'The things my school chums' mothers cooked always seemed much more appealing, exotic even. So I'd go home with them after school every chance I got, hoping that I'd be invited to stay for dinner; I often was. There might be crispy fried chicken or stuffed pork chops, sweet slaw, yellow squash pudding, fresh-baked biscuits, and -- cross fingers -- sweet potato pudding or pecan pie for dessert."

"I DIDN'T TASTE COUNTRY HAM or red-eye gravy until the summer I was ten. My family and I were driving north to visit my Ohio grandmother and after overnighting at a tourist court in the Virginia Blue Ridge, we stopped at a little mom-and-pop cafe-cum-gas-station for breakfast. This was my first true southern country breakfast and I was thrilled."

"MY DOUGHNUT STAND: The summer all the neighborhood kids had lemonade stands, I decided to sell doughnuts, mostly because I loved to watch them pop up in the deep fat and flip themselves over. I marvel now that my mother would let a 10-year-old work with 375-degree-fat -- especially since I had to stand on a step stool to see into the pot. But let me she did. My doughnuts were dreadful--leaden and greasy right out of the fryer. Eaten cold, they were a major Maalox moment. Still, deliverymen always stopped to buy a few. I made no money on the doughnut stand; in fact it bankrupted me. But the experience taught me how to plan and budget."

AND FROM HER DAYS AS AN EXTENSION AGENT IN IREDELL COUNTY: "In the kitchen I came upon Mrs. Farmer, a blowsy, red-faced woman, making soup mix from garden gleanings. Chickens pecked up the spills and shoats (young pigs) snoozed beside the stove. Mrs. Farmer's opening shot: "Are you a lipper or a dipper?" I had no idea what she meant. "Your snuff," she continued. "What do you do with it? I'll bet you're one of them dainty l'il things what daubs it around with a toothpick" -- her definition of a dipper. She, a "lipper" and proud of it, pulled out her lower lip and upended a can of Tube Rose directly into it. I was unprepared for the tirade that followed. Under no circumstances would she permit her children to rejoin the 4-H Club because "it was draggin' them through the flames of hell ... 'lowed them to dance!" Which she pronounced dayntz. Clearly we had no common ground; in fact, we could barely communicate. In defense of Mrs. Farmer, however, I will say that she made one terrific soup mix and canned gallons of it "for good winter eatin."

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