Taylor Hicks Quotes

Cooking is like music: you can tell when someone puts love into it. I come from a place where there was so much attention to detail. The population is smaller in the South, so more attention is given to serving smaller numbers of people.

I'm from South Georgia, so my mom, she always cooked some dang good food when I was growing up.

Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi... and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing... and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie.

American cooking is one of the unknown cuisines in America.

I'm American. Very American. Like, I-might-have-biscuits-and-sausage-gravy-for-dinner American.

A lot of people don't know, but I love soul food. I love fried chicken and pork chops, all of that.

People come to Nashville where I live and they say, 'What's a great Southern restaurant?' Well, you got to know the right grandmother, because there's a lot of magic to good Southern cooking.

I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern.

I'm a foodie. I enjoy it a lot, and contrary to what it looks, I eat a lot. My comfort food, of all things, would be southern soul barbecue.

My mom's collard greens. No one else in the world can make them like hers. I'm not just saying that because she's my mom. She's got some Mississippi secret. I could seriously eat them every day.

I love food: biscuits and gravy, cheese grits, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken-fried steak with white gravy... but my favorite dish is my wife's beanie weenie cornbread casserole. It's so good. It sounds stupid, but if you eat it, it's heaven. Of course, it's only something you can eat if you've got a lot of money.

I don't want to spend my life not having good food going into my pie hole. That hole was made for pies.

When I was growing up in Mississippi - it was good Southern food... but I also grew up with a Greek family; when other kids were eating fried okra, we were eating steamed artichokes. So I think it played a big part in my healthy cooking.

Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers, room service there doesn't do soul food.

For me, I love the flavors of Southern food, and people usually think of Southern food as heavy and fattening, but it doesn't have to be.

I'm kind of fascinated by Paula Deen. I've been to her restaurant, The Lady and Sons, in Savannah. My friend was studying in the area, and we ate at her restaurant, and it was right at the cusp where Paula Deen became Paula Deen.

Stone-ground grits are wonderful, but because they take so long to cook, I usually go with quick cooking grits - which I also love. But I never make the instant kind - some things a Southerner just won't do!

For breakfast I have grits, because I'm a Southern girl!

The restaurant chefs in Spain are breaking ground, but in terms of the everyday cooking in Spain I still hear people coming back and saying they were disappointed. I think it's because they're expecting the chef stuff.

I say to my industrialist friends, when you have guests from out of town, I don't care how important they are, you should feed them the essence of Italian culture: spaghetti, bread and olive oil.

Yes, I'm a real southern boy.

The food I've liked in my time is American country cookin'.

If you like good ol' fashion Southern soul food then, yes, I am a good cook! My specialty is chicken dumplings and poke salad.

Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here.

Few people know that I love local dhaba food. It is the best!