Spiritof27 Loc: Lincoln, CA

Did you say morels? Most people don't know what you're talking about. Every spring as soon as the snow melted we'd go hunting morels in Indiana where I grew up. I granddad claimed he could smell where they were at. No reason to doubt him, we always got some. Nothing else in the world tastes like them. Or like fried okra. Here's my recipe: take a pound of bacon and fry up as crisp as you like, dredge the sliced okra in some flour and cornmeal then fry it in the bacon grease, pour off what ever grease wasn't absorbed by the okra, crumble up the bacon and add it back to the okra. Oh my!

blaylock Loc: Okla/Mexico

oh my is right, we live in Mexico during winter & always try to get back to Okla by1 April...usually morels come out after 1st warm rain for about 2-3 weeks...
and okra..thats a staple in Okla & most of the south...easy to grow and easier to eat...

blaylock Loc: Okla/Mexico

well, us old folks get to fish free in Okla...lifetime hunt/fish license free after 65..have pond on our farm & no license required.....soooo

saw1 Loc: nor cal Windsor

Wooo weee, y'all sure makin me hungry.

Jeffrey1 Loc: Brentwood Ca.

I said “I heard it was slimy”
I never have tried it!
😆

Spiritof27 Loc: Lincoln, CA

Well Jeffrey1 you heard correctly. If you boil it, it is slimy. Still tastes good. A little butter and some salt and pepper. Good eats far as I'm concerned.

Jeffrey1 Loc: Brentwood Ca.

If I see it in the store I’ll for sure try Okra with the flour cornmeal Bacon recipe!
I don’t think I’ve ever even seen it at Safeway!
I live in ca.
Does it come from out of state?
I’ll have to investigate Okra!

Jeffrey1 Loc: Brentwood Ca.

Okay!
They say it’s good for men to eat it every day!
Men’s Sexual health benefits!
It’s a natural boner medicine!
Gotta stay fit!

Spiritof27 Loc: Lincoln, CA

If you've got a Whole Foods or Nugget market you'll be more likely to find it there. And since they don't sell much of it, it's gonna be pricey. Stay away from any pods that look or feel like they might be fibery, if that makes any sense, that's like trying to eat a luffa, one of those Scandinavian scrub brushes.

blaylock Loc: Okla/Mexico

only slick when boiled...still damn good with black-eye peas boiled...& gumbo

blaylock Loc: Okla/Mexico

generally smaller pods better.

hemihappy Loc: pawleys island s.c.

Can only happen maybe in Alaska nice dream though. I bet we have all thought about it at one time or another.

Foodfisher Loc: SO. Cal coast

Churches chicken might still serve it.

Robert J Samples Loc: Round Rock, Texas

Well, possibly one reason it is scarce in CA is that during the dustbowl days, a lot of folks from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, and perhaps a few other states, loaded up their kids and went to CA. In doing so the state of CA tried to block all these poor farm folks, so after getting there, these "Okies" did everything they could to assimilate, including hiding that they were from the South, which may have also included not ever mentioning some of the truly southern dishes, like Okra. You can fry it, put in Gumbo, or boil it. My mother would regularly boil a pot of okra, and what was not eaten at that meal, she would use some flour and make into pancakes! Even today you will find a lot of folks from CA who are sensitive about where they came from if it was the South.

My favorite okra story: My brother-in-law was raised on his family's farm just outside of Decatur, TX. He related the story about another farm family who besides being farmers, were also nascent entrepreneaurs. They regularly planted okra in their garden and loved having it with their meals. Since they knew other folks like okra, they decided to go into bigger production of this crop and sell it in local stores and neighbors.

So, they went about planting (I'm not sure) about 10 acres. It could have been more but as you will see later, this will do for the story. They got a good crop, in fact a great crop! It was actually much more than they could possibly handle. You see, okra pods have to be harvested almost every day due their fast growth rate. It would have taken maybe 20 or more workers to regularly harvest 10 acres of okra every day. Now okra plants and the pods are not like picking tomatoes, the okra and pods have small, but serious stickers and a worker must wear gloves for protection. Now if the pods aren't harvested every day, they get too big and tough and are no longer fit for anything, except to go to seed.

Now this where the fun starts. Since the crop produced so much okra that this family could not keep up in harvesting, a lot of the pods grew to enormous size, dried up, and split open, scattering okra seeds all over the ground. This was a Sunday picnic for the local birds, who loved the benevolence of this farm family. In fact the local birds consumed so much of this bonanza of seeds, they could not digest all and thus all over the Wise County, not just Decatur, they planted okra seeds! So much so, that the family became infamous for their turning the entire county into a wild, volunteer okra patch. Flower beds, gardens, yards, the court house lawn, every where for miles there came up wild okra plants! So much so, the family's name, which I will not mention, became a hiss and byword in Wise County! You have to be careful what you wish for. Just saying....RJS