“The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.” ― Chris Fabry, The Promise of Jesse Woods

Drug of Choice-an excerpt from the book Food for Thought by Don Miller

While food is my drug of choice, “Food for Thought” is not a cookbook. There are some recipes, recipes from angels now gone, who with their hands, cast iron pans, dollops of bacon grease or lard, and a lot of love, created so much from so little. There are other recipes from those that still exist and come to you over the cable ways on such channels as the Food Channel or from the internet.

Primarily it is a book of memories and history, a Southern history if you will, chock full of pig parts, home grown ingredients, and possibly roadkill. No not roadkill but there might be a possum or a raccoon story to tell. It is stories of an elusive quest for the perfect biscuit, peanuts poured into an eight-ounce Coca Colas, dope wagons in the cotton mill, and why when we order a Coke we are asked, “What kind of Coke?”

There is diversity, lessons taken from Scot Irish Appalachia fused with Native American and African American food and combined into dishes that have culturally diffused throughout the United States. 

There are also too many essays involving pig parts, pulled pork, liver mush, sausage, slow cooked ribs, I need to quit before I go crank up the smoker.

None of the recipes shared are mine. Some are old family recipes, others from Methodist and Baptist cookbooks handed down by previous generations in my family. Lastly, some came from the Food Channel and such and are noted and linked as such.

Really lastly, any beautiful photographs of certain dishes are not mine. My dishes rarely come out looking photograph worthy. To quote an old college chemistry professor I had, “Find your wife’s disasters and you will eat like a king.” Thank you Dr. Setzler. The proof is in the eating not in the looking.

Food For Thought: From the Musings of a Mad Southerner may be purchased in Paperback or Downloaded from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVF3PFTB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CYH7YGW5PD0N&keywords=Food+For+Thought+Don+Miller&qid=1707591751&sprefix=food+for+thought+don+miller%2Caps%2C438&sr=8-1