"I knew a woman in Alabama who'd make you reconsider," he says. "She didn't use cream cheese--it was some top-secret concoction, and if she'd told me what it was, she'd have to kill me. It was fluffy like eating a bowl of kittens, but not disgusting like that probably made it sound. And the cake..."

The cake was the stuff of dreams.

"I crash church picnics. You get the best home cooking there, where everybody brings their specialty. And if you play your cards right, you can get invited back to their parlors afterward and you know how that goes."

If you like home cooking, like he does.