Jay loves the fall, but hates it, too. It's a political thing, trying to maintain the delicate balance of family sensibilities with the need to remain under half a ton overweight.

Fall has some great stuff going for it. There's the wondrous spectacle of the leaves turning orange, red, yellow and whatever. Jay's often seen - and photographed - blue and purple ones - always a joy, and the prospect of cooler days, welcome after having suffered through another of the Deep South's infamous summers.

Sadly, there's the annual Season of Food, too. That's the period of gluttony between summer salad 'cause it's too hot to even eat, and winter comfort snacks in between the hearty soups, stews, and chowders. Jambalaya, even. Jay's always been a person of the large persuasion, some of the time - like now, for instance - holding down the higher end of the category with gusto. It runs in the family, so Jay likes to say he got it honest.

Take Thanksgiving, for example. Much is made of turkey and dressing, but T-giving dinner at Jay's Grandma's house - a tradition that defines traditions - always included copious other food of many kinds for copious guests, all of whom, especially darling Jay, were expected to bestow copious compliments on the chef - chefs, plural, in most cases. Jay's other cooking-inclined relatives brought along their respective specialties and presented them proudly. If there was some to take home, they were saddened, wondering what went wrong with the preparation.

Here's a typical example: You only had three helpings of (whatever) didn't you like it? No kidding, not exaggering one bit! Hey, how ya doing, I brought all your favorites. True, no doubt, and Jay had - well, has - lots of favorites. He's way fond of dessert, though he can put away considerable tonnages of other victuals, too. Then there's the unintentionally backhanded "My, you've gotten a lot bigger since I saw you at (whatever event). Do you want another slice of pie? I made it special 'cause I knew you'd be here."

No kidding, all these are real, quoted from among many sad episodes that haunt Jay's memories. In later years, Jay tried to mitigate the expected consumption in the hope of being able to breathe during the afternoon of wheezing that followed T-day feasts. This plan didn't work. "You're not eating much, are you sick? Let me see if you have a fever. Eat something. You'll feel better." Well, he got it honest, like he says.

Jay often wonders. He wonders a great deal, and pretty much weekly he wonders why restaurants insist on being closed when he wants to eat. Jay's no stranger to the art of cooking. He knows how to assemble a sandwich, chop a proper salad and apply salad dressing, preferably in copious amounts. He knows how to marinate, how to broil, bake, and stir-fry. He especially knows not to, most especially in the summertime when it's blazes hot outside and heating up the stove makes it even hotter inside, as well as putting a strain on the airconditioning that's readily reflected in the electric bill. So aside from being too lazy to cook - the truth outs - Jay likes going out to eat for other reasons. Coolth conservation in the summertime, and a handy reason to escape the confines of home otherwise. He also likes walk-in-sit-down restaurants and mostly doesn't relate to drive-through food.

Not to say Jay doesn't like fast food. Indeed, that's his most frequent choice because it's simple, uncluttered, and predictably mediocre-at-worst. Jay likes food and other things - life, really - uncomplicated. He doesn't need hype to tell if food is good, and hype doesn't make the dishes taste any better anyway. That "garden fresh salad" as promoted by the picture-perfect theme-restaurant menus is usually dunked in nasty chemicals to keep it from spoiling. Not interested. One thing Jay has learned in years of restaurants: it never looks like the picture.

Mostly, Jay doesn't care for fancy food. Or things that look like they might bite, or food that spent too much time near the pepper pot, or disgusting looking creatures passed off as delicacies. You know the ones. From years of vegetarianism and near-so, Jay's not a fan of steaks, but he can be tempted now and then. He generally tries to hold the calorie count down, at least out of scientific notation, and lately has to skip everything that even vaguely resembles dessert, by far his favorite stuff. Lately, Jay's become far more predictable than he likes to admit, but he's mostly a night person. He's frequently hungry when most restaurants aren't open. Ever been to a "late night" place late at night? They're always packed to the rafters. So why, Jay wonders, are all the other places closed? Surely they'd like to serve up some food and rake in some dough from the late night rush.

Jay fondly remembers a time when there were many fewer corporate restaurants in Columbia. Better days for sure, and better food and more choices to boot. The Capitol Café, which was open all night, served up an extensive menu of food from a multiple-page menu stitched into green plastic. So now we have an endless array of characterless, close-at-ten-o'clock-sharp, corporate exemplaries with grills and fryers and a limited menu of stuff some ad agency pushes very hard. Open till ten, or maybe you can queue up for an hour at the drive-through window while the minimal staff chews gum. The late-night choices continue to dwindle.

The procrastination gremlins have been having their way lately, so here's Jay again, typing away at this blog despite having many other things he ought to be doing. We left off last time in a hurry as a result of previous procrastination episodes, before taking up the Conch Republic.

In Jay's view, the Florida Keys have a big problem: Florida. Namely, you have to travel through all of Florida to get to the good part: Key Largo and parts south. Travel in the state is impeded by enormous amounts of traffic, mostly homicidal drivers of large, obnoxious vehicles. Well, Florida has more problems than that - and we won't discuss politics here - but when it comes to the Keys, getting there is a very long drive. Understatement of the week.

Jay's made the drive many times, mostly in the scorchiest days of summer when the only the heartiest of Southerners venture out. Jay discovered the Keys in summer in the mid-1970s. He'd just bought his first Hondacar, a yellow Civic CVCC 5-Speed with no airconditioning, which he chose for high fuel efficiency so he could roam around on the cheap. He met a friend in Miami and for fun they trekked to Key West to see if local yarns about it were true (they were!). In those days all the bridges were narrow wooden affairs, rather scary, especially the infamous seven-mile bridge. Jay was happy to be driving a narrow car. Jay and his friend dined like royalty in Key Largo - a quaint little German restaurant where the friendly owners grandmothered the diners. The food was exquisite.

They checked out John Pennekamp Coral Reef Undersea Park, but did so from the bank, and climbed its lookout tower, and made a note to come back again for a better look. Wandering around all the Keys in turn, large and small, they eventually landed in that other world known in this one as Key West. Amid many creatures of a time long past, aging hippies mostly, Jay felt at home, especially when he found out that the Big Event of the Day was the sunset. Jay's a fan of sunsets. Key West's locals and tourists gathered daily on the docks at Mallory Square to admire the sunset. Local sailboaters and colorful characters took turns riding off into the sunset so the tourists would get nice snapshots. The Cookie Lady peddled cookies from her bicycle's basket, and musicians congregated to jam and jive. In short, a good time was had by all. Jay and his friend went back to Miami with smiles on their faces and stories to tell.

Besides Ernest Hemingway's cats, its bars, and some other things, Key West is famous for Key Lime pie and Conch Fritters. First the fritters. The pretty sea shells that she sells you by the seashore and you hold up to your ear to hear the roar of the ocean? Those are conchs. You coax one of those defenseless little critters out of its shell, batter it, fry it up and smack it on a bun with condiments of your choice. Ding! Conch fritter. Jay admits to consuming exactly one conch fritter - when in Rome - but after seeing them being roasted in their shells at a Long Key campground he swore off permanently. Too barbaric.

Key Lime Pie, on the other hand, is a delicacy Jay can get into. In fact, it was first on the list of local foods to try when Jay and his friend first visited Key West. They stopped for afternoon snack at a disreputable dive - because that's where his friend insisted on stopping - and surrounded a memorably unmemorable meal followed by absolutely divine Key Lime Pie. The place's signs touted their pie as original, genuine, native, home-made, and everything else that gets the tastebuds into high gear. It was.

For the Key lime pie uninitiated, don't think green fruits and Corona cerveza. Limes and Key limes are different fruits altogether. Key limes are much yellower than green limes, and they're much sweeter, with a distinctive taste more like lemon chiffon than plain ol' lime. Jay and his friend returned to Miami a few days later, raving about the pie - naturally they ate it constantly at many different places. "Oh," said his friend's mother, "I've heard about that. Let me see." She walked out into her back yard in Coral Gables and picked some Key limes off her tree! In a couple hours she proudly served home made, phenomenally delectable Key lime pie. What a treat. Jay has never had better, and he's tried many, many times.

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.