A stunning 50th anniversary edition of one of the most beloved cookbooks of all time, by “the empress of Southern cooking” (The New Yorker), beautifully repackaged and redesigned, with a new foreword by Toni Tipton-Martin

With the publication of The Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis proclaimed the food of the American South as one of the world’s great cuisines. From Baked Virginia Ham and Corn Muffins to Oyster Stew and Lemon Meringue Pie, Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) extolled the vir­tues of the good food of her childhood, spent in a Virginia farming community founded by her grandfather and his friends after emancipation. A celebration of eating locally—decades before “farm to table” became common parlance—the book catalogs the joys of cooking with the seasons: the field greens and salads of spring, pan-fried chicken and crushed peaches in summer, baked ham and sweet potatoes for fall, and hearty soups and stews during the cold winter months. An affirmation of a distinctly American way of eating, half a century after its publica­tion, it remains the definitive book on Southern cooking.

A first-of-its-kind Southern cookbook featuring more than 300 Cook's Country recipes and fascinating insights into the culinary techniques and heroes of the American South.

Tour the diverse history of Southern food through 200+ stories of women who've shaped the cuisine!

Shepherded by Toni Tipton-Martin and Cook's Country Executive Editor and TV personality Morgan Bolling, When Southern Women Cook showcases the hard work, hospitality, and creativity of women who have given soul to Southern cooking from the start. Every page amplifies their contributions, from the enslaved cooks making foundational food at Monticello to Mexican Americans accessing sweet memories with colorful conchas today.

* 70+ voices paint a true picture of the South: Emmy Award–winning producer and author Von Diaz covers Caribbean immigrant foodways through Southern stews; food journalist Kim Severson delves into recipes' power as cultural currency; mixologist and beverage historian Tiffanie Barriere reflects on Juneteenth customs including red drink. Consulting food historian KC Hysmith contributes important—and fascinating—context throughout.

* 300 Recipes—must-knows, little-knowns, and modern inventions: Regional Brunswick Stew, Dollywood Cinnamon Bread, Pickle-Brined Fried Chicken Sandwiches, Grilled Lemongrass Chicken Banh Mi, and Oat Guava Cookies bridge the gap between what Southern cooking is known for and how it continues to evolve.

* Recipe headnotes contextualize your cooking: Learn Edna Lewis’ biscuit wisdom. Read about Waffle House and fry chicken thighs to top light-as-air waffles. Meet Joy Perrine, the "Bad Girl of Bourbon."

Covering every region and flavor of the American South, from Texas Barbecue to Gullah Geechee rice dishes, this collection of 300 recipes is a joyous celebration of Southern cuisine and its diverse heroes, past and present.

A profound and poetic memoir, tracing the wounds that racism and colonialism have left on Black people across borders. 

With astute insight and immersive prose, Bonhomme outlines a personal and political history of life in the United States, Haiti, and Germany, discovering what it means to be Black at home and abroad. She unlearns the lies that she was told about slavery and colonialism and explores how communities are resisting the weight of centuries of history.

Whether examining debt, medical racism, art, or reparations, Tending to Our Wounds cuts a breathtaking course between the past and the present, the individual and the collective―identifying the tendrils of history in the everyday and outlining a path to real freedom.

Winner, James Beard Foundation Book Award, 2016
Art of Eating Prize, 2015
BCALA Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation, Black Caucus of the American Library Association, 2016

Women of African descent have contributed to America’s food culture for centuries, but their rich and varied involvement is still overshadowed by the demeaning stereotype of an illiterate “Aunt Jemima” who cooked mostly by natural instinct. To discover the true role of black women in the creation of American, and especially southern, cuisine, Toni Tipton-Martin has spent years amassing one of the world’s largest private collections of cookbooks published by African American authors, looking for evidence of their impact on American food, families, and communities and for ways we might use that knowledge to inspire community wellness of every kind.

The Jemima Code presents more than 150 black cookbooks that range from a rare 1827 house servant’s manual, the first book published by an African American in the trade, to modern classics by authors such as Edna Lewis and Vertamae Grosvenor. The books are arranged chronologically and illustrated with photos of their covers; many also display selected interior pages, including recipes. Tipton-Martin provides notes on the authors and their contributions and the significance of each book, while her chapter introductions summarize the cultural history reflected in the books that follow. These cookbooks offer firsthand evidence that African Americans cooked creative masterpieces from meager provisions, educated young chefs, operated food businesses, and nourished the African American community through the long struggle for human rights. The Jemima Code transforms America’s most maligned kitchen servant into an inspirational and powerful model of culinary wisdom and cultural authority.

A must-have anthology of the leading Black women and femmes shaping today’s food and hospitality landscape—from farm to table and beyond—chronicling their passions and motivations, lessons learned and hard-won wisdom, personal recipes, and more.

Chef and writer Klancy Miller found her own way by trial and error—as a pastry chef, recipe developer, author, and founder of For the Culture magazine—but what if she had known then what she knows now? What if she had known the extraordinary women profiled within these pages—entrepreneurs, chefs, food stylists, mixologists, historians, influencers, hoteliers, and more—and learned from their stories?

Like Leah Penniman, a farmer using Afro-Indigenous methods to restore the land and feed her community; Ashtin Berry, an activist, sommelier, and mixologist creating radical change in the hospitality industry and beyond; or Sophia Roe, a TV host and producer showcasing the inside stories behind today’s food systems. Toni Tipton-Martin, Mashama Bailey, Carla Hall, Nicole Taylor, Dr. Jessica B. Harris . . . In this gorgeous volume these luminaries and more share the vision that drives them, the mistakes they made along the way, advice for the next generation, and treasured recipes—all accompanied by stunning original illustrated portraits and vibrant food photography.

In addition, Miller shines a light on the matriarchs who paved the way for today’s tastemakers—Edna Lewis, B. Smith, Leah Chase, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, and Lena Richard.

These collective profiles are a one-of-a-kind oral history of a movement, captured in real time, and indispensable for anyone passionate about food.

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Afro-Atlantic Histories brings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories―their experiences, creations, worshiping and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories and cultures.
The plural and polyphonic quality of “histórias” is also of note; unlike the English “histories,” the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic and cultural, as well as mythological narratives.
The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings: Maps and Margins; Emancipations; Everyday Lives; Rites and Rhythms; Routes and Trances; Portraits; Afro Atlantic Modernisms; Resistances and Activism.
Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Emanoel Araujo, Maria Auxiliadora, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Paul Cézanne, Victoria Santa Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Melvin Edwards, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Ellen Gallagher, Theodore Géricault, Barkley Hendricks, William Henry Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Titus Kaphar, Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Edna Manley, Archibald Motley, Abdias Nascimento, Gilberto de la Nuez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Dalton Paula, Rosana Paulino, Howardena Pindell, Heitor dos Prazeres, Joshua Reynolds, Faith Ringgold, Gerard Sekoto, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Rubem Valentim, Kara Walker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Join us for a montly children's storytime at Kindred Stories. Each Story time will celebrate a special book and be read by a wondertful community mementer. IT also includes a story time. 

Featured Book: Daisy Helps With The Dress 

Featured Reader: Antonia Adams 

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, September 26 @ 11 AM CST 

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St. Houston, TX 77004)

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your spot and let us know you are coming.

ABOUT DAISY HELPS WITH THE DRESS 

When Daisy tries to help with her cousin’s wedding, her misguided assists almost ruin the big day, until she finds a way to pull the dress—and her family—together in this charming picture book by award-winning author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.

Daisy loves helping her family and she knows the best kind of helpers never wait to be asked. That’s why she doesn’t ask before adding finishing touches to her family’s special reused, re-tried, remixed things, like a leftover broccoli topping for Auntie Fontie’s cakes or a good bath for Nana DJ’s “back-in-the-day, rusty, dusty” vintage albums—much to their chagrin.

But what Daisy wants most is to help give her cousin Simone’s recycled wedding dress a little razzle dazzle. She knows just what the vintage dress needs: a little glitter here, a few stickers there to give the dress some flair.

But Daisy’s cousin Simone and the rest of the family are not so happy with her decorations. Can Daisy make things right and help find Simone a new re-lived, re-loved wedding dress?

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A warm and inviting picture-book portrait of African American culinary legend Edna Lewis, who brought Southern cooking to the masses

Edna loved to cook. Growing up on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, she learned the value of fresh, local, seasonal food from her Mama Daisy, how to measure ingredients for biscuits using coins, and to listen closely to her cakes to know when they were done. Edna carried these traditions with her all the way to New York, where she became a celebrated chef, who could even turn traditional French food into her signature Southern style. The author of several cookbooks and the recipient of numerous awards, Chef Edna introduced the world to the flavors of her home.

In this James Beard Foundation Cookbook Hall of Fame-inducted cookbook, Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) shares the recipes of her childhood, spent in a Virginia farming community founded by her grandfather and his friends after emancipation, as well as those that made her one of the most revered American chefs of all time. Interspersed throughout are personal anecdotes, cooking insights, notes on important Southern ingredients, and personally developed techniques for maximizing flavor.

In this classic Southern cookbook, the “first lady of Southern cooking” (NPR) shares the seasonal recipes from a childhood spent in a small farming community settled by freed slaves. She shows us how to recreate these timeless dishes in our own kitchens—using natural ingredients, embracing the seasons, and cultivating community. With a preface by Judith Jones and foreword by Alice Waters.

With menus for the four seasons, Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food, savoring the delights of each special time of year.

From the fresh taste of spring—the first wild mushrooms and field greens—to the feasts of summer—garden-ripe vegetables and fresh blackberry cobbler—and from the harvest of fall—baked country ham and roasted newly dug sweet potatoes—to the hearty fare of winter—stews, soups, and baked beans—Lewis sets down these marvelous dishes in loving detail.

Here are recipes for Corn Pone and Crispy Biscuits, Sweet Potato Casserole and Hot Buttered Beets, Pan-Braised Spareribs, Chicken with Dumplings, Rhubarb Pie, and Brandied Peaches. Dishes are organized into more than 30 seasonal menus, such as A Late Spring Lunch After Wild-Mushroom Picking, A Midsummer Sunday Breakfast, A Christmas Eve Supper, and an Emancipation Day Dinner.

In this seminal work, Edna Lewis shows us precisely how to recover, in our own country or city or suburban kitchens, the taste of the fresh, good, and distinctly American cooking that she grew up with.

Moving Stones explores the extraordinary life and work of Edmonia Lewis, the Black and Ojibwe sculptor who rose to international fame in the nineteenth century. Blending biography, history, and theory, Jennifer DeVere Brody approaches Lewis’s legacy through a Black feminist and queer lens, illuminating how her sculptures and self-fashioning challenged constraints of her time. Living much of her life in Rome as a free Afro-Native woman, Lewis used neoclassical forms to carve out a life in art. Brody considers how Lewis’s works were viewed historically and how they resonate with postmodern artists, engaging themes of race, materiality, sexuality, and embodiment. Rethinking one of the most important sculptors of her era, Moving Stones shows how Lewis’s art continues to inspire contemporary artists and scholars today.

For readers of Vanessa Miller, Sheila Williams, Victoria Christopher Murray and Tracy Chevalier, the story of an unconventional woman who overcame adversity to create enduring tributes in stone to her race and times. The life of pioneering Black Neoclassical sculptor Edmonia Lewis – from the Civil War-era Midwest to Boston’s abolitionist circles, to Rome’s expatriate community – is resurrected in this stunning debut biographical novel.

“I plan to be a sculptor, to memorialize forever the great men and women of my race, and those who have fought for our cause.”

At the age of 8, orphaned, precocious Wildfire seems fated to a life of toil selling her handmade crafts to Niagara Falls tourists alongside her Ojibwe aunts. But Wildfire’s older half-brother, Samuel, has been making other plans for his gifted sibling. Soon, she is set on a new trajectory—and with it comes her birth name, Edmonia, and a revelation about her true origins.

Ensconced at the home of a trusted benefactor while Samuel makes his fortune in California, Edmonia flourishes—despite her abhorrence for etiquette lessons. Privately nurturing artistic ambitions, she advances through the abolitionist’s prep school and lands at Oberlin College. But at Oberlin lies a devastating trap: Edmonia is accused of poisoning, nearly fatally, two friends, with tainted wine.

What ensues is a headline-making trial, a vicious attack by a white mob—and a bold journey that will lead Edmonia from a crucial introduction in Boston to a vibrant community of celebrated expatriate women artists in Rome, and encounters with such distinguished figures as President Ulysses S. Grant, Pope Pius IX, and Frederick Douglass.

Still, Edmonia’s success is plagued by stinging critiques, potent racism, and haunting self-doubt. She must decide, too, whether to abandon her romantic entanglements, or devote herself to bringing to life her visions of beauty and justice—and hopefully, forge her place in a rapidly changing world.