"southern states" news and stories

Few publicists instruct reporters to destroy their press releases. But in keeping with Food Lion's roll-out of what it is billing as its "first environmentally friendly grocery store," spokeswoman Christy Phillips-Brown issued materials printed on paper saturated with seeds.

"You tear it up, put it in soil and it grows," Phillips-Brown says.

Food Lion is counting on its green grocery in Columbia, S.C., to blossom, too. The store -- the first supermarket in the state built according to LEED Silver Certification standards -- is a major element in Food Lion's ongoing attempt to rehabilitate its image.

"Certainly we want to serve our customers," Philips-Brown says of the project. "But it's more about being a good corporate citizen."

A well-known Dallas restaurateur is pushing an underground eatery as an antidote to fundraising woes afflicting the Salvation Army, which this year has seen some stores officially shoo away its bell ringers.

Smoke owner Christopher Jeffers recently told the Dallas Morning News that he plans to open a guerilla restaurant in a former taqueria, offering two dinner seatings on Monday and Tuesday nights. All proceeds from the venture will go to three local charities, including the Salvation Army.

"We're trying to get all the chefs in the area to get on board with this," an enthusiastic Jeffers was quoted as saying.

He might first want to consult the agencies he's proposing to help: Dallas-Fort Worth Salvation Army spokesman Patrick Patey says he didn't learn of the project til he read about it in the paper.

"We haven't even met with them," Patey sighed. "Everything you do has a certain amount of logistics involved."

A pair of North Carolina entrepreneurs is making sure crab pots remain a common sight along the state's coastline – at least at Christmastime.

Don Acree and Mary Smith this year took over crab-pot maker Neal "Nicky" Harvey's burgeoning crab-pot Christmas-tree business, selling more than $150,000 worth of converted crab pots strung with lights. Acree says many buyers, who just like the modernist look of the green mesh trees, are unaware of the design's waterlogged origins.

But there's no mistaking a crab pot in Down East North Carolina, where the crabbing industry was once a leading source of jobs. As recently as 1998, the state's fishermen harvested 63 million blue crabs; last year, they caught barely half as many. Unable to fend off threats posed by pollution, rising fuel costs and the global market, dozens of crab houses shut down over the past decade. "The state's blue crab industry is in serious trouble, if it isn't dead already," Harvey's hometown paper, the Carteret County News-Times, reported in 2008.

Harvey, who once sold 3000 crab pots a season from his single-wide trailer, was lucky if he could unload 300 pots a year. So the craftsman decided to reconfigure his sheets of wire into four-foot tall Christmas trees. He soon gave up on his line of pots.

A steak delivery chain that's closed half its outlets is pinning its turnaround hopes on a state that seems perpetually starved for beef.

"If you can't make a steak delivery system work in Texas, then something's very wrong," concedes Mark Kime, who opened the state's first Steak-Out in Fort Worth late last month.

The Steak-Out concept -- summarized on the company's Web site as "from our grill to your door" -- was created in 1986 in Alabama by David Martin, who helped grow the chain to 70 stores. There are now a mere 30 outlets spread across a dozen Southern and Midwestern states.

According to a recent story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the chain shut down 10 stores over the last 18 months for under-performing and failing to comply with company standards. Chief Operating Officer Peter Petrosian told the paper that Steak-Out plans to revitalize its operations by recruiting more franchisees like Kime, who's spent 17 years in the restaurant business.

Photo: arnold | inuyaki, Flickr.

For Southern Jewish cooks, pork is the least of their problems.

Kosher-keeping eaters can easily steer clear of barbecue, bacon and fatback, even in the nation's most southernmost states. But what's to be done about buttermilk-fried chicken, a clear violation of the prohibition on mixing milk and meat, or a jambalaya featuring forbidden shellfish?

Memphis' Margolin Hebrew Academy lays out some answers in its new cookbook, Simply Southern, With a Dash of Kosher Soul, a recipe collection its editors are calling the first comprehensive how-to guide to kosher Southern cuisine.

"There's nothing on the market like it," co-editor Dena Wruble says of the book, which debuts this week.

According to Wruble, the families who've sent their children to the school since 1949 are accustomed to cooking at home. "Here in Memphis, we do not have kosher restaurants, so we entertain a lot," she explains.

Wruble and co-editor Tracy Rapp collected more than 500 recipes for favorite dishes from community members, honing in on those preparations with distinctly Southern elements. "There's not a lot of kugel in the book," Wruble says. But noodles do show up in a recipe for macaroni and cheese.