The United Plates of New Jersey (NY Times)

Some of my favorite places to be include Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria, NYC, Washington, DC (away from the politics), Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Francisco, Charleston, Block Island, the Oregon Coast, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Santa Barbara, Portland (both of them), Scotland, Wales and Cooperstown, New York.

But I have pretty much lived in New Jersey my whole life. It is home.
So, there is a small (very small) part of me that likes to come to the defense of the too much maligned state. Yes, it is too congested, taxes are too high, the politics too often are unsavory, but it is still home.

A defense for New Jersey -at least for the culinary diversity of the state - is to be found in this Escapes Section article in The New York Times of March 28:

"Outside the cookie-cutter turnpike service areas, it's a culinary melting pot - from hamburgers to haggis to shoofly pie"

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/travel/escapes/28turnpike.html