I like to joke about the way I talk.  I tend to describe it  as like Ray Romano and Fran Drescher had a love child.  It’s a unique blend of Midwestern nasal twang combined with a Texas accent on occasion.

In other words, I sound just like my mother.  We both were raised and learned to speak in Michigan, but both of us ended up taking on a bit of a Southern drawl.  You can’t help it, I guess.  I spent 15 years in the Lone Star State.  If you don’t modify your speech patterns, you get some questions that are not exactly “friendly.”

“Where you from?”  “You ain’t from around here, are you?” “Are you a Yankee, or a DAMN Yankee?”  A damn Yankee never goes home.  I did.  My mother hasn’t.

I have been back in Michigan for 13 years, almost the amount of time I spent in the South.  It doesn’t matter.  When my sister or mother come to visit, the “y’all’s” start popping out my mouth like you wouldn’t believe.

Though I did hear my mom say “soda water” and I just about had a fit at the memory.  We call it “pop” here.  Down South, you might hear “soda water”, but you can also hear “sody” or “Coke”.  But do not assume they want a Coca Cola.  They might explain which kind of “Coke” they wanted afterward.

I love Michigan.  It feels like home to me.  But some part of me is continually drawn to things you can only get way down further in our great nation.

Good Tex Mex.  Barbecue.  I watch the Food Network or Travel Channel and find myself salivating.  Only recently have I been able to find brisket here that wasn’t corned within an inch of its edibility.  Now that I own a smoker (thanks, Ma!) I plan on doing some up right.  My mom even brought me a few cans of my favorite beans you can’t get around here.  She brought me some Rotel too, but I assured her that we were civilized enough to have that delicacy now.

My mom has her own wish list when she visits.  Pickled bologna.  Faygo’s Rock N Rye.  Koegel’s hot dogs.  Pickles (which are cucumbers, but we call ‘em pickles even if they never touched vinegar).  Pizza bread, or pizza loaf as they call it, which is basically a calzone with sauce inside, and pepperoni to die for).  Blue moon ice cream,  blue and vaguely fruity.  To eat an apple off the tree like she did at her Grandma’s house.  To eat peas straight from the garden.

Every time I shovel snow I find myself wondering how the heck I ended up back here.  I remember being a child and using our whole snowfall in the front yard to make a snowman.  Shivering in 50 degree weather that I now find “pleasant.”

No, some things never leave you.  I make my black eyed peas for New Year’s Eve (with bacon) for good luck.  Paula Deen rocks my world with her recipes for things like sausage gravy and buttermilk biscuits (my husband, who lived in Louisiana, appreciates this).  I plant cilantro and jalapenos in my garden for salsa.  I am always pleased to find they grow so well here!

Even when I hit Tony’s Taco Stand a bit north of here, I asked for it “hot” and Tony himself asked me if I had water in the car.  In Spanish.  I assured him I did.  My Texan accented Spanish did not seem to comfort him that much!

We all have things we “want” when we go back.  I have to have some Popeye’s, some Whataburger, some Shiner Bock, some brisket, something smoked.  Tex Mex cuisine and blistering heat, the kind that makes you afraid to get into your car in July.  Schmaltz’s sandwich shop in Waco if I can, Schlotsky’s if I can’t.

So after a week with my mom, and a few days with my uncle and cousin from Tennessee, I probably sound like wild dogs just chased me into the hinterland against my Southern will.

Can’t be helped.

My hubby seems to be enjoying it.  “If you keep talking like that, I’m gonna…”  I didn’t ask what, because I was pretty sure the answer wasn’t “caulk that bathroom so smooth all you have to do is run a cloth against it.”

No, I know what he wants.  And I already bought the buttermilk.

When a man wants his Southern style biscuits with your homemade  strawberry jam, what else can you do?  That’s how foodies talk dirty, you know.

He just likes me to drawl it out for him.