Wilson - For the love of the South: recipes and stories from my Southern kitchen

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TO MY FAMILY

In the South, the spirit of hospitalitywelcoming people into our homes and making them feel lovedis engrained in us. This book goes beyond a love for Southern cuisine and digs deep into the intangibles of the Southern spirit: kindness, warmth, and a love of tradition. I want to share with you memories and meals from a place that is dear to my heart. I hope you feel as though Im with you in the kitchen, encouraging you as youre stirring roux for gumbo and rolling out pie dough. I hope there are blackberry juice starbursts splattered across the pages, dog-eared corners, and handwritten notes in the margins. Above all, I hope you find comfort in these recipes and make them your own.

I didnt grow up with delicate, handwritten recipe cards that my family members passed down from generation to generation. In fact, I dont remember anyone writing down recipes at all. Instead, I learned by watching the great Southern women before me. Once I had a kitchen of my own, it seemed only natural for me to tie my apron strings and get to work creating my own recipes inspired by the ingredients and dishes I fell in love with. Some recipes use ingredients in ways my grandmothers wouldnt dream of; others hold fast to the integrity of traditional recipes while still pleasing my personal taste. All the recipes have a theme. The ingredients are familiar, simple, economical, and rooted in the regions pantry.

Everything I hold dear about Southern culture rests in its narrative. The photographs throughout this book are personalas personal as the stories I share. The images of satsuma trees, pecan trees, and cotton crops are taken on family land. Almost all the silver, cast iron, stoneware, and glasses in this book are family treasures. My china pattern and silverware are adorned with one of my favorite flowers, a gardenia, which represents grace and hospitality in the South. The dark wooden background for many photos is an old painters table discovered at an estate sale in Decatur, Alabama. The marble background is a restored piece from an old home, Rocky Hill, that my husbands family owned. Everything in this book has a story behind it: a meaning, a purpose.

All my memories begin and end with food, and so all my recipes are inspired by memories. Its a mutual relationship. Characters develop around kitchen islands, barbecue pits, and dining room tables. Personalities are interwoven in the strings and strings of meals weve shared, revealing a colorful backdrop for every story I recount. I grew up in a close-knit family. Both sets of grandparents live within ten minutes of each other in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Aunts, uncles, and cousins piled in on the weekends; no one hailed farther than Baton Rouge.

Almost everyone I knew lived in a modest home with enough yard for a satsuma and a fig tree, and a simple garden filled with tomatoes, okra, and peppers. Occasionally, a chicken or pig could be spotted running around backyards, feasting on herbs. We didnt have a lot in the eyes of the world, but we ate like kingseven if our table was littered with crawfish peelings, our throne looked like a broken-in La-Z-Boy recliner, and the crowns we wore denoted our favorite football teams. We ate like kings. Thats what mattered.

Given the way I grew up surrounded by food, you would think I might have become a chef, food writer, or restaurateur, but the thought never crossed my mind until my senior year of college. In school, I pursued a degree in environmental science and geography. In the first semester of my senior year, I began mulling over topics for my thesis. I wanted to focus on something that interested me, something personal. So, I decided to go in the direction of human geography and chose a nontraditional thesis topic: Southern Food and How Food Defines the South. My professor, a fellow Louisianan, gave her blessing for me to pursue the topic. She recognized my passion for the project and suggested I have coffee with her friend, the editor of a Southern food magazine. While we were having coffee, the editor encouraged me to start a food blog. I simply stated, Im not creative. Im not a professional cook, and Ive never picked up a camera. Im a scientist. Nevertheless, she persuaded me to give it a try, and I did. My site, For the Love of the South, became a place where I shared my love for the food, characters, and culture that helped shape who I am. In the meantime, I interviewed to be part of NASAs applied sciences program after graduation. By the time I was offered the position, I had fallen in love with sharing stories and recipes from the South. Looking back, what drew me to science was the prospect of helping preserve everything I loved about my culture, but in a way, thats what Im doing through food.

This is my story of a region, my home, reduced and boiled down from personal experiences and memories. This book is for the food I cant live without, the region I love, and the people I share my life with. This is for my love of the South.

The kitchen has taught me many things about life, and the greatest guidance Ive been given is that preparedness and peace go hand in hand. Preparation and planning help me keep my sanity on days when Im too busy to cook or too exhausted to stand upright. This is how I cook and live, but at the same time I dont restrict myself to rules or a strict routine, and I dont want you to either. These are suggestions, not orders. Lets be honest, one of the greatest advantages of a home cooks kitchen is that its one of the only places where complete self-regard is greatly rewarded and guiltlessly pleasurable. This section is full of little pieces of economical and practical kitchen wisdom Ive picked up along the way.

PANTRY

Theres great comfort in knowing my pantry is well stocked. My pantry shelves are lined with spare bags of rice, flour, sugar, a few bags of coffee, boxes of kosher and sea salt, and lots of dried pasta and beans. There is a practical purpose for this. Whenever I am using the last of a kitchen staple in the middle of a recipe, I go to my pantry, knowing I have another bag, box, or bottle waiting for me. Then, I immediately put that item on my shopping list. That way, there are never emergency store runs; just peaceful cooking. The same thinking applies to plastic wrap, parchment paper, paper towels, plastic storage bags, and dish soap. These items are just as important in keeping my kitchen running smoothly and efficiently.