Bits and pieces about South Carolina

If anybody has been following our studying of the States you probably figured we had given up on it or something as I have been horrible about posting on it. We have still been diligently reading and eating our way through the states, I just have not gotten around to posting. So I am going to try to get up to date on that in the next day or so.





The last week in February we were studying about South Carolina. I didn't find a lot of recipes from there (At least not that had ingredients that were in our budget or sounded good to us.) Tobacco is their most profitable crop but we though it would be better not to try it out. :-)


We did eat Sausage Perlou, Fruit Salad with peaches in it and drank Sweet Tea (thought I have to admit I did cut down on the sugar in that recipe. I am not used to drinking syrup.).

The book on South Carolina from the "America the Beautiful" Series had a recipe for Shrimp Perlou but said you could substitute sausage or chicken or any other meat. It is basically meat, onion, tomatoes, rice and seasoning cooked together. It was pretty good. The book said that it is the main rice dish of South Carolina and the most famous. I also found another recipe called "Chicken Bog" that sounded pretty good and easy but it was similar to the Perlou so I didn't think I needed to make both in one week. The Chicken Bog is a lowcountry recipe. The term "low country" is used to describe the coastal area.

Other crops grown in South Carolina are soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and peaches. (South Carolina actually leads all other states in the production of peaches.) There are also cattle, dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey and ham that comes from South Carolina. We ate or wore the items that are in bold.

Some things we found interesting about South Carolina were:

• It was the 8th state to join the union on May 23, 1788
• South Carolina was the first state to leave the union in 1860.
• South Carolina was nearly destroyed by the civil war.
• Francis Marion (the "Swamp Fox" of the American Revolution) was from South Carolina
• Strom Thurmond the longest serving U.S. senator is from South Carolina.
• Charleston was a huge center for the arts and culture. It was there that many of the first theaters, museums, etc were in the US.
• Kevin Garnett (who played for the MN Timberwolves) is from S. Carolina.

Some things that we would love to go see are:

• The Cypress gardens near Charleston.
• The White-Water falls on the border between North and South Carolina.
• A peach farm.
• Beaufort, S. Carolina to attend the Gullah Cultural Festival.
• Charleston's historic district to see the 73 buildings that were built before the Revolutionary war and the 600 or so others that were built before the 1840's. We don't have buildings that old up around here and I would find that quite fascinating.

We did enjoy reading about this state. In many ways it sounds like it is a totally different world from MN and I would find it very fun to go visit it. If any of you are from there I would love to hear anything you have to say about your state.

Also this week we have been studying about New York and would love to hear about there and next week is North Carolina and we welcome any info about that state!