Home of the Moonpie and RC Cola and don't forget the salted peanuts floating on the top.

My first taste of real Southern food came from one of the best cooks in the South, my granny. I'll never forget the wonderful dishes she cooked -- fried chicken with gravy without any lumps. Took me many a day to master the non lumpy gravy. Potato salad, chicken and dumplings, cornbread, biscuits and fried crispy fatback. Fresh green beans cooked and simmered using bacon grease, fried green tomatoes and fried okra always cooked just right. Not to mention the fried catfish which is always served with a batch of hushpuppies. Today they would consider this type of cooking a heart attack waiting to happen. With that said granny lived to be 90.

There is no one single type of cooking throughout the South. What is red beans and rice in Louisiana is more likely to be peas and rice, or "hoppin john" in South Carolina while in Florida you find black beans and rice. In Virginia and Maryland crabs are steamed and then seasoned while along the Gulf Coast they are boiled in highly seasoned water. In Appalachia you find the freshest vegetables and "red-eye gravy" with your country ham. In North Carolina verbal warfare has been known to break out over the use of tomatoes in barbecue sauces.

Home cooking has been the best of Southern food. Corn, greens, potato salad, pork and chicken are still Southern mainstays. At Christmas you find baked ham and turkey, sweet potatoes, rice, corn, cornbread dressing and ambrosia along with pecan pies, pumpkin pies anywhere in the South.

Creole and Cajun cooking developed in Southern Louisiana. Basically Creole cooking is city style and Cajun is rural. They both use many of the same locally grown ingredients. Creole refers to a native development from the French and Spanish colonial period. At one time anything grown locally was termed "creole", so you could buy creole eggs, creole cream cheese, creole beef, etc.

Today the area's best tomatoes are creoles. Both styles have been influenced by Indians, French, African Americans and Spanish. Both styles use fresh local food but the preparation is different. Creole cooking is more elegant.

Fish and rice and a sauce might be used but in Creole dishes the sauce would be more delicate and the ingredients served separately. In Cajun cooking it would be more likely to put all the ingredients in one pot and serve it as a one dish meal. Cajun cooking is known for its spiciness. If you're not born Cajun, taste first.

Recipes

This site is dedicated to a wonderful lady my granny who spent her entire life dedicated to her family. I have alot of her recipes, her moms recipes and her sisters recipes. Which are very precious to me and will share some of them here. She would like that.

Grannys other sister Sally, which we loved dearly but anytime we had a gathering my boys always asked who made what. Sally meant well she just wasnt the best of cooks...lol...