Dinner at Miss Lady's: Memories & Recipes from a Southern Childhood
by Luann Landon

Publisher:  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
ISBN:  1565122275

"Dinner at Miss Lady's" is part cookbook and part memoir of slower, gentler time in the South. In it, Luann Landon lovingly recounts childhood memories of summers she and her sister spent visiting her grandparents' elegant home in Greensboro, Georgia.

Miss Lady, Landon's paternal grandmother, "was waited on by servants all her life and didn't even know how to make a cup of tea, but she had an infallible sense of how food should taste." Murlo, her maternal grandmother, "made everything herself, unwilling to entrust her recipes to someone else's ignorance or carelessness." Henretta was the beloved family cook and maid, serving the family with obvious love and loyalty.

The recipes are plentiful, ranging from traditional Southern "Henretta's Stewed Corn" and "Beaten Biscuits" to more elegant "Galantine of Turkey with Chaudfroid Sauce" and "Aunt Virginia's Terrine of Pheasant." Landon reconstructs the recipes from memories of the many hours spent watching Henretta and Murlo in the kitchen. The stories, Landon freely admits, are from both memory and imagination. Each chapter ends with a related menu and its recipes.

If you love the history, culture, and foods of the South, you'll enjoy this charming cookbook.

Diana Rattray, your Guide for Southern U.S. Cuisine