Cleora's Kitchens


Book Description




Cleora's Kitchen


Book Description

Cleora's Kitchens tells the story of the Black settlement of Oklahoma. Cleora's parents, children of former slaves in Texas, came with other former slaves in covered wagons for free land and the hope Oklahoma was to become a Black and Indian state. These early settlers built Black towns and successful businesses. Oklahoma did not fulfill the promise of a Black and Indian state, but these pioneers prospered and made a good life for themselves. In Tulsa, Oklahoma the Black community of Greenwood was called the Black Wall Street of America.In 1921 a terrible Race Riot destroyed much of the thriving Greenwood community. The year after the riot Cleora moved to Tulsa to help rebuild from the ashes. Cleora joined the Vernon AME church and helped to feed the struggling community from the church kitchen. Cleora's amazing culinary gifts were soon recognized and she was in demand by both black and white Tulsa. She catered the Tulsa Opera Guild as well as the Greenwood Jazz Street dances. Cab Calloway, who often played in Greenwood, said Cleora's chicken and dumplings were the best in the world. Cleora describes the life of her pioneer family and gives us family recipes not to be found anywhere else.Cleora's mother's hickory nut cake, beaten biscuits, possum grape wine, mustard greens, and famous chicken and dumplings are beyond compare. Cleora shares her famous baked fudge recipe from her bakery she opened on Greenwood. Cleora also gives us recipes she cooked for newly rich oil families, both black and white. Donald Simmons, the first Black Oil man in America, paid for the typing of Cleora's hand written story and recipes.




Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens


Book Description

As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home.




From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies


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Sheds light on the history of food, cooking, and eating. This collection of essays investigates the connections between food studies and women's studies. From women in colonial India to Armenian American feminists, these essays show how food has served as a means to assert independence and personal identity.




Jubilee


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“A celebration of African American cuisine right now, in all of its abundance and variety.”—Tejal Rao, The New York Times JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • IACP AWARD WINNER • IACP BOOK OF THE YEAR • TONI TIPTON-MARTIN NAMED THE 2021 JULIA CHILD AWARD RECIPIENT NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The New Yorker • NPR • Chicago Tribune • The Atlantic • BuzzFeed • Food52 Throughout her career, Toni Tipton-Martin has shed new light on the history, breadth, and depth of African American cuisine. She’s introduced us to black cooks, some long forgotten, who established much of what’s considered to be our national cuisine. After all, if Thomas Jefferson introduced French haute cuisine to this country, who do you think actually cooked it? In Jubilee, Tipton-Martin brings these masters into our kitchens. Through recipes and stories, we cook along with these pioneering figures, from enslaved chefs to middle- and upper-class writers and entrepreneurs. With more than 100 recipes, from classics such as Sweet Potato Biscuits, Seafood Gumbo, Buttermilk Fried Chicken, and Pecan Pie with Bourbon to lesser-known but even more decadent dishes like Bourbon & Apple Hot Toddies, Spoon Bread, and Baked Ham Glazed with Champagne, Jubilee presents techniques, ingredients, and dishes that show the roots of African American cooking—deeply beautiful, culturally diverse, fit for celebration. Praise for Jubilee “There are precious few feelings as nice as one that comes from falling in love with a cookbook. . . . New techniques, new flavors, new narratives—everything so thrilling you want to make the recipes over and over again . . . this has been my experience with Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee.”—Sam Sifton, The New York Times “Despite their deep roots, the recipes—even the oldest ones—feel fresh and modern, a testament to the essentiality of African-American gastronomy to all of American cuisine.”—The New Yorker “Jubilee is part-essential history lesson, part-brilliantly researched culinary artifact, and wholly functional, not to mention deeply delicious.”—Kitchn “Tipton-Martin has given us the gift of a clear view of the generosity of the black hands that have flavored and shaped American cuisine for over two centuries.”—Taste




The Southern Quarterly


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Baking in the American South


Book Description

Experience mouthwatering Southern baking—from humble home kitchens to innovative new Southern chefs. One of the world's richest culinary traditions comes to life through this essential cookbook from bestselling author Anne Byrn. With 200 recipes from 14 states and more than 150 photos, Baking in the American South has the biscuits, cornbread, cakes, and rolls that will help you bake like a Southerner, even if you aren't. Recipes can tell you volumes if you pay attention—the crops raised, languages spoken, family customs, old world flavors, and, often, religion. Did you know that where a mill was located affected the recipes handed down from that area? Or that baking and selling pound cakes directly impacted the Civil Rights Movement? These stories and recipes, developed from good times and bad, have been collected and perfected over years and are now accessible to us all. Anne's expertise in assessing, modernizing, and developing well-written recipes makes this the definitive guide for bakers of all levels. From-scratch, Southern classic recipes include: Thomasville Cheese Biscuits Ouita Michel's Sweet Potato Streusel Muffins Nina Cain's Batty Cakes with Lacy Edges The Best Lemon Meringue Pie Georgia Gilmore's Pound Cake This fascinating dive into the history of 14 Southern states—Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and more—features stories and beautifully photographed recipes from pre-Civil War times to today's Southern kitchens. It's about the places, the people, the products and the culture of the moment that influenced what people baked. It's about African-American women and the monumental contributions they have made to the art of Southern baking, about home cooks and how they've kept traditions alive wherever they settle by baking family recipes each year for holidays and celebrations, and about the pastry chefs who have thoughtfully reimagined how the South bakes. Experience the recipes and the stories behind them that showcase the substantial contributions Southern baking has made to American baking at large. Food historians, bakers, foodies, and cookbook collectors from every corner of the country will want this cookbook in their collections.




Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens, Enhanced Ebook


Book Description

As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. In Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home. The enhanced electronic version of the book includes twenty letters, photographs, first-person narratives, and other documents, each embedded in the text where it will be most meaningful. Featuring nearly 100 pages of new material, the enhanced e-book offers readers an intimate view into the lives of domestic workers, while also illuminating the journey a historian takes in uncovering these stories.




From Hardtack to Home Fries


Book Description

Culinary historian Barbara Haber takes a unique approach to the history of cooking in America, focusing on a remarkable assembly of little-known or forgotten Americans who helped shape the eating habits of the nation. As Curator of Books at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, Haber has access to more than 16,000 cookbooks from which she has drawn inspiring and often surprising cooking stories from the 1840s to the present: a Confederate Jewish woman's ancestral chicken soup which helped improve institutional food overall; the well-groomed, upright "Harvey Girl" waitresses who helped civilize America's western frontier; and the Graham Cracker, which was created by a fanatic Seventh-Day Adventist trying to curb sexual appetites. With recipes throughout, Haber's fascinating survey adds a delicious new dimension to America's cultural heritage.




A New Home--who'll Follow?


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