Kinfolks Custard Pie: Recollections Recipes From East Tennesssean Hardcover by Walter N. Lambert (University of Tennessee Press) (IBRCookBooks)

If you enjoy good country cooking but don't know how to cook it here's your one-stop guide. If you know how to cook most country recipes but would like to relive a little of the traditions of Eastern Tennessee then grab a glass of lemonade, sit in a rocker on the porch and let this book take you back in time. I received this as a gift from my mom after telling her I felt like an inferior cook next to my new husband's parents who cooked in the traditional southern country style. I could boil potatoes with the best of them but my fried potatoes were a disaster. I'd never made soup beans or fried okra, never was able to fry chicken very well or make homemade chicken-and-dumplings...until I got this book. Now I can cook like my great-grandmother and my husband's family. I'm making poor man's pies, custard pies, blackberry cobblers, homemade biscuits with sausage gravy and even potato salad!

Two words of warning! First, the food in this book is addictive! I warn you that you may not be able to go back to your regular menu after getting a taste of some of these recipes (though I do draw the line at the recipe for fried chicken livers). Secondly, this is not a fat-free, politically correct book. To cook in the authentic country style you can't use low-fat mayo, low-fat margarine, skim milk and powdered egg substitute. If you aren't going to enjoy the full-flavor versions then you may not be happy with this book unless you are getting it more for the tales than the recipes.

Which brings me to the style of the book. Mr. Lambert writes in a narrative style that is not the norm for today's cookbooks. He begins each chapter with stories about life on a small farm in East Tennessee where he grew up, just north of Knoxville. As the story gets to reminding him of food--which happens often with stories in the south--he shares a recipe pertinent to the story. Many times, in the narrative under each recipe, are variations you can try. Back before the days of large supermarkets and the convenience of cars the farmhouse cook "made do" with what she/he had. If grandma was making bread pudding then one day she used biscuits from breakfast and another may have made it from left-over rolls and cornbread from dinner. A lot of the variations in recipes throughout the south came from "making-do".

Overall this was a highly enjoyable book. I learned a little about my husband's East Tennessee heritage and even recognized foods from my own conglomeration of Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky ancestors. I learned a lot about how to cook "southern" style and knew I had arrived the day that my youngest son (and biggest food critic) walked in the house and said, "Boy, it smells like Papaw's house in here!" and then proceeded to eat every bite of the fried potatoes, okra and chicken on his plate.