I am down in Douglas.
. . . and also an authority on spelling. Ahem. It’s “cuisine.” Sorry, I’m a schoolteacher. As a Southerner, I apologize for my effrontery. As for cooking, well, I did live up north for a few years and almost died of food poisoning several times. The rubberized calamari I didn’t expect in the Italian section of Boston almost killed me. Yes, my hat’s off to the Barefoot Contessa, whose “northern” cooking show is terrific, but she is easily just as fat as is Paula Deen. And yes, the blueberries and lobster in Maine were terrific, and I had a nice bowl of clam showder in Connecticut, but, good God! Do they even know what vegetables are? And the ever-present Italian eatery up north, with its calzones a la grease and sodium, would have sent me to an early grave had I not returned to my beloved South, which has always been a land of gracious plenty, and hospitality, green and verdant and full of health, homemade jams and preserves and grandmothers and root cellars. And besides, if my grandmother tossed a little lard into her homemade biscuits, who cares! There was no finer cuisine on the planet!