Last few months been very...

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Welcome to Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living.

I'm Sid Evans, editor-in-chief of Southern Living magazine.

And in this episode, I'm talking with someone who's best known as one of the anchors of the Today Show on NBC.

Hoda Kotby was raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, but she also spent plenty of summer vacations visiting family in Egypt, trips that gave her a unique perspective

on the world. She worked as a local reporter in small towns such as Greenville, Mississippi,

in Fort Myers, Florida. But it was her six years at WWL in New Orleans that led her to fall in love with a place

that now feels like a second home.

Hoda talked to me about her best friend, Karen Swenson, who just wrote a story about her in

Southern Living, the Baklava recipe passed down from her mother, and the way her father's untimely

death in 1986 affected the course of her life. All that and how she finds inspiration in every

day on a very special Biscuits and Jam. Hoda Kotby, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.

Sid, I can't believe I'm on with you. How are you? I'm great. I'm great. The last time I saw you, we were in New Orleans doing a photo shoot for Southern Living, and you were dancing with the jazz bands on the street at about nine of the morning.

Can I tell you something? We found my happy place. You know what I'd love about that? First of all,

we're dancing with a jazz band. And don't just say me, Sid. There were others participating.

I think you might have been in that number. But what I love is like, people come out of their houses.

People are walking down the street carrying a croissant going, oh, what's happening here?

It was such a fun shoot and just a fun day with you guys in what is arguably, I think, the best city on earth.

It was so great, and it just felt like an impromptu street party, you know, that just sort of formed, as happens in New Orleans.

...