Flyover Food
 

That term just came to mind with 'flyover' recently being prevalently if not promiscuously used to describe the middle of the country between the coasts.

Except for growing up in the desert southwest I have spent most of my time on either coast. During my travels I have enjoyed sometimes only locally available regional specialties which I truly enjoyed.

What I most remember is huckleberry jam in Montana from locally grown wild huckleberries, American Bison steaks and burgers in South Dakota, wild rice soup in Minnesota, cheddar cheese in Wisconsin, collard greens, black eyed peas, okra and grits in the south, locally grown yellow watermelon in Amarillo, Texas, Coors Beer in Colorado in the early 1960s before it was widely distributed, locally caught catfish in Missouri. These were all regional foods at the time I enjoyed them. That yellow watermelon did just not ship well I was told so it was not commercially grown.

Anybody have any fond memories of discovering some tasty flyover food?

Fresh cheese curds at the local cheese factories in Wisconsin. They are best fresh IMHO...just not the same if purchased in the grocery store. Also the fresh picked produce from the midwest tastes a bit differently than here. It's hard to explain but think the black soil up there along with the "fresh" fertilizers used contribute. There are CSA's there (I'm not sure if they have them in FL or our area at least) to get fresh produce (farm to table quality).

Yes! I try to stop at roadside stands for fresh fruit and vegetables during harvest times. Most times the flavor and textures of the fruit and vegetables is almost unbelievable compared to store-bought foods.

There are differences in how a food tastes depending on where it was grown. The soil, climate, altitude, length of growing season and so on do make a difference.

Its not flyover food but I love freshly picked and roasted Silver Queen corn from the Maryland Eastern Shore.

Corn on the cob from Ohio. OMG. Our Pittsburgh family spent summers at a cottage at Madison On the Lake, Ohio, on Lake Erie. We would go to the farm stand, ask for a dozen corn, and they would go out to the field beside the stand and pick it. ('50s and early '60s) I have never had better corn since.

Later, at Deep Creek Lake, MD, there was a woman who baked "sticky buns." They were the best cinnamon buns ever. You had to order them, then go the next morning to pick them up warm from the oven. They were almost the size of a lunch plate. We always ordered one extra for whoever got up early to pick them up to wolf down on the way home. Because you couldn't drive with that scintillating aroma in the car without diving into one.

At Lake Michigan, lake perch and walleye (especially planked walleye) were amazing. Fresh, fresh, fresh.

Oh boy! Now I remember first eating fresh caught walleye! It was fantastic! Thanks for the reminder.

We used to sail in the North Channel, between Canada and the US. Mostly you would anchor overnight or stop at a small marina. A lot of the islands up there were Native American land, and technically you weren't supposed to go ashore without permission. But the kids who lived there would pick wild blueberries and sell them to us tourists. Best ever blueberries.

When I was a kid at our summer place at Lake Erie, we had a meadow katty-cornered to our property. Wild strawberries grew there. They were tiny, and we would spend hours with our mother picking them. She made strawberry jam out of a lot of them, but what I remember most is eating them out of hand. The only strawberry that's ever compared to them was one I found during a walk on a country road in Elk Rapids, Michigan. There it was, one tiny strawberry in a plant on the side of the road. Exactly like the ones we picked as kids.

I wish I could say I picked that strawberry and took it home to my friend's cottage to wash and then eat. But no. I was so excited I stupidly popped that sucker right into my mouth. And it was as good a wild strawberry as I remembered from my childhood. Who knows what was on that strawberry. Some dog, maybe... Well whatever, I didn't get sick, I'm still here, and I have those two memories.

You've really started me down memory lane, manaboutown. Isaly's ice cream in Pittsburgh. They had a special kind of ice cream scoop that was shaped like a long curved triangle. Plunged down into one side of the ice cream bin, then the other, and out came a cone shape of ice cream about 5 or 6 inches tall. The flavors were amazing. Mint chocolate chip, coffee, chocolate--geeze those were good. One time in the fourth grade I bought a big cone of something, walked out of the store, and the ice cream fell out of the cone before I could even take a lick. As an elementary school kid I knew nothing about customer service, but I went back into the store crying. (It was most of my allowance; it was our neighborhood store.) They gave me a new cone. I was astounded.

When I was a kid...our hometown had dairies that the farmers took their milk to. One of them had a "bar" where you could buy ice cream goodies (think sort of like Kilwins)...cones, sundaes etc. Soooo good! Not sure what happened with them...maybe big corporations took over.
Midwestern sweet corn has it ALL over the corn grown here...though it doesn't come in til late July. The season, of course, is short. Think Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin---my only midwestern states of experience so not acquainted with the other state's produce. The "bread basket" of the world--we were taught in school. Kansas, Nebraska probably fit into that paradymn as well.

Re: Strawberries
 

Frankly true of most if not all fruits and vegetables. We insist on large, pretty fruits. The farmer, insists on high yield resistance to insects and plant diseases. Thus, we remember what used to be.

If, you can find them-mail order-buy GUARDIAN strawberry plants. The fruits are, well not pretty so they are no longer grown commercially.

If, you want really good blueberries. I've never seen them sold by variety. Perhaps, at one of the you pick places. In MY OPINION, the best blueberries that will grow in our climate is MISTY. The plants are pretty. I do not but you could use them as a hedge. You get fruit-if you can beat the birds to it and it turns red in the fall.

Asparagus-like corn it immediately starts to deteriorate on picking. I don't grow them here but you reminded me of in our previous home picking Asparagus outside our kitchen window.

My earliest and one of my fondest of memories of a mostly local food is related to the egg sac or roe of the shad fish. My grandparents lived in Higganum, CT during WWII. Come spring, the shad season, there was a local fisherman by the name of Bill Maynard that used to catch, clean and sell shad and shad roe in the area. He smoked a pipe and as luck would have it, my grandfather was able to get his hands on Bill’s favorite brand of tobacco when it was generally scarce. Bill never forgot.

As a kid, I vaguely remember going to Maynard’s for shad and shad roe. According to my grandparents, Bill was the only one in the world that knew how to bone a shad properly. I believe it. In my mother’s latter years, I used to drive her from Long Island, NY up to a shop near the Connecticut River to buy shad and shad roe. It had to be from the Connecticut River.

I haven’t had any shad or shad roe in a number of years. Spring is here. Maybe I should go to Connecticut.

New Jersey is known for their produce and I guess that's why they call it the Garden State.

There is nothing like Jersey corn, their tomatoes and peaches and Jenny Lind Cantaloupes which I have not had in many, many years.

I'm salivating!

On your way up there,could you take a detour through Beaufort, SC, and get me some scallops off the boat?

I keep telling myself that one summer I'll go over to Crystal River and hire a guide and snorkel around to gather some bay scallops.

One can do that? It sounds like fun.

Ohio sweet corn fresh from the field and homegrown tomatoes picked ripe, never refrigerated!. Yum!. Oh yes, and BBQ from the little shacks that dot the South!