A baked rice dressing, made with freshly shucked Gulf oysters, with sautéed onion, green onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, rice and seasonings, and always a holiday favorite here in the Deep South.

Oyster Rice Dressing

Rice stands in for bread and cornbread in this common dish here in the Deep South and is what we refer to as a rice dressing.

A mix of meats or seafood, or sometimes, as with this oyster rice dressing, a blend of them, along with onion, green onion, bell pepper and celery, rice and seasonings, it's very often offered as a side dish, though it is also used as a stuffing at times.

One thing is for sure. It's a favorite here in the Deep South year-round, and super popular for  Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.

Southern fried cabbage is a very simple cabbage dish prepared often as here, with a bit of butter, bacon and onion. I like to add cider vinegar and dried pepper flakes for a little extra flavor punch.

Southern-Style Fried Cabbage

We southerners know this dish as "fried" cabbage, even though it's actually more of a mixture of skillet sautéing, braising and pan frying, alternating between being fried and cooked low and simmered in its own juices. 

I imagine a lot of folks raised outside of The South associate the words "southern" and "fried" to always mean something that is deep fried in a huge vat of boiling oil, like our fabulous fried chicken, for instance. Surely these people must think we crazy southerners deep fry some odd things - like cabbage and fried corn and fried apples, to name a few.