Southern Sayings

I'm playing catch-up here. I intended on starting this blog before now - but I just haven't had time! This is blog #2 for me. Yes, I know that's crazy. It's just that I type so darned fast and there is nothing in this world I love to do more than write. The second thing I love most is what I do in the kitchen. Sometimes I cook, sometimes I bake, sometimes I create and sometimes I just make a total mess of things and smoke us out of the house. But whatever I do in the kitchen seems to make me happy because I spend so much time there.
Hanging on the wall beside the stove in my kitchen is a small iron trivet depicting a man and a woman and the saying which I so aptly named this blog. I bought it for 25cents at an old junk store in Savannah right after we got married. It struck me as so funny and has since become my mantra of sorts. We both like to be in the kitchen. If I'm not cooking something, Baxter is. We very rarely get take-out and we have acquired some pretty good amateur skills over the last few years. As we celebrate our 7th anniversary on the 22nd, I would like to dedicate this blog to Baxter. He is the inspiration for this blog. He is the man that I love to feed and I still try to impress him with presentation or ingenuity on a pretty regular basis. He tries to impress me with his thoughtfulness and careful craftsmanship. He owned a restaurant before we got married and I helped him run it. I baked the desserts and we spent our first Valentine's day, dressed up for dinner, frying chicken wings in place of our irresponsible staff who all decided to call in sick for the dinner shift. That is love. When we first got married, the restaurant was bankrupt and we weren't far from it. We moved down to Savannah and started fresh and for about a month we lived off of Claxton Chicken Leg Quarters (19 cents a pound at the Red & Black). I figured out about 97 different ways to make dark meat chicken - and served it all on Waterford china with Williams-Sonoma napkins. Don't worry, my recipes here will be much more varied. I can afford white meat chicken now! But what I learned back then informs what I practice now, that anything you pour your heart into will show it. No matter if I'm making strudel from scratch or scrambling eggs for dinner - I'm going to do it right. For me, it's an act of love. Kissin' don't last, cookin' do.