To call Laurance Daltroff Triplette’s Gimme Some Sugar, Darlin’ a Southern cookbook doesn’t quite cut it. There are recipes, to be sure — nearly 800(!), in fact, covering all the essentials and then some, from pralines to pumpkin dressing. But no mistaking it: Gimme Some Sugar, Darlin’ serves, too, as a love letter to Triplette’s family and to the region and it’s also a hilarious primer to living in the South.
Triplette, who was born in Memphis, lived in Charlotte, and moved to Oxford a few years back, took some time to answer questions for Hungry Memphis.
There are probably a million people out there who have shoeboxes and notebooks full of family recipes they’ve been planning to compile in a book. You actually did it. What makes you so special?
Aside from the fact that I’m a Southern diva, obsessively compulsive about keeping family together, connecting the past to the present, and keeping files of everything in alphabetical, color-coded order? My primary mandate as an ADD adult has been to finish what I start. It only took me about five years to finish this project. That’s AFTER letting the files age in a huge box for years beforehand. As I always say, just give me time and focus, and we’re golden.
