I got your four basic food groups! Beans, bacon, whisky and lard. — Atlantis, The Lost Empire

I love Southern cuisine, I really do.  It has wonderful flavor, and I’ve never come away from a properly cooked meal hungry.  But it’s going to kill me some day.  I will die happy and fat, but I will die from all this wonderful food.

Whisky is of particular importance to Irish Woman’s cooking.  There are grades of whisky when it comes to cooking, of course.  First, you have the sipping whisky, like Buffalo Trace, which is rarely, if ever, used as an ingredient.  Then, we have the good whisky, like Maker’s Mark, which is good enough to drink, but is primarily used to flavor food.  Finally, we have the cooking whisky, which in our house is Jim Beam.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Irish Woman drink Jim Beam, but it shows up in a lot of dishes.  It’s used to flavor barbecue sauce, as the ‘secret ingredient’ in her apple pie preservers, and to add sweetness to desserts.

Lard’s high-rent cousin butter is a major component of cooking around here too.  Now that we have the ability to have high-quality cream delivered to the house every week, Irish Woman is making her own.  That means that a lot of my food has that wonderful, creamy, artery clogging flavor that we all love.

Bacon, well, what can I say about bacon?  Around here, bacon goes with breakfast, other meats, salads, vegetables, and sometimes even desserts.  Bacon grease is our food lubricant of choice when we are cooking.  I know Irish Woman is going to be in a good mood when I come home and the house smells of bacon.

Like I said, all this is going to kill me some day.  My curse is that I married a woman who loves to cook, and it’s a curse I think I can live with.