I met award-winning cookbook author Virginia Willis about a month ago at IACP Portland, and within seconds of meeting, we were giggling about….oh I don’t even remember! After a couple glasses of wine, chocolate bar and bite after bite of seafood cooked on salt blocks, courtesy of the fabulous Mark Bitterman, selmelier (yes! a salt expert!), specifics were forgotten and all I can say was that a good time was had by all.

Virginia was Martha Stewart’s former kitchen director, and book, Bon Appetit, Y’all: Three Generations of Southern Cooking was an instant hit…and now it’s become one of my favorites. So far, Cola Glazed Baked Wings and Dirty Rice have each been made and ravenously consumed by my family.

How can you not love a woman dressed in nothing but collard greens!? If you have a chance, come and visit her blog. If I lived next door to this lady, I’d never leave her doorstep.

I’m planning a trip to Atlanta soon,  and she doesn’t know it yet, but I’m stopping at her house first to get fed. We vowed that the next time we would see each other, I would teach her more about blogging and she would bake me a pie.

Don’t tell her I’ve got the better end of the deal!

How to make Cola Glazed Baked Wings

Simple ingredients! I bet Dr. Pepper would work just as well.

Simmer the sweet cola sauce:

Stir in as much jalapeno as you want:

Let cool a bit and then toss with wings:

Bake, flip and bake more:

And that’s it!