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!

I know I can cook, but the place where I cook... it's a mess! I'm very disorganized.

I love Hershey's chocolate. I feel the same about chocolate as I do about wine. Connoisseurs like dark chocolate and they like nasty wine that doesn't taste good to me. I don't get it!

People see me on TV two and three times a day, and see me cooking all these wonderfully Southern, fattening dishes. That's only 30 days out of 365. And it's for entertainment.

The first thing I did was give up sweet tea because I drank so much. I'd start drinking at lunchtime and wouldn't set it down until I went to bed. When you calculate how much empty calories and how much sugar I was consuming, it was staggering. So I haven't had a glass of sweet tea in three years.

I am guilty of buying way too many gadgets - way too many! And though I try to keep things nice and orderly, sometimes I get distracted and stick saucepans where the stockpots should go.

Well what I would really like is a bunch of little n***ers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties. You know, in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around. Now, that would be a true Southern wedding wouldn't it? But we can't do that because the media would be on me about that.