{"product_id":"the-taste-of-country-cooking","title":"The Taste of Country Cooking","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn recipes and reminiscences equally delicious  Edna Lewis celebrates the uniquely American country cooking she grew up with some fifty years ago in a small Virginia Piedmont farming community that had been settled by freed slaves. With menus for the four seasons  she shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food  savoring the delights of each special time of year:   The fresh taste of springthe first shad  wild mushrooms  garden strawberries  field greens and salads . . . honey from woodland bees . . . a ring mold of chicken with wild mushroom sauce . . . the treat of braised mutton after sheepshearing.   The feasts of summergarden-ripe vegetables and fruits relished at the peak of flavor . . . pan-fried chicken  sage-flavored pork tenderloin  spicy baked tomatoes  corn pudding  fresh blackberry cobbler  and more  for hungry neighbors on Wheat-Threshing Day . . . Sunday Revival  the event of the year  when Ednas mother would pack up as many as fifteen dishes (what with her pickles and breads and pies) to be spread out on linen-covered picnic tables under the churchs shady oaks . . . hot afternoons cooled with a bowl of crushed peaches or hand-cranked custard ice cream.   The harvest of falla fine dinner of baked country ham  roasted newly dug sweet potatoes  and warm apple pie after a day of corn-shucking . . . the hunting season  with the deliciously different taste of game fattened on hickory nuts and persimmons . . . hog-butchering time and the making of sausages and liver pudding . . . and Emancipation Day with its rich and generous thanksgiving dinner.   The hearty fare of winterholiday time  the sideboard laden with all the special foods of Christmas for company dropping by . . . the cold months warmed by stews  soups  and baked beans cooked in a hearth oven to be eaten with hot crusty bread before the fire.  The scores of recipes for these marvelous dishes are set down in loving detail. We come to understand the values that formed the remarkable womanher love of nature  the pleasure of living with the seasons  the sense of community  the satisfactory feeling that hard work was always rewarded by her mothers good food. Having made us yearn for all the good meals she describes in her memories of a lost time in America  Edna Lewis shows us precisely how to recover  in our own country or city or suburban kitchens  the taste of the fresh  good  natural country cooking that was so happy a part of her girlhood in Freetown  Virginia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44986769244213,"sku":"ByrdShop_0394483111","price":726.3,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780394483115.jpg?v=1770916372","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-taste-of-country-cooking","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}