(or How To Survive in a Southern Kitchen Without a Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup) is a cookbook for Southerners who want to recapture the tastes, smells, and memories of their youth. Robert St. John takes the Southern classics, adds time-honored professional cooking techniques, and combines them for use in the home kitchen - nothing complicated, no foreign, hard-to-find ingredients, no complex methods or procedures, just honest home cooking with readily available ingredients, updated and legitimized for the home cook.

"Robert St. John has truly captured a Southern era with Deep South Staples. From funeral food like deviled eggs to the school carnival cakewalks, this book is a hilarious blast from the past and full of updated oldies but goodies. I am reminded of my own index cards full of down-home family recipes and heart-warming memories. A true gem of a book!" - Cat Cora, fron Chef, Food Network