On the Menu: Southern Kitchens

(Tasting the menu at Ravine.)

No discussion of the southern home is complete without addressing the bedroom (reading: Suzi Parker's Sex in the South; watching: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Before I explore that space, however, this week I'll be posting on the southern kitchen and the places we entertain.

Living in Oxford, Miss., creates more than a few examples for this conversation. Home of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization that documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South, as well as The Grove, a place on the campus of the University of Mississippi that becomes the picnic grounds for those attending the football games most weekends in the fall, Oxford is not short on places to eat. There are also a few restaurants on the outskirts of town, whose cozy settings coupled with a BYOB policy, create an at-home dining experience.

I'll be bombarding the blog with posts on all of these things, in addition to a write up of Julia Reed's latest books on home and entertaining, and my own ruminations on what it means to feed people. How did I become a hostess? There's a story there, I promise.