As a native of the South, I understand all too well that some of the best cuisine to be found anywhere hails from my part of the country, an assertion which is backed up the fact that some of the best cooks to be found live below the Mason-Dixon line.

I say cooks, not chefs, because in the South a cook is someone who prepares great food and a chef is someone who is looked at with a slight air of suspicion because they had to be sent away to school to learn what the rest of us learned standing alongside our parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents in the kitchen.

Except for me of course. I am neither a cook nor a chef, although I enjoy food which is, I suppose, the reason that Cousin Hilary asked me to be a guest writer on her blog while she was indisposed…