Like many of you, I grew up around my grandma’s table. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of Sunday dinners (that’s the noon meal for those of you who didn’t grow up in the...
She Spoke, and I Listened
I am what you would call a fifth-generation farmer. If I do not farm, I’ll get sick. If I have to rent, borrow, beg a piece of property somewhere, I have got to put something on the land...
Portfolio: Paintings
This series explores the rich iconography of the rural southeastern United States, incorporating elements of art history, children’s tales, persistent stereotypes and even commercial...
The Monumental Cakes of Frankye Davis Mayes
The toil is long; the results are sublime. Everyone wants to fall on the floor in a swoon, except for when I served it in Italy to friends who pushed it around on their plates, all finally...
Whiskey: The Analog Drink
Here’s what I love most about whiskey: time. You need time to make a good whiskey; Scotch takes at least three years by law, bourbon has no legal minimum, but in either case it’s four...
Lost Recipe
When we say the blessing now at family gatherings, there is an echo in the murmur of the present. I hear the voices of those who are gone, I hear the bell tones of my children when they...
The Flavors that Bind Us
It was obvious that food, the sacrament of breaking bread together, was the tie that bound me—a thoroughly Greek woman—to my new home, the American small-town South. It was inevitable...
“State of the Plate”: An Update on Food Studies at UNC Chapel Hill
Since I began teaching my first course on American food cultures, “Cooking Up a Storm” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005, students have clamored for more...
Kosher Pork
We are, to put it mildly, somewhat different—a modern iteration of the odd couple. He is a Creole chef from Louisiana. I am a Jewish lawyer from Long Island. I have neuroses that define...
How Koshary Saved a Starving Student
The sheer pulsation of energy and controlled chaos attracted me to this take-away restaurant. If Henry Ford did kitchens, this would be how they ran.
Bittersweet: The Life of Key Lime Pie
Someone had to die so that we might have key lime pie, and key lime pie in its first incarnation experienced a kind of death of its own.
Welcome to My Kitchen: What It Means to Design Food and Beverage
We dream up hundreds of ideas; some look ridiculous and some just plain impossible, but we push ourselves in new and exciting directions.
Summer 2014
The Summer 2014 issue of South Writ Large celebrates the many forms of food and drink. Food does more than sustain; it binds us to places and people, offers an outlet for emotional expression, and connects us with kin, friends, neighbors, and even strangers. Although it is merely the quotidian stuff of life, our bellies—and our souls—would be emptier without it. While a famous dish acts as a magnet that draws hungry visitors from afar, another treasured recipe reminds the weary traveler of home as she journeys through unknown lands. The preparation of a meal or a beverage slows us down, reminding us to savor the processes of creation and discovery. Food enlivens our day-to-day existence, enriching our lives in countless ways.