Sheetz is great, but QuikTrip will always be my one and only.

I am getting annoyed. You guys need to visit Tucson and eat El Rio or LeCave's donuts, and then we all make a trip to eegee's. ThetaPrincess and Blondie93 have tasted eegees - and I know AZ-Alpha Xi will have my back on this.

waffle fries? blechh. Need to go to Pat's Chili Dogs and get their chili fries. And then we head to El Guero Canelo for Sonoran Hot Dogs.

It's soda. Or Coke. No RC (gag) and Pepsi - please, no, just no. Waiting for someone to start talking about Dr. Pepper (an abomination). Not in love with QuikTrip - but their gas prices are good ($3.13 this morning).

Carry on with the Northern girl/Southern education. I'm taking notes.

Yes!

Love!

As long as we're talking about donuts, there's a donut place right across the street from the admissions building at W&L. It's called Pure Eats. One of the admissions officers told us they had to change their weekly team meetings from Monday mornings to Tuesday mornings because Pure Eats decided to close every Monday, and they always have those donuts at the admissions meetings.

So, we figured we had to try them. They're not that great, but they do have some unusual cake donut flavors. Generallygreek is looking forward to having better donuts back home.

However, I will vouch for the burgers (locally sourced beef) and milkshakes at Pure Eats.

Dr Pepper addiction is a sure sign you're from Texas. We used to bring it to my cousins in Michigan (that would be the part of Michigan where you need two hands to show your hometown.)
I still love the real cane sugar Dr Pepper or Mexican Coke.

The cane sugar ones DO taste better. High fructose corn syrup is an abomination.

Blueberry Cake donuts from Buckeye Donuts = Heaven. Most of my family waxes poetic about their strawberry, but the blueberry ones are wonderful! Middle son will be moving to an apartment just a block or so from Buckeye Donuts for his last year so I'm sure I can get him to pick up some before he does his occasional laundry/food visits again. Yum.

That reads better. Very much pronounced more like your spelling.

I was trying to figure out how to spell it phonically but wasn't thinking it out. What I am use to hearing is kind of a short “c" sound that serves as a kind of “bridge” between the “co” and the “ola”. Almost like "Co'c'ola" - but I'm not sure that would be correct way to write it out phonically either.

Frankly, unless it was in literature where the author was trying to invoke the local dialect, I am not sure I have ever seen “coca-cola” spelled any other way then the correct (full) way.

Now I'm parched for a cherry co’cola.

Everyone at my school in St. Louis is obsessed with John Donuts. It's only open at night and it's on everyone's bucket list as a place to go to before you graduate. They're all made in-house and they're sooo good. But their apple fritters are the best; people sell them for fundraisers and they sell out almost immediately. I could eat them for days and be happy, and would definitely take them over Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme.

Speaking of TX and drinks... I moved here and became a beer drinker. Shiner, Lone Star ("The National Beer of Texas"... that always cracks me up), St. Arnold's, Karbach, No Label, etc.

I love my Sam Adams, but for the most part, I drink Texas beers now :)

I can't tell the difference. Wish I could, but I can't.
But back when Coke became "New Coke," I chanced upon an "old" Coke at a gas station, and there was a HUGE difference.

Ugh. Gross. New coke.

While we're talking about beverages with regional appeal, let's not forget Sundrop and Cheerwine.

A Sundrop would taste good right now.

There's a store near me that sells Sundrop, Cheerwine, and other rare carbonated beverages.

I would love to visit Tucson, because my little brother is going to Arizona in the fall and I really want to see the campus! Maybe I can beg my parents to let me go to freshman orientation with him.

I actually envy y'all (yes, I said y'all because it is is a fantastic word and I can pronounce it properly) for having all this donut variety! There is a local coffee place near the high school in town that has delicious pastries and bagels but not donuts. Part of the disadvantage to the DD brand monopoly is that there is no choice in donuts. First world problems, I know.

The No Label Brewery is a stone's throw away from my home.

http://nolabelbrew.com/

Alas, I don't like beer!

I woke up this morning with a hankering for pimento cheese and hummingbird cake (not necessarily together).

I blame this thread.

And neither hankering has been met yet. :(

Come to Houston, MC!

Pimento cheese - Zoe's Kitchen
Hummingbird cake - Empire Bakery

For MysticCat:
 

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...PVdQ9viIhIWBaw



https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...CqPVysrMgI3T9w


(I wasn't sure how you wanted the pimento cheese!)

Thumbs up for cane or beet sugar coke. For those of you who don't know the difference, coke with sugar kinds of burns while it goes down your throat. Ahhhhhh. HF corn syrup coke doesn't, and has a slightly mellower, syrupyer (duh) taste.

I also prefer cans to plastic bottles and fountain. (I so rarely get glass bottles anymore that I can't really include them.) Fizz factor is important, by golly. My husband just looks at me and squints on this. Knows better than to roll his eyes, ha. Although foaminess/head/whatever is important to beer drinkers, so why not to sodas/pops?

if only Houston were a little closer.

Actually, I can make my own of both if I had the time. But I have a number of sources for good pimento cheese, and the weekend ins't over yet.

Is there a bad way to have pimento cheese?

How about pimento cheese fritters?

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5100/...b60b371278.jpg

Actually, maybe macaroni and cheese with pimento cheese is a possibility tonight. Hmmmm.

And that cake is beautiful -- maybe too pretty to cut! But where are the nuts? I've got to have nuts on hummingbird cake.

Now I have 2 new places I need to go to :)

Yes! Cans are the best. I completely understand.

I also prefer cans to plastic, but I like fountains (assuming they're blended right and working properly) better than cans.

FWIW, the formula for Coke, and I'm assuming for most other soft drinks, is different for cans and personal-sized bottles compared to the formula for fountains and larger bottles, like the 2-liter ones. That's because they assume that people will drink directly from cans and small bottles, but that they'll use ice for fountains and larger bottles. So the Coke from fountains and larger bottles is slightly stronger to allow for dilution from the ice.

Yes, but the can has to be chilled first, and it must be in a glass with ice. It just doesn't taste as good if you pour a room temperature Coke over ice, no matter how much ice you add. (Which is why I always get juice on an airplane instead of Coke, because they don't chill the cans.)

No way. Just the can. But I agree that it must be cold.

If you can get Mexican Coke - it is still made with cane sugar and comes in a glass bottle. Chilled and out of a washed bottle is still the best!
If you don't have a bodega or taqueria near by some grocery stores hide it in the ethnic foods aisle.

You can actually taste the difference between the cane sugar Mexican Coke which has a higher sucrose content. Coke bottled in Dallas which has more beet sugar and some fructose but a higher sucrose content, and Coke bottled in Atlanta which has a higher fructose content.

Anybody ever try the Dr. Pepper bottled in Dublin, TX? It was made with cane sugar, and it was delicious. The local bottler ws forced to stop making it due to a trademark dispute with Dr. Pepper corporate, but you can still find it (for now) on eBay and Amazon.

The dispute was with the local bottler. It is no longer from Dublin, but you can still get cane sugar Dr. Pepper in Texas.
I have it imported.... :o

But, back to the original post, I hope that your daughter did enjoy her first year in the South and found a warm welcome there

Edited -- Oops!, I had decided not to add that quote from Robert E. Lee (and certainly not multiple times). Not sure what happened to make it post like that. Please ignore.

My husband is obsessed with QuikTrip (so much so that he calls them "QT"), and constantly mourns the fact that they aren't in our area. Having been in one, I can say I understand!

Fritters! Yum!

MC, would I serve you hummingbird cake with pecans? I think not!

I didn't know this - although my parents would give us the Coke syrup when we were sick. Now that I think about it, maybe I had it wrong...?

I have to amend #7 from the original list. From my perspective, you CAN have too many sundresses. Delta charged Generallygreek $150 for her excessively overweight suitcase and garment bag on yesterday's flight home!

(That's on top of her storing most of her belongings in a storage locker she's sharing with several pledge sisters, and we brought home her cold weather clothes when we visited over Easter.)

Generallygreek needs to become friends with Fed Ex or UPS - shipping should be cheaper!

Isn't all tea sweet, y'all?

Discuss. :)

My son has a carton of it in the glass bottles.

If we're talking doughnuts, it's got to be either Long's Donuts in Indianapolis, IN or the newly opened GBD (Golden Brown Delicious) here in Washington, DC. GBD has some crazy doughnut flavors/dishes, including the Luther--maple sugar glazed with bacon! They do friend chicken and doughnuts.

In terms of the other things: I am un-learning to say 'pop' instead of 'soda' here on the East Coast and I miss my McAllisters. None around here :(

Ha!
Sweet tea is NOT just tea with sugar. Sometimes the unknowing will suggest that you "just put sugar in your tea". That is not sweet tea.

You have to sweeten the tea while it is HOT in order to have the sugar melt and disperse evenly. If you just stir sugar into cold tea you do not have a consistent sweetness, and you end up with white gunk in the bottom of the glass. Yuck. That is tacky.

We don't like tacky in the South. :D

"Sweet tea" is redundant. "Unsweet tea" is an abomination and makes the angels cry.

LOL.

We always made tea with simple syrup. Steep the tea in the simple syrup (2 cups water, 2 cups sugar) while it's hot, and then dilute with the necessary amount of water to get a gallon of tea.

The angels will rejoice.