Starting this rusty thing up again.

In 2017 I did a short review of Dr. Jessica B. Harris’s memoir, My Soul Looks Back, for Shelf Awareness.

Shelf Awareness only publishes recommendations, and part of their standard format is to include the title of the author’s previous book in the review. Which, eager to read anything else by her, is how I found her book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa to America, which led me to Edna Lewis, and Cleora A. Butler, and Michael Twitty.

And now I have been watching High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America which is also excellent, and combines food lore and travel and good interviews, and the subtitle says it all. When I read those books, my understanding of this country, not just our food, was transformed.

Being fond of food, I also broke down and ordered some of the Carolina Gold Rice featured in Episode 2. I file that kind of thing on Pinterest, where I stash a lot of ingredient and recipe ideas to avoid drowning my kitchen in novelties I do not have time for, and this rice has been bookmarked in there for a long time. We have a rice cooker now, and we get through a lot of rice, so it seemed like a reasonable purchase. And then I saw the crema pastry flour, and the Graham flour, and the buckwheat flour, and the Sea Island Red Peas. They won’t take up space for long.