the taste of country cooking by edna lewis

and Emancipation Day with its rich and generous thanksgiving dinner.? The hearty fare of winter?holiday time, the sideboard laden with all the special foods of Christmas for company dropping by. hog-butchering time and the making of sausages and liver pudding. the hunting season, with the deliciously ?different? taste of game fattened on hickory nuts and persimmons. hot afternoons cooled with a bowl of crushed peaches or hand-cranked custard ice cream.? The harvest of fall?a fine dinner of baked country ham, roasted newly dug sweet potatoes, and warm apple pie after a day of corn-shucking.

Sunday Revival, the event of the year, when Edna?s mother would pack up as many as fifteen dishes (what with her pickles and breads and pies) to be spread out on linen-covered picnic tables under the church?s shady oaks. pan-fried chicken, sage-flavored pork tenderloin, spicy baked tomatoes, corn pudding, fresh blackberry cobbler, and more, for hungry neighbors on Wheat-Threshing Day. the treat of braised mutton after sheepshearing.? The feasts of summer?garden-ripe vegetables and fruits relished at the peak of flavor. a ring mold of chicken with wild mushroom sauce. With menus for the four seasons, she shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food, savoring the delights of each special time of year:? The fresh taste of spring?the first shad, wild mushrooms, garden strawberries, field greens and salads.

In recipes and reminiscences equally delicious, Edna Lewis celebrates the uniquely American country cooking she grew up with some fifty years ago in a small Virginia Piedmont farming community that had been settled by freed slaves.

The taste of country cooking by edna lewis