Quotes from John Egerton

Iced tea is too pure and natural a creation not to have been invented as soon as tea, ice, and hot weather crossed paths.

Fruitcake really is the queen of cakes!' she insists as she passes a thick, crumbling slice. 'There is just nothing better — nothing!' Tasting it, you have to agree. The crude jokes about fruitcake seem silly and unfounded as its moist richness blooms on the tongue, stirring both memories of Christmases past and anticipation of those to come.

In Gee's Bend, Alabama, he bent an ear to church-mother Mrs. Eugene Witherspoon, who informed him that watery grits goes with sleazy ways.

Food is a major topic of conversation, the author [Dori Sanders] explains. If it weren't for the weather, who died, and food, we wouldn't have any conversation!.

And we will have macaroni and cheese, which is a vegetable in the South, and, one of the best things on earth, a big pot of pinto beans, a massive ham bone swimming in the middle for seasoning.

People used to 'pig out' on fresh produce and home cooking, but today, there are only the pigs, human and otherwise — no produce. Local fruits and vegetables are vanishing, and only occasional barbecue gatherings remain. Frozen foods and fast foods, and melons and strawberries from Mexico, have become staples. Folks aren't eating less (just look at the stomachs hanging over the counters at McDonald's and Taco Bell), but they are eating differently.

The worst thing about the Americanizing of Dixie may be that its farms and gardens are disappearing even as its fast-food restaurants and its population escalate. Southern tongues were tied to the land, and as long as the land was primarily rural farmland — which is to say, up through World War II — Southerners had a sense of taste.

As we old Southerners, survivors remembering repasts past, have aged, we find ourselves eating in a foreign land at dinnertime. We hang our hams in a willow and weep. Dixie has become America, and the flavor is almost gone from the stew.

Sugar syrup for ice tea is concocted by adding one pound of Dixie Crystal sugar to a tablespoon of water. In the south, sweetened ice tea is taken for granted, like the idea that stock car racing is our national pastime, or that the Southern Baptist church is a legitimate arm of the Republican party.

Why southerners are so sugar-fixated may be a mystery, but it is an indisputable fact. We are a breed who makes marmalades of zucchini, tomatoes, onions, and even watermelon rinds.

The whole notion of what is black and what is Southern is a thorny issue, to say the least.

Over the years, I have learned just how Southern my Northern upbringing was, and I think that it is important to begin by making the point that the custodians of many of the old ways of African American foodways are also to be found in the ghettoes of the North.

Where does black food (Dunbar food, to use Ishmael Reed's term, which I prefer to 'soul food') stop and Southern food begin, or vice versa?

Here it is also possible to suggest that there are more than a few similarities in dishes of African origin throughout the hemisphere, notably the preparation of composed rice dishes; the creation of various types of fritters and croquettes; the use of smoked ingredients for seasoning; the use of okra as a thickener; the abundant use of leafy green vegetables; the abundant use (some would say abuse) of peppery hot sauces; and the use of nuts and seeds as thickeners.

Wherever okra points its green tip, Africa has been: 'nuff said.

Given the overwhelming presence of English settlers, the warp of cookery in the colonies was English. … But from the very beginning, there were other peoples on the scene contributing brilliant streaks and splashes of color to the tapestry that was American cookery.

I say that the warp of colonial cookery was English, but in the Southern colonies, a funny thing happened on the way to the hearth. In households of any importance whatsoever, African women slaves did nearly all the cooking. It's as simple as that

To this day the historical extent and importance of slavery in any given area in the Americas may very nearly be gauged by the extent and importance of okra, particularly by the degree of acceptance among whites.

In short, okra had come to be completely accepted by the Virginia gentry by the early nineteenth century.

Nineteenth-century Southern cookbooks almost invariably included receipts for okra.

The Mason-Dixon line can almost be said to be the Okra Line, that is, historically: As a rule, Southern writers gave receipts for okra, even when their works were published in the North. Northern writers did not, with the exception of those of Philadelphia, an anomaly explained by the early presence of West Indians who came to very nearly dominate the catering business in that city.

Food is so central to the South we all like—the Good South of conviviality and generosity and sweet communion.

Cornbread Nation is not a term freighted with any profound or universal meaning; it's just a catchy little phrase that calls to mind, for some of us, a timeless South where corn has been the staff of life forever, and cornbread in myriad forms has held a central place in the cookery of the region since the original people hunkered down to bake and break bread together.

We're simply operating on the premise that if there's anything your garden-variety Southerner likes to do more than harvesting, preparing, or consuming the region's superlative food and drink, it probably would be talking and writing about the very dishes and libations that have sustained us through this vale of tears for centuries.