Eating our way across the South - road snacks

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Dixon's/Central Plain Stripped Cracklins

It was a road-trip after all, so we also ate plenty of road snacks. A few snacks of note:

Erica taught me to eat shelled* sunflowers the way her father had taught her. I'd never done the whole thing with sticking a bunch in your mouth at once and then moving the shells and seeds into different cheeks like a hamster. I'm not sure I've really mastered it yet.

Coming out of Starkville, I bought a little taste of home -- "The Original 1893 Chicago State Street Caramel Corn". Of course, it turned out to have been made in South Carolina. Tasty, none-the-less.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love pork fat. I gross out Erica all the time by eating the nice fatty strip of my pork chops. Pork cracklins are pretty weird, though. They're super-hard at first, but as they re-hydrate in your mouth they turn into -- fat. Weird.

I was having such a mixed coffee-experience on this trip that when noticed that a rest stop vending machine claimed it could provide me with an "espresso"** for 70 cents, my curiosity gland overrode my common sense and I got one. It was terrible, of course.

* Or unshelled? Are we refering to the process or the state? Anyway, they had shells on.
** Or chicken soup. Out if the same tube?