Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas with More Than 200 Favorite Recipes

This mouth-watering collection of more than 200 recipes showcases the best of traditional Southern cooking and storytelling. This is no ordinary cookbook, though it boasts plenty of old-fashioned recipes for cakes, pies, casseroles, and stews, submitted by people who hail from the Carolina mountains to the Low Country and even from locales around the world. Editor Amy Rogers invited more than 100 contributors to tell their favorite stories about food. Included are some of the Carolinas' most beloved writers, as well as many first-time writers who have wonderful tales to tell about their recipes. Josephine Humphreys describes how to catch and cook blue crabs. Jill McCorkle shares her grandmother's recipe for making fried apple pies. Lee Smith acquaints us with "Lady Food." True-crime writer Jerry Bledsoe asserts that "Seafood Bledsonia" is better than any other fish dish you can imagine. There are even some offerings from songwriters, including former Carolinian James Taylor, who passes along his recipe for baked beans. The book is divided into groupings such as Appetizers and Soups; Main Dishes; Vegetables and Side Dishes; Breads; Desserts; and Holiday Recipes and Other Specialties. Each recipe is accompanied by a story, telling where it came from, a firsthand account of how it became part of a family tradition, or a profile of the cook who submitted it. The stories are humorous, poignant, sometimes surprising, and always memorable. Sprinkled throughout are little-known facts about the origins and background of time-honored Southern foods. As this collection makes clear, the meals we prepare and share mean more to us than simple sustenance. Food is a touchstone of identity and culture, a link between one generation and another. No matter where you're from or what your tastes might be, this book will leave you hungry for home.