Where is most home cooking done in America these days (or at least back when)?

[Patrick]

I was listening to my local radio station the other morning and they were doing their daily "question of the day". This meant that they would give a topic and people would call in naming songs that had to do with that topic. For example if the question of the day was " What songs had the state of California in them?" people would call in and name a song that had California in it and so on.. Now this station is able (thru web streaming, etc) to broadcast by radio or the computer all over the country so people would call in from across the nation.

Now, the question of the day for which I write this blog was about songs with food/cooking in them. After about a couple of hours of the show, the DJ makes a profound statement. She said that the calls so far appear to be regional meaning the VAST and OVERRIDING majority came from the south and southwest. Now keep in mind this radio station is based out of the Bronx, NY so there wasn't any local influence.

My quick analysis of this is that these regions (south and southwest) are a back bone of home cooking in this nation. It may be forward of me to make the assumption that the people who wrote these songs were originally from the regions but it is probably a good bet that they were, as musicians tend to write about their experiences from when they were young to older. Obviously, food was big part of their lives.

Now when you think about it, these regions historically have been the poorest in the nation with the south more so. This means (again my own analysis) that home cooking, farming gardening and using what they had was commonplace and in fact a way of life..

So that is my non-government funded study for today. Think about it.

[John Barrows]

gimme somma dat hoe-bread