The day after Thanksgiving we went for lunch to Anchuca, an antebellum mansion in downtown Vicksburg that is now a bed and breakfast with a cafe. The dining room was small and, frankly, I was expecting small salads and cucumber sandwiches or the like. Erica and I got a bowl of seafood gumbo and a panini, "The Vick" to share. The gumbo was, oddly, free of rice, but had a good flavor and an acceptable amount of seafood. The Vick was a cheeseburger panini -- topped with both Cheddar and Swiss and caramelized onions and mushrooms. It was, simply, incredible. The onions and mushrooms created a delicious sauce for the sandwich, and the Ciabatta bread was the best I've ever had.

McAlister's is a chain, and has an aggressive expansion plan that means that it soon won't be a Southern-only thing. But for now, they are, I've never eaten there before, and they have sweet tea -- so I'll count them. McAlister's has sandwiches and soup, but their specialty is huge baked potatoes with a variety of toppings. I got Erica's favorite -- the Spud Max: "nearly 2 pounds" of baked potato, turkey, ham, cheese, olives, sour cream, crimminy -- I can't remember what else. I'm still full. And the sweet tea is great -- not too sweet.

The day after Thanksgiving, we were in Jackson, MS to see Jimbo Mathus Knockdown South at Hal and Mal's. Hal and Mal's is a large multi-room restaurant and venue and the back room where Jimbo was playing didn't serve food (nor have draft beer). But we were able to go over to the other side of the restaurant and order some take-out and bring it back (which is why the presentation is so... styrofoam). The fried food sampler was everything we could have wanted from such a thing, including fried pickles, everything coated in the same flour batter. The red beans and rice came with some fairly tasteless french bread and a surprisingly large sausage.

Jimbo Mathus has gotten a lot more Mississippi redneck in both dress and music since his Squirrel Nut Zippers days, and both suit him well. Things seemed a little shakey for the first couple of songs, but the band seemed to warm up and really got into a groove. Viva la swamp rock!

The Reids' long time friend Daniel Boone (yes, related) has opened a coffeeshop in downtown Vicksburg, underneath the art gallery, the Attic Gallery, owned by his wife, Lesley Silver. Highway 61 Coffee is a cozy little place decorated with the same kind of folk art found upstairs. We're coffee snobs and I'm not giving in to familial loyalty when I say that they pull a nice shot of espresso. We've been there at once a day every day of this trip.

We're headed to Vicksburg, Mississippi and then New Orleans for an extended Thanksgiving holiday. Erica's going to be showing me all her favorite spots and we're going to be eating our way throughout the South.

On the drive down from Chicago to Vicksburg we stopped in Memphis at Rendezvous for a late second dinner. Downtown Memphis on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is pretty dead, and what you'd think is the front door of Rendezvous directs you go around the corner to the alley. Around that corner, past some dumpsters, and it all started to feel like this might be a fool's errand. But as soon as we got inside, we could hear cheerful chatter from a still-busy dining room.

Rendezvous has a fairly short menu and the menu section of "Other Items" has the sub-head, "strange as it may seem, some folks don't eat pork ribs every chance they get" and we decided not to be those strange folks -- we both got a small order of ribs. Their ribs come with a pretty thick dry rub and the sauce is on the side -- one hot and one not -- which I think might be the perfect arrangement for me. As odd as it may sound for a ribs fan, I'm not really a fan of messy food. The plate came with two small sides, an oddly yellow cole slaw and a delightfully greasy pork-and-beans.