Reviews for The Black Diet Doctor's Solution for Black Women

The average rating for The Black Diet Doctor's Solution for Black Women based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-05 00:00:00 Ilene Mcfarland My husband walked by the other night and asked what I was reading. "Oh, just a cookbook" I answered. "What for?" he said with raised eyebrows and added, "When was the last time you cooked something from a cookbook?" He had a point. "Well, this one's really interesting. I've always wanted to know how to butcher a hog". That sent him on his way shaking his head. To tell the truth, my husband was right. I read lots of cooking magazines and cookbooks and yet make very little beyond the usual meals I've cooked the last forty-seven years. What he doesn't realize is, cookbooks are read for more than the recipes. They are oral histories of lives lived, our connection to family through food and celebration and storytelling at their finest. The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis, reissued with a foreword by Alice Waters, is a gem. This is one of those times that I wish I knew how it got on my reading list as I'd love to thank the source for the recommendation. Lesson learned. Edna Lewis was born in 1916, the year my own dear father entered this world. This is probably where their commonality ended though their Christmas stockings held similar treats. The foreword penned by Alice Waters begins "Miss Edna Regina Lewis was born in Virginia in 1916, in a bucolic, out-of-the-way settlement known as Freetown, which had been founded by her grandfather and other feed slaves after the emancipation of 1865.She enjoyed a childhood that could only be described as idyllic, in which the never-ending hard work of a farming and cooking both sustained an entertained an entire community. In 1976, with the publication of this lovely, indispensable classic of a cookbook, she brought her lost paradise of Freetown back to life. Thanks to this book, a new generation was introduced to the glories of an American tradition worthy of comparison to the most evolved cuisines on earth, a tradition of simplicity and purity and sheer deliciousness that is only possible when food tastes like what it is, from a particular place, at a particular point in time." Now, thirty years later, this anniversary edition may once again offer readers a glance into a time past. A time when food, was not packaged, shipped and purchased at a chain grocery store but was planted, grown, raised and cooked from scratch using recipes handed down from generation to generation. Not fast food, but meals that took hours to prepare on wood stoves by the women of the house with hard work pride and love; the original farm to table. After an introduction that gives us a brief history of Edna and her grandfather's farmland the cookbook is presented in four seasons, each with their harvests, feasts and stories. It would be impossible to share all that delighted me and most likely you'd pick something different anyway. Here is a sample of each season. Spring - "Coffee or Java (as we called it)" "The smell of coffee cooking was a reason for growing up, because children were never allowed to have It and nothing haunted the nostrils all the way out to the barn as did the aroma of boiling coffee. The decision about coffee was clear and definite and a cook's ability to make good coffee was one of her highest accomplishments. Mother made real good coffee but some mornings my father would saddle the horse and ride more than a mile up the road to have his second cup with his cousin Sally, who made the best coffee ever. This brings back memories of the first coffee I brewed for my husband and his uncle prior to our marriage. It's a miracle he married me. The description of Carmel Pie, with a history of more than one hundred and fifty years was a specialty of the Freetown Ladies and one that Edna calls haunting. Pan-fried Shad was a favorite meal of Spring, as shad is only available around May in Virginia just as it is here in Connecticut. I prefer it sprinkled with a bit of pepper, topped with lemons, wrapped and foil and grilled. Somehow we missed Shad season this year and need to wait a whole year to enjoy it again. Summer "The busy season of harvesting and caning brought many delights at mealtime: deep-dish blackberry pie, rolypoly, summer apple dumplings, peach cobblers, and always pound cake to accompany the fruits or berries that would be left from canning." A delight of summer would be turtle soup. My uncle used to make this and though I did like it I'll stick to that pound cake recipe Edna provides. Fall - Race Day Picnic "Beautiful Montpelier, nestling in the Shenandoah Valley, surrounded by an oak forest, was the most perfect spot to have a great fall picnic lunch. Everyone would be dressed in the latest fashions to attend the races, even the handsome guest horses wearing the colorful silks of their stables." Winter - Christmas "Around Christmastime the kitchens of Freetown would grow fragrant with the baking of cakes, fruit puddings, cookies, and candy. Exchanging gifts was not a custom at that time, but we did look forward to hanging our stockings from the mantel and finding them filled on Christmas morning with tasty "imported" nuts from Lahore's, our favorite hard candies with the cinnamon-flavored red eye, and oranges who special Christmas aroma reached us at the top of the stairs." One last thought. Edna and her sisters loved liver pudding. It is the one recipe I have no desire to try.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-10-12 00:00:00 Shawn Oconnor A unique experience! So much more than a cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking is a sweetly contemplative and often elegiac travelogue through Lewis' life as a girl in Freetown, Virginia, a farming community founded by freedmen including the author's grandfather. It is hard to do justice to the moving quality of the writing, which manages to be both matter-of-fact (the post-butchering preparation of a hog carcass is described quite clearly) and lyrical (portraits of her mother cooking, the smells of fruits and slow cooking, her long summer days with her many siblings, a child's wonder at life's busyness and bounty). Lewis structures the cookbook by season, describing the high points of each and how the changing of seasons impacted farming life and the food that came to her table. Sections and subsections start with recollections about each time of year, as well as key events such as Sheep-Shearing Day, Wheat-Harvesting Day, Sunday Revival, Race Day, Emancipation Day, and Christmas Eve. Many of the individual recipes include snatches of history about this or that vegetable and how they came to her community, or how a certain cut of meat tastes compared to other cuts. She describes life on this Freetown farming settlement as an almost utopian place of hard work, plentiful food, generous friends and family, a strong sense of community, and a true partnership with nature. This was an immersive experience and I soon came to live in this special place and time. And it was just that for Lewis: a very specific place and time: her past. At the age of 16, after the death of her father, she struck out on her own to New York City where she worked in many different jobs (including three hours as a laundress), became something of a bohemian and socialite as well as an ardent radical, eventually married Harlem communist spokesman Steve Kingston, and formed a 50/50 partnership with the fabulous international antiques dealer John Nicholson. And so through the late '40s to the mid-'50s, she was chef and partner at what would become the renowned and very au courant author-magnet named Cafe Nicholson. Many years later- with a number of stops and starts along the way - she authored a series of cookbooks that eventually positioned her as one of the foremost authorities on Southern cooking. Edna Lewis passed away in 2006 at 90 years of age. In 2014, she was commemorated in stamp form by the U.S. Postal Service. I came to learn of her recently, on episode six of Top Chef's 14th season. All that said, perhaps the many remembrances and pictures of life in Freetown painted by Lewis have such an elegiac quality to them because she spent a mere one-sixth of her storied life in that setting. The Taste of Country Cooking is a splendid cookbook, of course, but it is also a portrait of a bygone life and an era long past. Fond wistfulness suffuses this lovely and poignant book. Sad to say, it is unlikely that I will make many of these recipes because I really feel that the flavors that Lewis so beautifully describes will only come after using ingredients fresh from garden and field (or - during winter months -from the bounty that comes from home-canning), meat from animals that roam free on a country farm, food foraged or hunted or fished within the forest and streams surrounding her community farm, and then cooked over wood-burning stoves and hearths. That said, there were still a good number that seemed doable, including: > Skillet Scallions > Lentil and Scallion Salad > Scalloped Potatoes (featuring beef broth rather than dairy) > Pan-fried Oysters > Virginia Fried Chicken with Browned Gravy > Pan-fried Chicken with Cream Gravy > Chicken Gelatine (recipe looks more tasty than its title!) > Blueberry Sauce > Caramel Pie But as delicious as they may sound, the recipes are scarcely the point of The Taste of Country Cooking. This is a book about nature and a certain community and times past. I had a wonderful experience getting to know my new friend Edna, traveling with her back to her youth and through some of her earliest, most precious memories.