Read to Eat

• Read to Eat

  Traverse the world of food from your poolside perch this summer

  BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

• Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China

  BY MICK VANN

• Two Dudes, One Pan: Maximum Flavor from a Minimalist Kitchen

  BY KATE THORNBERRY

• The Organic Food Shopper's Guide

  BY KATE THORNBERRY

• Wine Bar Food: Mediterranean Flavors to Crave with Wines to Match

  BY WES MARSHALL

• Washington Wines & Winer­ies: The Essential Guide

  BY WES MARSHALL

• Around the World in 80 Dinners: The Ultimate Culinary Adventure

  BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

• Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and their Food

  BY MM PACK

• Italian Grill

  BY MICK VANN

• > Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales From a Southern Cook

• Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing

  BY MM PACK

Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales From a Southern Cook

I was especially pleased to get this book, because I was a big fan of chef/author Martha Hall Foose's excellent baked goods at the Bottle­tree Bakery in Oxford, Miss., when I attended the Southern Foodways Symposium there in years past. A native of the Mississippi Delta, Foose is a well-traveled restaurant cook and French-trained pastry chef who returned to her roots a few years back. She's now the executive chef at the Viking Cooking School in Greenwood, Miss., raising her young family in a house inherited from her grandmother. Foose's rich culinary heritage and professional training definitely inform her first book. Who knew she would turn out to be every bit as good a storyteller as she is a cook?

Screen Doors and Sweet Tea features mouthwatering recipes for Southern specialties laced with tales of the family members, friends, and mentors who inspired or shared them. You'll enjoy Yazoo Cheese Straws, Delta Hot Tamales, peach fried pies, cheese grits, ham glazed in Barq's Root Beer, Sweet Tea Pie, and sweet-potato biscuits, each with a charming personal anecdote or a fascinating story establishing historical context. Foose's food, and her writing, manages to evoke the warm and genuine hospitality of the American South. Whether you're whipping up a batch of pimento cheese in the kitchen or relaxing in a rocker on the screened-in porch with a frosty glass of blackberry lemonade, Foose will be a welcome companion.