The news hit me like a ton of grits. Smuckers, the company that bought the White Lily flour company, is closing the White Lily plant in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the end of the month. After that, White Lily will only be made at two plants in the midwest. According to the company, the While Lily flour produced at the two new plants is indistinguishable from the old. A.) I'm sure that's not true. B.) The product itself is not what's at stake here. To every Southern baker I know, White Lily is synonymous with the South. It represents the soul of Southern baking tradition. Move White Lily out of the South? That's insane. That would be like moving Kossar's Bialys... More

Editor's note: Occasionally what looks at first glance to be a conventional guidebook transcends the genre in surprising ways. John T. Edge's Southern Belly is just such a read, which is why I'm pleased that he has allowed us to excerpt selected items from it on Serious Eats, where they appear every other week. —Ed Levine By John T. Edge | Jane Barton, whom everyone seems to call the Mayonnaise Queen, has been on her feet since 4:30 this morning. Her gray hair is fashionably coiffed. She wears a paisley smock over Bermuda shorts. Her reading glasses dangle from a gold herringbone necklace. This is her 49th year of service at the Waffle Shop, a Lenten-only canteen set in the... More