"You'd do just the same," Lewis says.
"Oh please," Peacock retorts, though a moment later he whispers to me, "You know, I probably would."
They worked well together, and soon enough they were arranging meetings at conferences and food festivals whenever they had the opportunity. In 1993, the two helped found the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Cooking. The relationship has grown to become far more personal than professional, though, and if the two share ideals concerning cuisine—they are working together on a new cookbook—it's easy to see that the expressions of this bond are mostly of the kind a mother might share with her favorite son—the details and intimacies of time, a way of doing this or that, a special dish here or there.
In a quiet moment, I ask Lewis whether, after all these years of effort and work, she considers herself to be an artist.
"An artist?"
"Work can be art," I say.
"Gee, I don't know." Then, after a while, she says, "I don't think I am an artist. I don't worry about that kind of thing, I guess. I never really have. I don't have regrets. I just think about doing things right. I do what I feel like I should do, and the way I should do it. Then I go on to something else. If that's art."
I nod, thinking it is. Peacock comes by, bearing plates of dessert. Enough talk, for now. We each take one, and just eat.
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