Poverty still exists.

A Pecan Pickling Glazed Sugary Journey is a reminder that places with lean incomes-supported by an ethic of love and benevolence served over hot biscuits, pork chops, sweet potatoes, hand spun molasses, and a tall glass of iced tea-tend to disrupt the norm.

As a little girl, my reality was growing up in a rural, disadvantaged community of color, struggling through years of persistent poverty. Prerequisites needed for success were abstract notions of living beyond the fields and the hard work of tenant farming. The gift of vision was from a teen mom determined to leave poverty and follow a dream and two godly grandparents with a fourth and seventh grade education. My "arising" out of a state of poverty and into an"awakening" of sorts, was because of her-my mother-and them-my grandparents.