Southern Cuisine

Quick-Fix Southern

This review comes with instructions: #1. Buy the book. #2. Turn to page 112. #3. Make the recipe “Slow Cooker Pot Roast.” Now, to be as un-journalistic as I can be: OMG! If you like pot roast you’ll love this recipe. It is so easy to make (as long as you own a slow cooker), and the end result is a truly magnificent braised meal. Perfect for the winter months. The recipe worked to a ‘T.’ The beauty of this dish for me? All I had to to do was buy the boneless chuck roast ($13.47 at Whole Foods). Happily, I already had the onions, carrots and potatoes from my C.S.A. More beauty? I managed to get three meals from one roast. All the recipes I tried from Quick-Fix Southern worked very well. Author Rebecca Lang knows how to cook and this book reflects her talents.

Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly

As I made my way through Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly I was reminded of my paternal grandmother and the food I knew she cooked. Southern Appalachia and the people who live there are in kind to where my father came from, to the food and customs. Distant eastern cousins I’d venture to say. I found this book comforting in many ways.

It is not a book of high cuisine; in fact I think I can correctly say it’s all about low cuisine and that’s a good thing. Author, Joan E. Aller, a transplant to southern Appalachia fell in love with the place once she was there. Wanting to preserve a lifestyle that she saw quickly changing she set about collecting the best recipes southern Appalachia had to offer by traveling around the area and gathering up recipes, stories and histories from the area’s inns, hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, taverns and cafes.

Southern Cuisine