A fellow southerner and I recently prepared for our non-Southern friends a feast that rivaled the best post-church Sunday dinner. Fried chicken, cheese grits, collard greens, biscuits, fried okra, and the mandatory ‘nana puddin’ for dessert. We were comparing cookbooks (his from Texas, mine from North Carolina) when I noticed the directions for frying chicken included this: The pan should contain enough oil so that the chicken floats freely (Crisco preferred). It wasn’t until we had used an entire 48 oz. bottle of Crisco, and our chicken still was not floating freely, that I realized the magnitude of that directive. Southerners love their oil.