Here in the South, we have a long tradition of putting our money where our mouth is. We love good food and know there's no quicker way to open someone's pocketbook for a good cause than to work a great meal or fine wine into the request.

You can trace the impulse about as far back as you want to go. In the days before online dating, there were box-lunch auctions, where young men bid for not just the meal but also the right to eat it with the young lady who prepared it.

We've raised money for heartfelt causes for years with bake sales. The pile of fundraising cookbooks issued for everything from churches to Junior Leagues to domestic violence shelters could sink the USS North Carolina.

Today, gourmet events and wine tastings such as the popular Triangle Wine Experience, which raises money for the Frankie Lemmon Foundation for children with developmental disabilities, bring out the food fans.

I could go on until dinnertime listing mouth-money links (Girl Scout cookies ... those dreamy Samoas).

But some people have taken the connection further, by working to help a devastated city that holds a special place in the souls of food fans.

If you really love food, you must, sometime in your life, spend time in New Orleans. And you should hope it will be, eventually, close to what it was before Katrina.

Some people aren't waiting. Groups of volunteers have been working since the hurricane hit in August 2005 to help historic small restaurants and other food-related agencies rebuild.

Bill Smith, chef of Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill, recently returned from his second trip to help rebuild Willie Mae Seaton's Scotch House and Leah Chase's Dooky Chase, both renowned homes of traditional New Orleans food that their elderly owners operated on shoestrings.

On his first trip, just after the hurricane, Smith ripped out wet Sheetrock and pulled out grease-filled fryers. This time, he touched up paint and did finishing work on 90-year-old Seaton's home, which is attached to the restaurant.

There's still a lot to do and not enough people to do it, Smith says.

"The neighborhoods are still a mess. It's off the headlines. I do think people have forgotten. If there's a spike in crime, New Orleans is in the headlines for a day, but there are other things on the front page now," Smith says. "I do it because I'm fond of the city and I feel a connection to restaurants in trouble."

Helping himself, too

One Raleigh man found an interesting way to put his money where is mouth is, to help a New Orleans nonprofit that trains underprivileged youth for the hospitality industry and to help himself in the process.

Dean McCord got the bad news in October. At 240 pounds and 43 years of age, with a strong family history of heart disease, he found out that he is pre-diabetic.

To say this is a man who loves food would be an understatement. I got to know him over a pig brining in his bathtub for a pig-picking.

Dieting wasn't too hard, he says. Exercise was more difficult. When his wife, a runner, declared her intention to run a half-marathon in New Orleans on Feb. 25, he decided he'd do it, too. No matter that at the time, in October, he could barely run one mile. A half-marathon is slightly over 13 miles.

What he needed was motivation. His passion for New Orleans, and friends and food there, provided it.

McCord decided to raise money from friends and colleagues for Cafe Reconcile. This New Orleans nonprofit trains young people to work in the restaurant business. The group enrolls seven students in each six-week program, where they learn everything from the front of the house to the back of the house -- waiting tables, dealing with customers and cooking on the line.

Chef Emeril Lagasse recently bought space in the building, where he will finance facilities to offer advanced culinary training. The Cafe is a popular dining spot as well.

The students also learn life skills, such as how to budget their money. Drug counseling and literacy classes are offered.

The program is also helping the restaurant industry, which is struggling to get enough trained staff.

In Raleigh, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle offers a food service training program, but not on such a scale. (And Raleigh is not New Orleans in terms of restaurants and tourism.)

To prepare for the run, McCord embarked on serious training, losing more than 30 pounds.

And he finished the race.

"Sixty-year-old women were on my pace, but I finished," he says. "Now I understand people who do marathons, why it's so meaningful. My wife and I just broke down at the finish line."

Two hours after the race, he helped a displaced New Orleans family move back into their home.

So, if you don't care about New Orleans (sigh), find something that inspires you to put your money where your mouth is. There's a lot of good out there that needs to be done. Get cooking.