Coast to Coast, we are a nation of local tastes and conspicuous calories.

From Rochester, New York's Garbage Plate and Detroit, Michigan's Boogaloo sandwich, to Hawaii's Spam Musubi and Biloxi, Mississippi's Koolickles, our regional foods in the United States are deeply embedded into our local

culinary consciousness.

These hometown delicacies are a marriage of cultures, subtleties of tradition, local ingredients, and, above all, community. These morsels of scale-tipping pride are equal parts civic symbols, edible tourist attractions, and cultural obsessions.

This book features the birthplace of many of the foods we love. Some seemingly strange combinations are hard to get your head around until you take your first bite. Please note: none of them will make you skinny.

These recipes, which I've been collecting for decades from many long-lost sources, are an homage to our immense bounty of our great country's uber-local foods and a great excuse to putter in the kitchen.