Tarna, DC, Sooner, Native Floridian and anyone else who occasionally tunes into this board, but especially Wheels and Bama who have written so lyrically of the south, buy this month's special edition of Gourmet Magazine on Southern Cooking.

It features a beautiful essay by the late Edna Lewis titled "What is Southern" (excerpt below).  She, if you are not familiar with her, was called the "Grand Dame of Southern cooking".  From magazine brief bio:

Granddaughter of freed slaves, the late Edna Lewis left home when she was just 16 years old...to become renowned chef at Manhattan's star-studded Cafe Nicholson.  Her books have spread the gospel of genuine southern cuisine and inspired a generation of home cooks. 

<http://www.epicurious.com/gourmet/features/edna_lewis>

Online are recipes for Smothered Steak, Simmered Greens with Cornmeal Dumplings (I don't like greens but I swear, I'm gonna give this a try), Fried Apple Pie, Baked Tomatoes with Crusty Bread, and more. In magazine were many more, a Caramel Cake, Farm Eggs with cream and country ham

Nifty picture step by step walk through for feather light biscuits, a tip by Miss Lewis I'd never thought of, illustrating the extraordinary attention to detail in a 'simple' food like biscuits that makes a difference. You can make your your own baking powder - she was able to detect the slightly metallic taste of the store bought, and wouldn't have it in her biscuits.

How did southern food come into being? The early cooking of southern food was primarily done by blacks, men and women. In the home, in hotels, in boarding houses, on boats, on trains, and at the White House. Cooking is hard and demanding. It was then and still is now. What began as hard work became creative work. There is something about the south that stimulates creativity in people, be they black or white, writers, artists, cooks, builders or primitives that pass away without knowing they are talented...

Not about food but this is so evocative

Southern is an early spring morning shrouded in a thick mist. The warmth of a bright sunrise reveals shimmering jewellike dewdrops upon thicket and fence. ...