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One woman, a tiny farm, unruly chickens, and the challenge of putting down roots in a rapidly changing world

Cat Woman in Dog Country is Helena Feder's witty, perceptive account of life on a tiny North Carolina farm. Part memoir, part nature writing, and part literary how-not-to guide to growing and raising things, it chronicles her attempts to cultivate a small plot while marveling at the symbiotic wonders of figs and wasps, navigating chicken politics, and learning to laugh at her own mistakes.

A transplanted Yankee by way of California, Feder often feels like exactly what the title suggests: a cat woman in dog country. Conspicuous in a place where men still largely own and work the land, she finds herself at once welcomed, bewildered, and fascinated by the culture around her. Along the way, she discovers that teaching Walden requires a very different skill set from growing her own beans and that country life comes with its share of challenges, from failed crops to an alarming abundance of rats and copperheads.

Charming, laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply thoughtful, Cat Woman in Dog Country reflects making a home in an era of climate change, forever chemicals, and environmental uncertainty. It is a book for anyone who ponders the personal, social, and planetary meaning of home.
 

Works of Distinction, LDEI M.F.K. Fisher Prize for Excellence in Culinary Media Content, 2022

A rare woman’s-eye-view of working in the professional French kitchen

Though women enter France’s culinary professions at higher rates than ever, men still receive the lion’s share of the major awards and Michelin stars. Rachel E. Black looks at the experiences of women in Lyon to examine issues of gender inequality in France’s culinary industry. Known for its female-led kitchens, Lyon provides a unique setting for understanding the gender divide, as Lyonnais women have played a major role in maintaining the city’s culinary heritage and its status as a center for innovation. Voices from history combine with present-day interviews and participant observation to reveal the strategies women use to navigate male-dominated workplaces or, in many cases, avoid men in kitchens altogether. Black also charts how constraints imposed by French culture minimize the impact of #MeToo and other reform-minded movements. 

Evocative and original, Cheffes de Cuisine celebrates the successes of women inside the professional French kitchen and reveals the obstacles women face in the culinary industry and other male-dominated professions.

250 Recipes from the University of Alabama’s famed University Club in Tuscaloosa

The historic mansion at the corner of University Boulevard and Queen City Avenue in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has been home to the University of Alabama University Club since 1944. In its early years, the Club took shape around the vision and culinary expertise of the formidable Atlantan Alline P. Van Duzor, still remembered in Tuscaloosa for her impeccable and exacting standards. This book reveals her most beloved recipes.

Commissioned in the early 1960s by a New York publisher, this collection of her gastronomic creations sold through more than eight printings, further spreading her reputation.

The more than 250 favorite Southern recipes in this now-classic cookbook are written in Van Duzor’s straight-forward style, using common fresh and store-bought ingredients. This new edition has been augmented by a guide to portions and food brand names, an index to the recipes, and an appendix of past presidents of the University Club Board.

Cookbook collectors, local history buffs, the university community, and happy cooks everywhere will welcome this reissue of a popular cookbook that has won decades of fans. 

The definitive survey of collards, an iconic southern food.

Food is essential to southern culture, and collard greens play a central role in the South’s culinary traditions. A feast to the famished, a reward to the strong, and a comfort to the weary, collards have long been held dear in the food-loving southern heart. In Collards: A Southern Tradition from Seed to Table, Edward H. Davis and John T. Morgan provide this emblematic and beloved vegetable the full-length survey its fascinating and complex history merits.

The book begins with collards’ obscure origins. Like a good detective story, the search for collards’ home country leads the authors both to Europe and West Africa, where they unravel a tale as surprising and complex as that of southern people themselves. Crossing back over the Atlantic, the authors traverse miles of American back roads, from Arkansas to Florida and from Virginia to Louisiana. They vividly recount visits to homes, gardens, grocers, farms, and restaurants where the many varieties of collards are honored, from the familiar green collards to the yellow cabbage collard and rare purple cultivars.

In uncovering the secrets of growing collards, the authors locate prize-winning patches of the plant, interview “seed savers,” and provide useful tips for kitchen gardeners. They also describe how collards made the leap from kitchen garden staple to highly valued commercial crop.

Collards captures the tastes, smells, and prize-winning recipes from the South’s premier collards festivals. They find collards at the homes of farmers, jazz musicians, governors, and steel workers. Kin to cabbage and broccoli but superior to both in nutritional value, collard greens transcend human divisions of black and white, rich and poor, sophisticated and rustic, and urban and rural.

Food trends may come and go, but collards are a tradition that southerners return to again and again. Richly illustrated in color, Collards demonstrates the abiding centrality of this green leafy vegetable to the foodways of the American South. In it, readers will rediscover an old friend.

Just remembering the crispy fried chicken and luscious peach cobblers a grandmother or aunt used to make can set your mouth watering. And since remembering is no substitute for eating, cooks across the country have turned to Cooking Texas Style to find recipes for the comfort foods we love best. Thirty years after its first publication, popular acclaim has made this collection of favorite family recipes the standard source for traditional Texas cooking.

Here are over three hundred tasty recipes from the kitchens of Candy Wagner and Sandra Marquez. You’ll find classic Texas dishes such as chicken-fried steak, barbecue, chili, guacamole, and cornbread hot with jalapeños, as well as novel, exciting ways to prepare old favorites such as Tortilla Soup, Fajitas, and Chicken and Dumplings. Organized for easy reference, all the recipes are clearly explained, simple to prepare, and simply delicious. Cooking Texas Style is an invaluable addition to the kitchen bookshelf of anyone interested in cooking—and eating—Texas style.

Whether you're hungry for down-home barbecue and Tex-Mex, or you want to try more exotic dishes such as Paella Valenciana and Thai Pesto, Texas Highways has long been a trusted source for delicious recipes that reflect wide-ranging Lone Star tastes. The state's official travel magazine published its first Texas Highways Cookbook, which has sold 20,000 copies, in 1986. Responding to the public's demand for a new collection of the magazine's recipes, the editors are pleased to bring you Cooking with Texas Highways, a compilation of more than 250 recipes that are as richly diverse and flavorful as Texas itself.

Cooking with Texas Highways samples all the major ethnic cuisines of the state with recipes from home cooks, well-known chefs, and popular restaurants. It offers a varied and intriguing selection of snacks and beverages, breads, soups and salads, main dishes, vegetables and sides, sauces and spreads, desserts, and more. A special feature of this cookbook is a chapter on Dutch-oven cooking, which covers all the basics for cooking outdoors with live coals, including seventeen mouth-watering recipes. In addition, you'll find dozens of the lovely color photographs that have long made Texas Highways such a feast for the eyes, along with tips on cooking techniques and sources for ingredients and stories about some of the folks who created the recipes. If you want to sample all the tastes of Texas, there's no better place to start than Cooking with Texas Highways.

People from around the world have found a home in Texas, bringing with them a multiethnic feast replete with dishes that originated in Mexico, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In these pages you'll discover a magical place called Cuisine, Texas, where you can find all these favorite family recipes in one handy source.

Noted food writer Joanne Smith spent several years gathering the traditional recipes of every major ethnic group in Texas. As a result, Cuisine, Texas is a virtual encyclopedia of Texas cooking, with more than 375 recipes drawn from Native American, Spanish, Japanese, French, Cajun, Mexican, Tex-Mex, Anglo-American, African American, Thai, Czech, Swiss, Dutch, Jewish, Greek, German, Polish, Italian, British, Lebanese, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, and Scandinavian cooking.

The recipes cover the full range of foods, from appetizers to entrees, salads, vegetables, breads, and desserts, and all have clear, simple-to-follow instructions. Interspersed among them are engaging discussions of the different ethnic cuisines, flavored with delightful stories of some of the cooks who created or perfected the recipes. And to make your cooking even easier, Joanne Smith includes information on how to readily find imported and specialized ingredients and a word about health-conscious substitutions.

Cuisine, Texas, may not exist on the map, but it can be found everywhere that people enjoy good food and the fellowship that goes with it. Let this book be your one-stop source for all the tastes of Texas.