@rebel: it varies by area like anywhere else.
The southeast is notable for their preference for deep-frying or pany-frying, but that mainly started from the fact that it's a hot, humid climate that produced a lot of oil crops, and fried stuff was convenient to eat if you're working, fairly filling and palatable if not exactly nutritious, quickly prepared, and it kept its shape and texture and didn't go over that quickly in muggy heat...at least that's what I've read. Not everyone ate it daily, and still don't. The rest of our cooking is sort of a fusion of traditional creole cuisine using hot-climate veggies like black-eyed peas and sweet potatoes with British or French cooking. Louisiana cooking features rice prominently, since rice just loves it here. If you go south towards the coast, you'll start finding cafes and restaurants that serve rice along with breakfast as an optional side dish, just as some places serve potatoes or hash browns. Seafood is pretty major along the Gulf. Also, grits.
Here's the secret to grits--they're actually polenta, made with white or yellow hominy instead of untreated corn, which gives them a distinctive taste. The process of turning maize to hominy makes B-vitamins in corn much more available than they would be otherwise. You can eat them with butter, milk and sugar, or sausage, or cheese, or whatever.
As you might have surmised, I'm most familiar with the cuisine of the Southeast because hey, this is where I live. But, not to leave anyone out...
Go east toward the Atlantic, and you'll start finding seafood cookery in quantity. Traditional Northeast cooking closely resembles British cooking fused with a bit of Native American (think fish n' chips or clam chowder). Hawaiian and Pacific cooking once again use a lot of seafood, but they use it differently than the Northeast does, and they use a lot more seasonal produce. The Midwest is sort of a hodgepodge of many different things. In the northern Midwest, you have a German/Scandinavian influence to go along with the rest of it (you also get a bit of German in the regions of Arkansas and Texas). The Southwest has a strong Spanish influence, and Tex-Mex cuisine is its own animal.
Basically our cuisine is all over the map. Don't judge us by McDonald's--we're a little embarrassed about them too.
