Edna Lewis is a significant food luminary - not a celebrity chef - but one of the first people who cooked "seasonally" and "farm to table" before either of these terms was conceived and bandied about by every chef and food critic. She is revered as a trailblazer of regional cooking by knowledgeable food heavyweights such as Alice Waters, Craig Claiborne, James Beard, and they were influenced by her. I first learned about Miss Lewis (as she is best known) from reverential articles I read in Gourmet magazine (maybe in the 1980's). So when I heard about this book, I was eager to read it.

I liked the concept of this book, but the essays written by a variety of food authors and chefs became repetitive. How many times do we need to read about her childhood, young adulthood, life in New York, cooking techniques, and the books she wrote? The editor should have given each writer guidelines so the essays as a group were not the same researched history of this talented, humble, pioneer of Southern cooking. ( )