The Lady Finger

We'll start this post with a Dad joke: where does the Lowcountry's favorite vegetable come from? Okra-homa! (Pause for the groan...) And that's not the worst of the jokes about the slender green vegetable, sometimes called the Lady Finger, that's been a staple of Southern cooking for generations. Steamed, boiled, grilled, pickled, sautéed or fried, okra is the key ingredient in gumbos and salads, or as a side dish. It's high in vitamins C, K, A and B6, and contributes no fat to your diet while offering 2 grams of protein and only about 30 calories per cup.

Okra on the vine

But okra's most famous attribute, the one that gives pause to newcomers to the vegetable, is the slimy goo the pods exude when cooked. (The amount of goo can be reduced by cooking with an acidic vegetable, like tomato.) But even the mucilage has its benefits, used as part of wastewater treatment (it reduces cloudiness) and under study as a biodegradable packaging material and as a biofuel. The pod's seeds can be roasted and ground for use as a coffee substitute (a popular use during the Civil War, when coffee beans were hard to come by), or pressed for their oil, which is high in unsaturated fats.

And okra carries a bit of mystery, too, because no one seems to know for certain where it was first cultivated. Egypt is the current favored origin, first described there in the 13th-century, and from where it spread around the Mediterranean and east toward India and southeast Asia. The first use of the word in English appeared in 1679 in colonial Virginia, derived from the vocabulary of enslaved worker fromWest Africa. But the plant (it's related to cotton and cocoa plants) was under cultivation in Asia long before and remains a staple of Asian cooking.

While the okra at our local farm stands is grown here, most of the commercial okra crop these days comes from Florida and, yes, from "Okra-homa". To enjoy this quintessential Southern food, check out these recipes from Southern Living.

Catfishin'

DuBose Heyward

Downtown's Spoleto Festival begins next week, an annual celebration of the performing arts that continues Charleston's place in the national arts. An early landmark of the city's arts prominence rose nearly a century ago with ""Porgy and Bess" and its ties to one of Charleston's leading artistic couples of the early 20th century, Dorothy and DuBose Heyward. The couple were A-list names in their day, well before writing the libretto for George Gershwin's adaptation of the Heywards' novel and play "Porgy."

DuBose Heyward came from an old Charleston family that traced its ancestry in the city to well before the American Revolution. Unusual for an aristocrat at the pinnacle of Charleston's elite white society of the time, Heyward pursued a lifelong interest in African-American Gullah culture, and incorporated Gullah dialect and traditions into his 1925 novel of life in Charleston's black slums, "Porgy". It was drawn from a newspaper article about Samuel Smalls, a paraplegic black man who made his way around Cabbage Row (part of present-day Church Street) in a cart drawn by a goat.

"Catfish Row", c. 1930 (courtesy College of Charleston)

Dorothy - a playwright and novelist whom Heyward had met during a writing workshop in New Hampshire and married in 1923 - adapted the novel into a play of the same name, which opened on Broadway in 1927 featuring at the Heywards' insistence an all-black cast, highly unusual at a time when most black stage characters were still being played by white actors in blackface.

George and Ira Gershwin with DuBose Heyward (center)

The play formed the libretto for the Gershwin jazz and blues-inflected opera cast with classically-trained black singers, which met with much controversy when it premiered in Boston in 1935 but has since become one of the most widely-produced American works in the operatic canon.

Made For The Marsh

Silky, our own Carolina Marsh Tacky

Horses have been present on Seabrook Island for generations, none more highly prized than the Carolina Marsh Tacky, now the official Heritage Horse of South Carolina and deeply entwined with Lowcountry history. We're fortunate to have two members of this rare breed as part of the herd at the Equestrian Center, like the mare Silky, a favorite mount for beach and trail rides on the island.

The ancestors of today's Marsh Tackies first arrived on the Carolina coast with Spanish conquistadors in the 17th century. Left behind when Spanish colonizing efforts failed to gain a foothold against competition from British and French rivals , the feral herd adapted to the rigors of the Lowcountry climate to evolve into today's Marsh Tackies, with thick manes, tails and skin for protection against insects, snake bites and dense underbrush. More importantly, the breed developed extraordinarily strong hooves, so strong that today's Tackies don't require shoes, an especially important advantage when striding through pluff mud. Tackies have even developed a unique behavior to free themselves if they become stuck in the mud: where most other horses would react frantically and work themselves deeper, Tackies will calmly lay on their sides and edge themselves out of trouble.

Francis Marion and his trusted Marsh Tacky

This unique breed was favored in Revolutionary War times by Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox", who was able to negotiate such treacherous terrain thanks to these physical traits and the breed's much-prized calm, steady temperament and comfortable gait. Confederate troops were often able to out-maneuver mounted Union forces for the same reason during the Civil War.

Two "sand pounders" on patrol during WWII

Even into modern times, the Marsh Tacky was used to patrol the coastline for German submarines during World War Two as part of mounted "Sand Pounder" volunteer patrols.

Bloodlines are now carefully registered and monitored by the Carolina Marsh Tacky Association, thanks to a DNA registry developed by the Livestock Conservancy. Look for Silky, with her dark mane and buckskin-like coat, the next time you drive by the Equestrian Center.