Although my mother was a good cook, she was a better supervisor of the series of live-in cooks the Meltons employed, and never failed to inspire them to the culinary heights of which they were capable.  But she never really mastered all of the Southern specialties my father loved. She once asked her mother-in-law how to make those gorgeously flaky beaten biscuits.  Miss Rose's technique was to take handful of this, a pinch of that, knead it until it felt right, and bake it until it was done.  Try as she might my mother could never master it.  In fact, one might say that all things Southern proved difficult for her.