In high school, cooking class was the best part of my day, and that was almost entirely because of my teacher, Mrs. Mones. She was originally from Georgia, and she carried that Southern warmth into everything she did, from the way she greeted us at the door every single morning to the way she insisted we slow down and actually taste what we were making instead of racing toward the finished plate. She did not believe in rushing anything worth doing well.
One afternoon she announced we would be learning how to make fresh fruit cobblers, which she also liked to call fresh fruit pudding cake, and she said it the way you would talk about something sacred rather than something you scoop into a bowl. That distinction mattered to her. She wanted us to understand that a dessert this simple still deserved our full attention.
