bill ahlschwede (billahls@utm.edu) from 192.239.147.163 at 09/29/98 09:06AM
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    The favorite foods of my students are cooked by Southern Women. These Southern Women prepare fried chicken from secret recipes. They make breakfast for their sons and daughters, using ordinary ingredients to make extra-ordinary pancakes from scratch, pancakes which cannot be reproduced by my students from the same ingredients using the same recipe. "The secret ingredient is love," the Southern Woman says. Southern Women make green pea casserole. The bottom layer is hamburger, the next layer green peas, the next macaroni, and the top layer cheese. Southern Women prepare white beans and cornbread for their family, served with love. Southern Women have a way of teaching young women to cook real food, food for the soul. Southern cooking is learned by Southern Women at the hip of elder relatives. Ingredients not written in recipes are learned in the kitchen from elder Southern Women. John Edgerton was in Southern Living a couple of years ago frying chicken "southern style." It may have the best tasting chicken in the test kitchen--five tablespoons of bacon fat in a hand-carried-from-Nashville-to-the-test-kitchen pot, but it was not authentic. Someone named John could not know the Southern Woman learned-in-the-kitchen secret ingredients that my student's mothers use.