I was spending a few minutes visiting with our friend, food/lifestyle blogger, chef in the making, and soon to be network television culinary queen Jill McCoy about why we eat what we eat.

Obviously we eat like tourists when we go somewhere. We eat like kids when it's something that our Mother makes. We eat like fans when we are at a festival or sporting event. How do we eat when we need to feel better about ourselves?

That's where this edition of our Food Friday series began to take shape. Comfort food is just that. It is the foods and flavors that we associated the most with feeling good when the world is not treating us with kindness. For a lot of people in South Louisiana comfort food might be a gumbo or etouffee. For me, I can find comfort in the most simplest of sandwiches, the grilled cheese.

I asked Jill if she had any suggestions on how to take the sandwich that got me through many a minimum wage paycheck and make it sparkle with a bit of a gourmet flair. She did me one better with this week's recipe. It's a grown up version of another Deep South favorite, pimento cheese.

I know with Festival International, Cajun Woodstock, the Etouffee Festival and probably six or seven other celebrations going on this weekend you might not be needing to cook at all. But when Monday night or Tuesday after a day of hauling kids comes along, you're going to thank me. You will also want to thank Jill for this fantastic culinary connection to a time in your life when paying bills and doing laundry were the furthest things from your mind.

 

**Jill McCoy is a former announcer at 97.3 The Dawg who has turned her focus to cooking. She is currently enrolled at a prestigious culinary school in Austin TX. She also works in the kitchen at one of Austin’s finest restaurants. Jill also maintains her own food and lifestyle blog, Salt and Pepper 2 Taste. She is a regular contributor to 97.3 The Dawg every Friday**

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