The Weclome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking

This is my favorite cookbook. All of the recipes are practical,the ingredients are easily found (you probably have most in the kitchen already) and they are for food that everybody likes to eat. A short history and sometimes photographs accompany most of the recipes. My favorite recipe from the book is the one for sweet potato pie, it is always a crowd pleaser. My parents actually purchased this book several years ago when I was in high school, when I left for college I made sure to take it with me. The Welcome Table at times seems like a novel, the author's personal notes draw the reader into her life experiences and its easy to forget that this is a cookbook.

Even though I'm not African-american ( except in the cultural sense that ALL Americans are somewhat African-american...our culture owing so much to Africa ), I LOVED this book! It explains so much about what I grew up calling "soul food", and in a way that neither puffs-up it's subject or trivializes it in any way. The depth of this book simply must be seen and experienced to be appreciated. there is no way, for instance, that this book could well lend itself to making Afroamerican cooking "chi-chi", as has happened to so many other cuisines that have become trendy. The title says it all: "Welcome...whoever you are. Sit down and eat. Enjoy!" But, the book never panders to the hip and trendy. I also liked the recently published Tuskegee University cookbook, which was, unfortunately, stolen recently. Buy this book if you are at all interested in the origins of many things that most Americans think of as "American", but are actually African in origin.