Combining the study of food culture with gender studies and using per­spectives from historical, literary, environmental, and American studies, Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt examines what southern women's choices about food tell us about race, class, gender, and social power. Shaken by the legacies of Reconstruction and the turmoil of the Jim Crow era, different races and classes came together in the kitchen, often as servants and mistresses but also as people with shared tastes and traditions. Generally focused on elite whites or poor blacks, southern foodways are often portrayed as stable and unchanging—even as an untroubled source of nostalgia. A Mess of Greens offers a different perspective, taking into account industrialization, environmental degradation, and women's increased role in the work force, all of which caused massive economic and social changes. Engelhardt reveals a broad middle of southerners that included poor whites, farm families, and middle- and working-class African Americans, for whom the stakes of what counted as southern food were very high. Five “moments” in the story of southern food—moonshine, biscuits versus cornbread, girls' tomato clubs, pellagra as depicted in mill literature, and cookbooks as means of communication—have been chosen to illuminate the connectedness of food, gender, and place. Incorporating community cookbooks, letters, diaries, and other archival materials, A Mess of Greens shows that choosing to serve cold biscuits instead of hot cornbread could affect a family's reputation for being hygienic, moral, educated, and even godly.

A wounded warrior and his younger brother discover the true meaning of Christmas in this timeless story of family bonds--a poignant continuation of Monroe's beloved Lowcountry Summer series, winner of the Southern Book Prize. HC: Gallery Books.

The Tao of Vegetable Gardening explores the practical methods as well as the deeper essence of gardening. In her latest book, groundbreaking garden writer Carol Deppe (The Resilient Gardener, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties) focuses on some of the most popular home garden vegetables—tomatoes, green beans, peas, and leafy greens—and through them illustrates the key principles and practices that gardeners need to know to successfully plant and grow just about any food crop. Deppe’s work has long been inspired and informed by the philosophy and wisdom of Tao Te Ching, the 2,500-year-old work attributed to Chinese sage Lao Tzu and the most translated book in the world after the Bible. The Tao of Vegetable Gardening is organized into chapters that echo fundamental Taoist concepts: Balance, Flexibility, Honoring the Essential Nature (your own and that of your plants), Effortless Effort, Non-Doing, and even Non-Knowing. Yet the book also offers a wealth of specific and valuable garden advice on topics as diverse as: • The Eat-All Greens Garden, a labor- and space-efficient way to provide all the greens a family can eat, freeze, and dry—all on a tiny piece of land suitable for small-scale and urban gardeners. • The growing problem of late blight and the future of heirloom tomatoes—and what gardeners can do to avoid problems, and even create new resistant varieties. • Establishing a Do-It-Yourself Seed Bank, including information on preparing seeds for long-term storage and how to “dehybridize” hybrids. • Twenty-four good places to not plant a tree, and thirty-seven good reasons for not planting various vegetables. Designed for gardeners of all levels, from beginners to experienced growers, The Tao of Vegetable Gardening provides a unique frame of reference: a window to the world of nature, in the garden and in ourselves.

The authors of the James Beard Award-winning Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking serve up side dishes with vegetables taking center stage. Building on their reputation as James Beard Award winners, Dupree and Graubart have excerpted their best vegetable recipes (plus added some new ones) in this timely collection. Organized alphabetically by vegetable, each section begins with instructions on how to prepare and cook the vegetable and is followed by favorite new and classic recipes. Also included are a selection of vinaigrettes and sauces, plus a roasting chart for an array of vegetables. “Those like me who aren’t full-time vegetarians but definitely eat more greens than meat will love the 120 recipes in this book, each of which takes advantage of vegetables native to the South . . . All in all, I was quite impressed with Mastering the Art of Southern Vegetables. It caters to a good variety of cooking expertises, offering simple recipes that are perfect for an everyday dinner as well as more complex ones for the experienced cook looking to change up their veggie repertoire. Many recipes are perfect for families where not everyone eats meat, as they are savory enough to stand in for a meat main and flavorful and interesting enough to convert veggie skeptics.” —Organic Authority “An excellent cookbook for the less experienced cook looking for useful information on vegetables and on how to cook them . . . presented with a bit of southern flair.” —Portland Book Review

In stories, recipes, and photographs, James Beard Award–winning writer Robb Walsh and acclaimed documentary photographer O. Rufus Lovett take us on a barbecue odyssey from East Texas to the Carolinas and back. In Barbecue Crossroads, we meet the pitmasters who still use old-fashioned wood-fired pits, and we sample some of their succulent pork shoulders, whole hogs, savory beef, sausage, mutton, and even some barbecued baloney. Recipes for these and the side dishes, sauces, and desserts that come with them are painstakingly recorded and tested. But Barbecue Crossroads is more than a cookbook; it is a trip back to the roots of our oldest artisan food tradition and a look at how Southern culture is changing. Walsh and Lovett trace the lineage of Southern barbecue backwards through time as they travel across a part of the country where slow-cooked meat has long been part of everyday life. What they find is not one story, but many. They visit legendary joints that don’t live up to their reputations—and discover unknown places that deserve more attention. They tell us why the corporatizing of agriculture is making it difficult for pitmasters to afford hickory wood or find whole hogs that fit on a pit. Walsh and Lovett also remind us of myriad ways that race weaves in and out of the barbecue story, from African American cooking techniques and recipes to the tastes of migrant farmworkers who ate their barbecue in meat markets, gas stations, and convenience stores because they weren’t welcome in restaurants. The authors also expose the ways that barbecue competitions and TV shows are undermining traditional barbecue culture. And they predict that the revival of the community barbecue tradition may well be its salvation.

From the turmoil of high school to the personal revolution of college, from the fictional to the heart-breakingly real, from rage and disappointment to fulfillment and joy - this collection of poetry and prose depicts the life of one passionate and eternally blundering girl as it is: tragic, triumphant, poignant, magnificent and as always, something of a mess. This is the expanded, revised, and redesigned version of the original Something of a Mess.

Drafts, autograph manuscript, corrected, of the introduction and chapters 37 and 39 through 71.

if i could, i would want you to know that it is not the heart that feels, but the nervous system, and now, i am nervous that you are reading the heartfelt wants of what i couldn't do for you.

A compendium of words, phrases, and local meanings has been culled from years of research, using thousands of interviews with representative American communities. Online index is at http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=node/18.