Here is a collection of representative authentic soul food dishes for those who want the real thing. Most of the recipes were learned by the author from her grandmother, Frances Fleming Hunter, a cook whose café was in the little Mississippi town of Hollandale.

Kathy Starr compiled these recipes as a tribute to her grandmother, whom she remembers amid big pots of greens and vegetables that were bubbling on the stove as she stirred up the cornbread.

"Hunger," she says, "was something the black family had to conquer, and it was a must that simple foods make a delicious meal. My grandma, even today, can tell you stories of how proud she felt about her sister Malindy, who would walk up out of the cotton field and find company sitting on the steps and then would take a shelf of nothing and make the best meal you ever tasted."

While this cookbook does preserve the foodways of southern African Americans of the past, the recipes are food traditions that live today in the rural South. The author has included also recipes that are traditional treatments of more recently available foods, such as lobster with cornbread stuffing.