With insight, wit, common sense, and mouth-watering descriptions, comes a food memoir that takes place over many years, on different continents, and at kitchen tables across the Deep South and Midwestern America.
Part cookbook, part time machine, family recipes for Pig Pickin’ Cake, savory rib roast, hot sticky wings, Myesha’s Grape Salad and the stories behind them are shared – these are but a few of the dishes in a juicy repertoire that begins in the author’s childhood.
The former owner of a baking company, Wallace takes readers on flights to exciting destinations in Spain and Ghana; however, her life is far from being a cakewalk. Her memoir is interwoven with painful and poignant moments, like her mother’s death and disappearance of her beloved brother Tone Tone, who she’s still searching for in between bites, sips and chapters.
A Sampling of Life, One Taste at a Time invites the reader to prepare its dishes and sink their teeth into what it means to recreate wonderful meals shared with elders, siblings and friends…and if you happen to come across Tone tone, the author’s long lost brother, be sure to tell him there is an empty placeholder at Martha’s table.
Martha McCray Wallace is on a mission to recreate family recipes that got her through the 50s and 60s, the best years of which were spent with her grandparents, eating their down-home country cookin’. Martha’s grandparents were Alabama sharecroppers, who grew nearly everything they ate in their own backyard.
This writer is on a hunt for elusive “Chow-chow”, which is hard to find or duplicate in the way her beloved Grandma made it.
The recipes in this book are born from necessity. There is a poetic story behind each one – of family dramas, and certain experiences that called for therapeutic home cooking and a passing down of family recipes.
Some of the author’s tales take us out of the country, but no matter where she is, Martha, a former professional baker, makes food that is beautifully simple, delicious and down-home. Readers will be excited to make every dish!
