The many better-traveled people out there are by now cringing that they can't pack off hate email for Jay's meager travels being touted in the previous post. Fact is, Jay's been around mostly locally, and had a great time doing so. He'd rather explore the streets of Pageland, South Carolina, for the season's best watermelon or ride the Ridge west toward Leesville and Gilbert for July's best peaches than put up with leg-cramping, knee-aching, interminably boring flights to parts of the planet beyond the ponds.

Pageland, as it turns out, is on Jay's list of favorite places for the good times he had there. It's a cute, quaint, friendly, definitively small town. Jay's in no danger of moving there, the locals will be delighted to learn, but he's visited many times and enjoyed every trip. He's been to Boston many times, too, and big city that it is he enjoyed those visits. That was before Yoyo Ma, one of Jay's current heroes, played Bach on the cello for Beantown's benighted city council. Now, Jay'd have to think carefully before visiting Boston again. Well, okay, visit might be okay but calling on the city council is out of the question. Not that they care.

Jay had a great time in San Francisco, including a culinary adventure already detailed, and would like to visit again, stay longer, and maybe leave wiser but leave just the same. Chicago, too. Jay got snowed on there once in April. April! What a ridiculous time of year to have cold weather, much less snow. But Jay likes huge, hulking Chicago, having visited there many times and never once going shopping in the touristy designer shops area. Put Charlottesville, Virginia, on the like-em-a-lot list, too. Great small town that thinks it's a big city. Or maybe wishes it was.

Curiously, both times Jay's been to Virginia Beach, Virginia, it snowed. Well, it was January. Nice place, and Jay enjoyed going there but found it difficult to get comfy with snow and ice in the way.

Time's short this week, so this discussion has to hold for another installment.

We haven't yet explored Jay's passion for the Keys, his unenthusiasm for Jackson, Mississippi, or his fondness for Charlotte, North Carolina. Here's a picture from Newport, Rhode Island, another of Jay's favorites, to tide you over till next week.

Jay's been around. His family often ventured to Folly Beach, South Carolina, for vacations. That tradition took a small break in the 1950s when Hurricane Hazel eliminated the wooden ocean front hotel that the family frequented. The hurricane arrived while the family was IN the hotel. Jay's father, ever mindful of the weather, noticed the unbeachability that had beset the trip for several days. He gave up waiting impatiently for the weather to clear and packed up the Studebaker for the trip home. By that time ocean waves were lapping onto the narrow lane that led to the mainland. The rain was extremely heavy but he managed to get all of us home. Wet, but safe.

After that experience, annual beach outings moved to Myrtle Beach a couple of times, but settled on Savanna Beach and Tybee Island, Georgia, when Jay's favorite aunt moved there with her new husband Bill.

Jay liked Savannah for its donut shops, and he enjoyed the drive to his aunt's house for its down-home Southern scenery, mostly trees and cotton fields. A few times he went to Savannah with his grandmother on the passenger train - they still had those back then. Jay took the train to New Orleans, and to Dallas and back several times. He's also enjoyed the wondrous and famous Silver Meteor to parts south, namely Florida, as well as to Washington, DC, and Richmand, Virginia, from which a couple of times he took a train to Charlottesville, Virginia.

He does not like flying. Or airports, or crummy scrunched up seats with no legroom. But Jay has yielded and flown to places too far for car or train. After driving to California once and only once - and back - Jay's sworn off of deserts. He's seen one, and that's enough.

Some years ago, Jay roamed extensively around these United States. By Hondacar. Houston, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville, Orlando, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, and lots of places between. Discoursing on the wonders of Amiga computers and peddling his magazine and his books. Lately, he pretty much confines his travels to 'round town. Too many diets to watch, too many pills to take, and not enough driving time between requisite rest stops.

Jay's Sainted Mother long ago went on to that Big Hair Salon in the Sky, leaving this particular universe a sadder if not much wiser place. So on this, the annual Mothers' Day celebration, Jay surrounds himself with comfort food and mostly lays low.

He and his Mama had their differences, often about inconsequential things owing to a mile-wide streak of stubborn in both. Most of the time, they patched their disagreements with mute apologies and moved on to other matters. And to items they could agree on, like the delectability of Mama's home cooking. Born in 19(mumble), Mrs. Gross was the older-sister-by-five-years to Jay's favorite aunt. Their mother was also noted for her cooking and taught them well, but all three adopted different styles and used different recipes for just about everything.

Take cornbread, for example. Go ahead, take three pieces. Among the three consummate cooks, no two made the concoction the same way, although all tasted great. For reasons known only to their egos, they often sought Jay's opinion on their dishes - soliciting compliments, of course, and threatening to topple the delicate balance of power. Jay could not like one over the other, you see, but fortunately didn't have to as all the dishes were great. The challenge, often insurmountable, was to say as little as possible, preferably nothing, without giving offense.

The competition for Jay's favor exacerbated at holiday time - like Mothers Day. In fact, Jay came to dislike family occasions because of the intense pressure to favor one cook over one or more of the others. Never noted for diplomacy, Jay usually managed to invent delicate ways to issue compliments to the chef without offending the other two chefs. Mostly, however, he tried to steer clear of the questions in the first place, sometimes with just as disastrous results.

Unfortunately, with food there's no sidestepping the issue. You either eat the dish or don't, and if you don't eat it you couldn't stand it. Right? In Jay's fiercely competitive family of cooks, that means ask for seconds and maybe thirds, or be accused of not liking the dish. As in: "Awww, you only ate two slices of my (pick one: peach pie, chocolate cake, fruitcake), don't you like it?" Jay's extra hearty appetite and insatiable sweet tooth saved him from having to invent excuses.

With Italian food covered for now, we move on to other fare. There's Mexican, and its corrollary Texican - slash - TexMex, to consider. Jay's palate doesn't like being singed, so the milder spiciness suits him fine. His favorite Mexican dish is Chile Relleno, a wondrous concoction prepared with roasted chile peppers and cheese. Tangy, but not painful. He also likes tamales, enchiladas, and of course tacos in their many guises.

Jay visited actual Mexico in person once, decades ago. He dined like royalty in a small place in Reynosa, Mexico, where no one spoke a word of English. Jay's learned some Spanish since then, but on the trip south, south, south from Fort Worth, Texas, his traveling partner, a professor of mathematical-type stuff and a long time friend, assured him there'd be no need for Jay to cram Spanish skills along the way, as university classes were still fresh in his mind. They drove on, and when they got to Mexico, the first test of the good professor's Spanish was a road sign that said (forgive any misspelling after all these years), "No estacionarse." Jay, who was driving, asked frantically, "What does that mean? Is this a one-way street?" The professor shrugged a "don't know." Fortunately it only meant no parking, though cars were parked all around the sign.

After several days and many other great episodes, Jay and his friend dined in the nicest restaurant they'd seen in Reynosa. Jay spotted it the night before, observing that a block-long line of well dressed Mexican families were lined up outside, waiting for tables. Jay and his friend went early, to avoid the rush. The waiter brought the menu, and Jay asked his professor friend to translate. Unfortunately, Professor Math didn't know Mexican food, and asked the waiter if he spoke English. Nope, sorry.

Undaunted, Jay looked through the menu and pointed to everything he recognized. He'd learned the word "dos," two, and repeated "dos" for each item he pointed out. The waiter jotted furiously on a pad, saying things and asking questions. Jay nodded, though he understood none of it. After much gesturing and smiling all around, the waiter went off, presumably to the kitchen. In a few minutes the feast began. Dozens of dishes, all of them delectable though Jay knows not to this day what they might have been, accompanied by an inexhaustible supply of tortillas, salsas and garnishes. And bottled water - Jay'd seen a truck unloading the huge jugs of water the day before.

Jay and the Prof are both what we call here in the South "big eaters." They consume mass quantities of food, the more if it's good, and even more if they've starved all day in anticipation of a fancy meal, as they did in Reynosa. Even so, it turned out that everything Jay pointed to on the menu was in fact a "family" meal intended for several people. After a while, Jay and the Prof asked, no, begged, the waiter to stop bringing food. With some difficulty they finally succeeded in getting him to desist. Then the Prof got worried. "Oh, no," he worried, "we've run up a huge bill and we won't have enough money and we'll be imprisoned in a foreign land, never to be heard from again."

A while later, the Prof agonizing the whole time, the waiter presented the bill. Translated from pesos to dollars, it was little more than a couple of Happy Meals on the other side of the Rio Grande. Sighs of relief. Jay and his friend left an enormous tip, and smiled all the way back to the hotel.

There isn't much Italian food that Jay not just likes, but out-and-out craves. Pizza, well, okay, if it's there it's going to be gone soon but pizza's not on Jay's uncontrollable-urge-to-consume list. Fettuccini, though. And lasagna! Italian cooking has a double delight. First, it tastes good, and second it's fun to say. Tortellini, Manicotti, Fettuccini Alfredo, Pasta Fagioli, and the ever popular Dolci, a shining example of which is Tiramisu. Trust the Italians to sprinkle extra syllables into everything so the tongue gets so tired rolling over it all that it needs some linguini alla formaggio con whateveri dothingy stuff to sustain it. Extra sauce. Pomodori, you know.

Jay also likes most Chinese food, Japanese food except sushi, Mexican food that isn't too peppered up to stay in the same room with, Indian (as in India) food, especially those unpronounceable multisyllabic bread things from the tandoori ovens, French food that doesn't come from some unappetizing creature (like escargot!) and salad. He likes Southern food, but his taste in barbecue leans toward Mongolian, though he also has a warm spot in his clogged arteries for the mustard-based style of good ol' Southern barbecue.

Given druthers, he'd rather have simple fare, nothing fancy, and mostly vegetarian. Jay likes granola, but mostly eats only shredded wheat lately, to spare his blood sugar the shock of raisins, mangoes, apricots, and dates. He springs for organic milk and produce, in the hope of not being morphed by the non-organic kind into a three-headed gnome. Or a corpse. You can't say Jay's into conspiracy theory. For one thing, conspiracy's a fact, not a theory.

For many years, Jay was indeed a strict vegetarian, and considerably healthier back then - maybe from the food but more probably from simple youthfulness. His Sainted Mother never understood. She'd always provided proper Southern fare swimming in fat and washed down with tea so sweet it'd make a stalk of sugar cane jealous. Yet, freshly out on his own and living it up in Charlotte, Jay converted to vegetarianism and wouldn't touch a potroast, much less ladle the gravy onto a bed of mashtaters. She had to be convinced it wasn't a religion. Heresy, really. Want some more roast turkey and dressing?

Being a vegetarian back then wasn't easy, especially in restaurants, and out of frustration Jay later reformed. Caved in. Sold out, as his friends accused. Still, he knows one important thing about organic foods: the stuff tastes better!

Of the meals Jay's ever had - and that's a bunch of meals - his all time favorite is a Northern Italian dinner that he surrounded in a hotel's restaurant in San Francisco in the early 1990s. For two days he had smelled the food while at a convention of Amiga computer enthusiasts where he was chalking up his alloted minutes of fame as a featured speaker. Things weren't going well, and he was trying to hold expenses down, in spite of thirteen-dollar cold turkey sandwiches in the hotel's lobby eateries. The Italian aromas enticed him, so he just had to partake. He skipped some touristy outings, shortened his stay, saved his coins and splurged the lot on his last day in the city. It was wondrous, and he doesn't regret the extravagance. He remembers the experience to this day. What food!

So far, we've covered some things Jay likes: most of Mozart's music, people of the cat persuasion, and other stuff real and virtual. Now we devote digital ink dots to that which Jay does not like. It's a capacious category, so this won't be anywhere near a thorough rollcall. Yet.

First, rutabagas, because they comprise almost all the food items on Jay's not-interested tab. Jay likes spinach, in the wonderful Popeye cartoons tradition, loves carrots and carrot juice, finds lettuce, tomatoes, and beans delectable, and readily consumes cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and - yes! - broccoli whenever possible. He relishes relishes, squashes, zuccini, 'shrooms (the edible kind, thank you), and most anything you'd find in a vegetarian dish, even sprouts in small quantities and edamame. He digs turnips, kale, mustard greens, parsleys and cabbages. Those rutabagas, turnip-like root vegetables, Jay simply does not like. Can't stand, is more like it. He limits his collard greens consumption to a single annual binge on and around the first of January. Upholding tradition, you understand, but collards isn't a don't like, just a prefer-other-things commodity.

Otherwise, there isn't much food that Jay dislikes, though he has many preferences. He prefers, for example, everything he's not supposed to have, especially desserts, more especially chocolate desserts, and even more especially chocolate cheesecake desserts with chocolate frosting on top infused with chocolate mousse and chocolate sprinkles, and chocolate syrup, and scoops - nay, gallons - of chocolate ice cream to hold it all up. Along with a chocolate smoothie to wash it down. In the glory days before he was bitten by the diabetes bug, Jay indulged in a slice of cake called "Death by Chocolate" at a Barnes & Noble café. It didn't work, he wrily pointed out, but he kept trying. His all time favorite pastry, and it's extremely difficult to pick, is pain au chocolat, a wonderful French concoction, wouldn't you know. It's called chocolatine in the South of France and sold in but two establishments local to Jay here in the South of the U.S.A.

Vive le pain.

Chocolate Heaven's a major pain to make: Laboriously convince about 422 kilograms of butter to meld with a couple grams of flour and some yeast. Coddle and bake this dough into just the right shape, and it's le crossant. Don't do it! Wrap it around a delectable concoction of extra dark chocolate, and then bake it up into the most scrumptious morsel in the known universe - chocolatine, pain au chocolat, whatever.

Jay first encountered the delectable in the 1970s in a tiny patisserie in Key West, Florida. Wandering Duval Street in search of breakfast, Jay followed his nose off the beaten path to a Frenchman's tiny bakery. Thrilled, he ordered another, and then another. Ah, but the Frenchman took offense at the reorder and refused to sell it. "This," he explained, "is a delicacy. You do not wolf them down by the dozen." Obviously, Monsieur Frenchman did not know Jay's appetite. Nor care. Jay fabricated a story about an aging relative back in the hotel and scored two more delectables to go. The Frenchman's parting comment: "Pffffft." So true.

Along with spring flowers, April brings along the birthday anniversary of Jay's favorite aunt, Vonice. Known as "Bud" to all who knew her, she gave Jay his first and favorite puppy, and always looked after his welfare.

Last time Jay saw her, she traveled 80 miles to visit while he was laid up with a Dreadful Condition, bringing good wishes and chocolate, the latter of which didn't survive the afternoon.