé her family favors and her true love.
Sweet Home Alabama follows Melanie Carmichael, a woman who has turned her childhood dreams into reality. Unfortunately, when her boyfriend proposes to her, she must face her husband back home, down south, who refuses to divorce her. She returns home to convince him to sign the papers, but things don’t go exactly as she planned.
Andersonville is the diary of a prisoner in the famous war prison, Camp Sumter, in the 1860’s, run by the Confederacy in Georgia. The inmates are Union soldiers, and they plot and scheme a way out of the prison. Will they be successful, or will they have to wait until the war is over?
Ken Burns Documentaries are interesting pieces that document varying topics, including the Civil War, Great Depression era Louisiana Governor Huey Long, and Prohibition. The documentaries are in a specific style, with interesting camera shots, pans and angles. He also uses archival footage and images. His documentaries have won several Emmy Awards and have also been nominated for Academy Awards.
Doc Bill’s Shrimp and Gravy
Serves six
- 2 to 2 ½ pounds of large fresh Georgia white shrimp with heads on
- 1 cup diced celery
- 1 cup finely chopped green onions
- 3 tbsp flour
- ½ stick of butter
- 1 tsp finely chopped garlic
- 2 ½ cup fresh rich shrimp stock
- Canola oil for frying
- Salt and pepper to taste
Clean and devein shrimp. Place the shrimp heads and shells along with one quart of light salter water in a medium size pot. Bring the shells to a boil and reduce the stock mixture until 2 ½ cups of rich shrimp stock is obtained. The shells are strained from the liquid.
In a 10” cast iron skillet melt the butte a medium heat. Do not burn the butter. Add to the pan 3 tbsp of flour and stir until the mixture turns light brown but is not burned. Add the chopped garlic, celery and onions to the mixture and reduce the heat. Quickly add the rich shrimp stock to the pan and stir constantly to prevent sticking. As the mixture simmers reduce the heat further and season with salt and pepper to taste.
In a separate pan heat 5 tbsp of canola oil and add the clean shrimp which should be coated lightly with flour. Lightly cook the shrimp in order to obtain a light pink brown color but not to completely cook the shrimp. Remove the partially cook shrimp from the pan and drain the excess oil from the shrimp using paper towels or a cake rake. Add the partially cook shrimp to the gravy mixture and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve over rice or grits.
From the cookbook: The Foods of Georgia’s Barrier Islands – A gourmet food guide of Native American, Geechee and European Influences on the Golden Isles.
To order a cookbook email us at: coolstuff@travelbagswithannita.com
