Stretchin' The Truth

One of the first “adult” words my mom taught me was “prevaricate.” Look it up, honey, she said. I did. It means stretching the truth. Telling a tall-tale or whopper. In short, lying, or as we say in the “You Lie Like a Dog.”

I have to admit, despite my strong belief in being straight and upright, there is something simply wondrous about the southern capacity to spin a yarn, to take something seemingly banal and making something epic of it.

A lot of southern cooking is embedded in this same ethos: You take a fairly expensive food item and you stretch it out with whatever you have around to make it go further, feed more mouths. Okra Gumbo is like that. So too Sloppy Joe’s. Any type of patty — fishcakes, crabcakes, hell yam fritters, you name it — will typically have fillers in it to stretch that meal out, as will salads like the tunafish salad pictured here.

Over time, of course, these “stretcher” dishes have come into their own right as having a distinct and special place in southern cuisine. Our Brunswick Stew, for example, or Shrimp Salad are prototypical of specialty items on our soul food menu — and in surprisingly hot demand here in Tel Aviv.

Which goes to show you: Stretchin’ the Truth has its own Gospel adherents.