"In the most desolate and hopeless of circumstances, blacks caught in the grip of slavery often exhibited uncommon wisdom, beauty, strength and creativity. The kitchen was one place where their imagination and skill could have free rein and full expression, and they often excelled."
Recipes will get lost, tampered with, stolen, and in most cases their creators remain unknown, but not in this book. White Southern Mistress Minnie C. Fox was quick to recognize the outstanding recipes created by the black cooks around her and did what most white women would not have done, she compiled them.
In this book, you will find over 300 recipes from black cooks and the friends and families of Fox. From breads, to biscuits, soups, hams, fish, oysters, croquettes and so much more. These recipes are not just any recipes, they are the recipes of hundreds of loving mothers and grandmothers, who derived pleasure from the simple act of cooking. And what's more, these recipes can be tried today.
The Blue Grass Cook Book is not just any cookbook, it is one that holds recipes and history in its pages, detailing the beginnings of southern hospitality and cuisine.
Excerpt from The Blue Grass Cook Book
It is June in Japan, and it is June in that blessed land of the Blue Grass. The sun shines there, no doubt, right now: the corn top's. Ripe; the meadows are in bloom and along turnpike and out in the fields the song and laughter of darkies make gay the air. It is early morning. The singing of birds comes through the open windows - the chatter of blackbirds and the mid-air calls of far away meadow larks. Through those windows sleepy eyes see wood and field, with stretches of blossoming blue grass rip pling in the wind. Another half-conscious doze for an hour, another awakening, and by your bed stands a black boy in a snowy apron, his white teeth shining, and in his kindly black paws a silver goblet on a silver tray. Heavens, how it hurts to smell that mint this far away The goblet is gleaming with frost, and the mint is still drenched.