Black-Eyed Peas and Turnip Greens


Book Description

"A better sister novel for To Kill a Mockingbird, this southern bildungsroman, Black-Eyed Peas and Turnip Greens written by 92-year-old first-time author Bonnie Smith, plants our imaginations vividly in the soil of her poverty-stricken childhood and develops in us not pity but endearing admiration. Both a raw confessional and tale of triumph, Smith's voice is as fresh and flourishing as her first day of school amid violent bullies and shaming teachers whose relentless taunting only serve to fertilize a bounty of inner strength that will see her from coast to coast through decades of anti-female working conditions, failed marriages, and drug-abusing children. What most amazes and inspires in this sometimes funny, always generous, and deeply soul-searching autobiography, is that Smith remains thankful for the scarlet "P" that poverty etched upon her mind. I want all my high school students to read it as soon as possible, while the author lives to receive our thank you notes." Lauren Graham English Writing Instructor




Black Food


Book Description

A beautiful, rich, and groundbreaking book exploring Black foodways within America and around the world, curated by food activist and author of Vegetable Kingdom Bryant Terry. WINNER OF THE ART OF EATING PRIZE • JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe • ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time Out, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Food52, Glamour, New York Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Vice, Epicurious, Shelf Awareness, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal “Mouthwatering, visually stunning, and intoxicating, Black Food tells a global story of creativity, endurance, and imagination that was sustained in the face of dispersal, displacement, and oppression.”—Imani Perry, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University In this stunning and deeply heartfelt tribute to Black culinary ingenuity, Bryant Terry captures the broad and divergent voices of the African Diaspora through the prism of food. With contributions from more than 100 Black cultural luminaires from around the globe, the book moves through chapters exploring parts of the Black experience, from Homeland to Migration, Spirituality to Black Future, offering delicious recipes, moving essays, and arresting artwork. As much a joyful celebration of Black culture as a cookbook, Black Food explores the interweaving of food, experience, and community through original poetry and essays, including "Jollofing with Toni Morrison" by Sarah Ladipo Manyika, "Queer Intelligence" by Zoe Adjonyoh, "The Spiritual Ecology of Black Food" by Leah Penniman, and "Foodsteps in Motion" by Michael W. Twitty. The recipes are similarly expansive and generous, including sentimental favorites and fresh takes such as Crispy Cassava Skillet Cakes from Yewande Komolafe, Okra & Shrimp Purloo from BJ Dennis, Jerk Chicken Ramen from Suzanne Barr, Avocado and Mango Salad with Spicy Pickled Carrot and Rof Dressing from Pierre Thiam, and Sweet Potato Pie from Jenné Claiborne. Visually stunning artwork from such notables as Black Panther Party creative director Emory Douglas and artist Sarina Mantle are woven throughout, and the book includes a signature musical playlist curated by Bryant. With arresting artwork and innovative design, Black Food is a visual and spiritual feast that will satisfy any soul.




Hamhocks, Turnip Greens & Blackeyed Peas


Book Description

Lee Robert Jackson's ability to detect spoken lies by the odor emitting from the speaker brings a rush of federal agents to Farmers Mill in an effort to hire the young farmer or to prevent him from being used against their agencies. Seedy characters mingle with FBI agents and CIA operatives in a battle of wits. Fear of lie detecting creates conspiracies from the White House to Congress. Bureaucrats fear the orderly function of their activities hangs in the balance. Jackson must earn money to regain Four Oaks, Lucy Crabtree's family farm before the fiery redhead will agree to marry him. CIA's beautiful McCoy twins set a trap for him as Sherry, the judge's daughter initiates a campaign of her own to acquire Four Oaks for herself.




Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking


Book Description

The highly anticipated cookbook from the immensely popular food blog Minimalist Baker, featuring 101 all-new simple, vegan recipes that all require 10 ingredients or less, 1 bowl or 1 pot, or 30 minutes or less to prepare Dana Shultz founded the Minimalist Baker blog in 2012 to share her passion for simple cooking and quickly gained a devoted worldwide following. Now, in this long-awaited debut cookbook, Dana shares 101 vibrant, simple recipes that are entirely plant-based, mostly gluten-free, and 100% delicious. Packed with gorgeous photography, this practical but inspiring cookbook includes: • Recipes that each require 10 ingredients or less, can be made in one bowl, or require 30 minutes or less to prepare. • Delicious options for hearty entrées, easy sides, nourishing breakfasts, and decadent desserts—all on the table in a snap • Essential plant-based pantry and equipment tips • Easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes with standard and metric ingredient measurements Minimalist Baker’s Everyday Cooking is a totally no-fuss approach to cooking for anyone who loves delicious food that happens to be healthy too.




The Cooking Gene


Book Description

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts




Soul Food


Book Description

2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award, Reference and Scholarship Honor Book for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library Association In this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity. Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.




Turnip Greens & Tortillas


Book Description

From the chef/restaurateur of a Bon Appétit “Top American Restaurant,” southern fare with a Mexican flair that is “thrifty, practical and delicious” (New York Times). USA Today called Taqueria del Sol “a runaway success.” Bon Appétit wrote: “Move over, Chipotle!” The fast-casual food of Eddie Hernandez, the James Beard-nominated chef/co-owner of the restaurant, lands on the commonalities of Southern and Mexican food, with dishes like Memphis barbecue pork tacos, chicken pot pie served in a “bowl” of a puffed tortilla, turnip greens in “pot likker” spiked with chiles, or the “Eddie Palmer,” sweet tea with a jab of tequila. Eddie never hesitates to break with purists to make food taste better, adding sugar to creamy grits to balance the jalapeños, or substituting tomatillos in fried green tomatoes for a more delicate texture. Throughout, “Eddie’s Way” sidebars show how to make each dish even more special. “Eddie Hernandez cooks my type of food—honest, thrifty, and full of flavor—using fresh, inexpensive, and ordinary ingredients.” —Jacques Pépin “In our world, Eddie is a culinary innovator as inspiring as Thomas Keller, René Redzepi, or Madhur Jaffrey.” —Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors, The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen “From refried black-eyed peas to chicken–green chile potpies in puffy tortilla shells, Turnip Greens & Tortillas showcases honest and joyous cooking from the modern South.” —John T. Edge, author, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South “This book resonates with recipes that glorify home cooking from the South as well as Mexico and melds them together in a deliciously satisfying way.” —Nathalie Dupree, author, Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking




The Minimalist Kitchen


Book Description

The practical art of making more with less--in the kitchen! Melissa Coleman, the creator of the popular design and lifestyle blog The Faux Martha, shares her refreshingly simple approach to cooking that delivers beautiful and satisfying meals using familiar ingredients and minimal kitchen tools. The Minimalist Kitchen includes 100 wholesome recipes that use Melissa's efficient cooking techniques, and the results are anything but ordinary. You'll find Biscuits with Bourbon-Blueberry Quick Jam, Pesto Garden Pasta with an easy homemade pesto, Humble Chuck Roast that's simple to prepare and so versatile, Roasted Autumn Sweet Potato Salad, Stovetop Mac and Cheese, and Two-Bowl Carrot Cupcakes. While The Minimalist Kitchen helps tackle one of the home's biggest problem areas Ñthe kitchenÑthis book goes beyond the basics of clearing out and cleaning up, it also gives readers practical tips to maintain this simplified way of life. Melissa shows you how to shop, stock your pantry, meal plan without losing your mind, and most importantly, that delicious food doesnÕt take tons of ingredients or gadgets to prepare. This streamlined way of cooking is a breath of fresh air in modern lives where clutter and distraction can so easily take over.




Sweet Potato Soul


Book Description

100 vegan recipes that riff on Southern cooking in surprising and delicious ways, beautifully illustrated with full-color photography. Jenné Claiborne grew up in Atlanta eating classic Soul Food—fluffy biscuits, smoky sausage, Nana's sweet potato pie—but thought she'd have to give all that up when she went vegan. As a chef, she instead spent years tweaking and experimenting to infuse plant-based, life-giving, glow-worthy foods with the flavor and depth that feeds the soul. In Sweet Potato Soul, Jenné revives the long tradition of using fresh, local ingredients creatively in dishes like Coconut Collard Salad and Fried Cauliflower Chicken. She improvises new flavors in Peach Date BBQ Jackfruit Sliders and Sweet Potato-Tahini Cookies. She celebrates the plant-based roots of the cuisine in Bootylicious Gumbo and savory-sweet Georgia Watermelon & Peach Salad. And she updates classics with Jalapeño Hush Puppies, and her favorite, Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls. Along the way, Jenné explores the narratives surrounding iconic and beloved soul food recipes, as well as their innate nutritional benefits—you've heard that dandelion, mustard, and turnip greens, okra, and black eyed peas are nutrition superstars, but here's how to make them super tasty, too. From decadent pound cakes and ginger-kissed fruit cobblers to smokey collard greens, amazing crabcakes and the most comforting sweet potato pie you'll ever taste, these better-than-the-original takes on crave-worthy dishes are good for your health, heart, and soul.




Paula Deen


Book Description

Do you know the real Paula Deen? You may think you know the butter-loving, finger-licking, joke-cracking queen of melt-in-your-mouth Southern cuisine. You may have even visited The Lady & Sons to taste for yourself the down-home delicacies that made her famous and even heard some version of her Cinderella story (a single mom with two teenage sons started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant, a fairy-tale second marriage, and wildly popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune. Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and lows of her life in the inimitable charming and irreverent style that you know from her television shows and personal appearances. She talks about long childhood summers spent in a bathing suit and roller skates and hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a buzzing high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her beloved parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom. Of course, you can't get by on charm alone: as Paula has learned, you need plenty of willpower, hard work, and, above all, the love and support of family and friends to finance, sustain, and run a successful restaurant. In each chapter, Paula shares new recipes: there's serious comfort food like her momma's Chocolate-Dippy Doughnuts, Courage Chili for when you know life's going to get tough, Sexy Oxtails for seducing that special someone, and the recipe for her new mother-in-law's Banana Nut Delight Cake that Paula finally got just right. And you'll love the never-before-seen photos of her family. In this memoir, Paula Deen speaks as frankly and intimately as few women in the public eye have ever dared. Whether she's telling tales of good times or bad, her story is proof that the old-fashioned American dream is alive and kicking, and there still is such a thing as a real-life happy ending.