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Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes

Review

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes


Welcome to Maya Angelou's table. If good food and fond reminiscences play an important part in your life, then you'll enjoy same with poet and author Maya Angelou. The kindness, graciousness and just plain old southern hospitality that are a part of Ms. Angelou's life and stem from her southern roots are just as apparent in this book as they surely would be if you were sitting at her table.

As you turn the pages you'll read funny and touching remembrances from the author's life, as well as peruse a multitude of gorgeous photos of mouth-watering food that will urge you up from your easy chair and into the kitchen.

Each story in the book is followed by corresponding recipes. You'll laugh over "Pie Fishing" and be tempted by Chicken and Dumplings. You'll be touched by a grandmother's dedication to her granddaughter in "The Assurance of Caramel Cake" and your mouth will water at the accompanying photo. Another chuckle surely will follow your reading of "Writer's Block" and the eclair recipe begs to be tried.

One good thing about this book, other than the sheer beauty of the photographs and the sentiment of the memories, is the simplicity of ingredients and ease of preparation. This is not a book filled with exotic ingredients that are hard to locate or brimming with things you'd never dream of eating. It's likely that you can find most, if not all, of the ingredients in your kitchen or at your local grocery store.

This is a true cookbook. There's no low-fat, low-carb here. You won’t find any nutritional information contained within. This book harkens back to the day when food was food, to be enjoyed and shared with loved ones, not dissected and looked upon as an evil necessity just waiting to pack an extra pound on us. Ms. Angelou offers us the epitome of a lost art in HALLELUJAH! THE WELCOME TABLE. She offers us comfort food and comfort stories!

I encourage you to pull up a chair and spend an afternoon with this lovely book. After all, there's always room at this table for a hungry soul.

Reviewed by Amie Taylor on January 22, 2011

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes
by Maya Angelou

  • Publication Date: October 9, 2007
  • : 240 pages
  • Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
  • ISBN-10: 0812974859
  • ISBN-13: 9780812974850