Twenty-three years, 115,000 miles, four vans, 35,000 phone calls. That’s what it took for my best friend, Barbara, and me to collect the tastiest recipes this country has to offer. Seventeen thousand of them, to be exact. We were just two churchgoing Mississippi housewives looking for something to do after our kids were grown. We loved cooking, so we put together a cookbook of the best Mississippi recipes. That was easy—I could have told you right off the bat what the best recipes from my home state are—like shrimp and grits or baked catfish. But what about Wilmington, Delaware, say, or Pocatello, Idaho? I wasn’t even sure where Pocatello was.

    Then my husband, Barney, suggested that Barbara and I travel to other states to find out what their favorite foods were. It made sense—along with cooking, traveling was one of our favorite things. But could we really do this? Leave our husbands and homes and journey across the country for weeks at a time?
    We bought a big old gray van and filled it with supplies. Pots and pans for cooking, coolers packed with food, maps and travel guides and boxes of cookbooks we could sell along the way. We froze meals for our husbands and set off down the highway, one state at a time.

    At first we felt a little vulnerable, two women on the road in a used van, driving so many miles into unknown territory. For instance, we were covering Florida when we got lost in the Everglades. It was the dead of night, only dark swamp for miles and miles. “I’m scared, Gwen,” Barbara said. “Me too,” I replied. Then Barbara reached into the glove compartment—and pulled out our hymnal. “Maybe this will help,” she said. We started to sing, “Amazing grace…” It was calming, no matter how bad we may have sounded. Barbara and I sang hymns until we found our way back to the main highway. It’s almost impossible to be afraid when you’re singing hymns. Try it sometime.

    We had a scare on another lonely highway, this time way up in Maine. Lost again, we were suddenly surrounded by a motorcycle gang—about 100 tattooed, men and women, headbands, chains, leather jackets and all. We pulled into a gas station. So did they. Lord, you need to be with us now, I prayed. I took a deep breath and asked one of the bikers, “Excuse me. We’re lost. Could you help us?” Right away the man noticed my accent. “What are you doing all the way up here?” he wanted to know. We told him about our quest. Not only did he send us in the right direction, but the bikers swapped their favorite recipes with us. Turns out bikers love to cook too!

    Everywhere we went, people shared not just their recipes, but their lives. We spent an evening with an Amish family in Virginia, tasting their delicious homemade fruit pies, strawberry jam and smooth apple butter. We met the proud farmers of a 97-pound, blue ribbon-winning cabbage at the state fair in Palmer, Alaska. We slurped some creamy clam “chowdah” in Boston. Underneath the banyan trees on Hawaii’s Big Island, a woman gave us sweet pineapple muffins and the story about how her father got there (eight months on a boat from Portugal).

    We started out as a couple of housewives searching for a taste of America’s cuisine. What we got was a taste of America: its people, culture and beauty. Name a state and we will tell you our favorite dish from there—and share a story as well. Hot cheese in a jar (from Texas) became a staple in our van wherever we went. My grandkids love Nebraska’s walking tacos. Wasp’s nest cake from Indiana has only four ingredients (vanilla pudding, milk, yellow cake mix and butterscotch morsels)—easy and tasty. And, oh, my, the almond buttercream cake from California is to die for! Delicious souvenirs—each taste a discovery of how diverse and surprising our country can be.