Dear Friend,I would consider you to be lucky with ham hocks and with Jiffy Corn Bread Mix, for it is soul food–Delicious and wonderful.  I stoop to Martha White, but I know the best corn meal of all is the stone ground at Falls Mill, a few miles from where I spent my childhood.I made a PBS radio friend a dinner that my mother would have proudly served, and we all ate hungrily from something ingrainued in us long ago–What stupid people label as overcooked, the food of much of the mid-south, and when that garden was in and the milk check a little better, we might have had some flavoring from the ham shavings long ago.Here is the truth of southern cooking.  Folks have born and raised there kids on what they could afford, and it is not over cooked with vitamins swimming in the broth, for if you cook it right, then there is not a lot of liquid, and the taste is addicting.  I have almost never made green beans for other regional doyennes of cookery that they did not rave about the flavor.I wish that I could do a cookbook with the recipes of folks I have known, but the problem is–We used no recipes, and all things passed on to generations.  I know how the bread batter is supposed to feel and when all of the kettles have simmered just long enough.  People can enjoy their cerviche, but, please let me show someone how to fry a cat fish before my life is over.  I actually respect Cracker Barrel’s attempts to come up with mid-south cooking, and I like sweet tea made the right way until it is so cold that it almost makes your teeth chatter.Much of the year, I deal with California’s half raw cuisine, or fully raw.  I’ve cooked through much of Moosewood, and Holy Cow; Now everyone needs gluten free.  I see the trends beginning there in food, and most make their way east, so these raw vegetable and fresh fruit juices are going to sustain life, and we’re headed for even more raw fish–and now and then I find something most enjoyable.  Most times it just taste like it’s, “An acquired taste.”  I was way happier with our old San Francisco lentil soup and Irish soda bread, or sensual avocado and tomato with sprouts on whole grain bread.I love your writings, but I would have loved it more had it been you with the ham hock and Jiffy Corn bread, for we loose something if we fear such would make us ignoble.  I do not doubt that Panne Angelicus will be the inspiration of the second coming now that people know iron skillet corn bread satisfies so many of us and call us homeward.I know a lot to praise about my Alabama birth and my Tennessee raising and so much of it lingers, for it fed my body, and my soul at times when my hunger was so deeply rooted beyond the food.Glory be to the home folks, and I hope the gardens are coming in.  Love and Blessing, Barb”Pinkhoneysuckle,” may be discussed on a program with Kathryn Raaker, B4 64 in that Knoxville area.  Thank you for all of the loving support, and you are one of the people I do not want to lose the writings of.