Down in Kentucky I should engage Mandy Berry, colored, to fry for
them some spring chickens and make for them a few pones of real
cornbread. In Creole Louisiana they should sample crawfish gumbo;
and in Georgia they should have 'possum baked with sweet potatoes;
and in Tidewater Maryland, terrapin and canvasback; and in Illinois,
young gray squirrels on toast; and in South Carolina, boiled rice
with black-eyed peas; and in Colorado, cantaloupes; and in Kansas,
young sweet corn; and in Virginia, country hams, not cured with
chemicals but with hickory smoke and loving hands; and in Tennessee,
jowl and greens.
And elsewhere they should have their whacking fill of prairie hen
and suckling pig and barbecued shote, and sure-enough beefsteak,
and goobers hot from the parching box; and scrapple, and yams
roasted in hot wood-ashes; and hotbiscuit and waffles and Parker
house rolls--and the thousand and one other good things that may
be found in this our country, and which are distinctively and
uniquely of this country.
Finally I would bring them back by way of Richmond, and there I
would give them each an eggnog compounded with fresh cream and
made according to a recipe older than the Revolution. If I had
my way about it no living creature should be denied the right to
bury his face in a brimming tumbler of that eggnog--except a man
with a drooping red mustache.
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