Читать книгу The Laura Lea Balanced Cookbook - Laura Lea - Страница 10

foreword

We’ve all been at a place where our life is

in the balance; a place where our future is

undetermined and at risk. America is at that

place with food. Many of us have managed to

get into a precarious, unbalanced relationship

with our plate, our table, and our kitchens.

This cookbook will teach you how to find

balance again—and, if necessary, again and

again. Balance is not something you get stuck

in—it must be restored, over and over, bite

after bite, meal after meal. It’s something you

work to achieve. No one does it better than

Laura Lea.

Laura Lea cooks edible poems. Her recipes

break with convention and established food

culture. They express her vision of a lush life:

a life both serene and exciting, a world full

of surprises—all of them good. Simply put,

that is the essence of the recipes in this book

and the theme of Laura Lea’s kitchen—the

surprises will be good for and to you.

Laura Lea creates recipes that work, that

tell you exactly how to create a delicious

dish, but they will not be expected recipes—

they will be Laura Lea innovations. You will

treasure this cookbook. The woman is non-

stop when it comes to recipe development.

Laura Lea and I began working together at

the end of the 20th century. When still a teen,

she was part of a workshop examining the

impact improbable alliances and friendships

had had on the shaping of Nashville.

Ours is one such friendship. I am a black

woman who writes about putting health and

history on a tasty soul food plate, and I am

particularly concerned with great food on a

budget. There are budget and splurge items

in this cookbook, easy- and harder-to-get

ingredients, but Laura Lea and I have a

common cause: food that’s good to you and

good for you; food that sustains by delighting.

I am proud to say, my daughter Caroline

Randall Williams and I put one of Laura Lea’s

chia pudding recipes into our cookbook

Soul Food Love, and cooked that pudding

for food justice workers in Baltimore.

When I was appointed Faculty Head of

Stambaugh House at Vanderbilt University,

one of my first acts would be to hire Laura

Lea to curate a syllabus of food for the

house so that my students could learn

more about the world they lived in—and

about themselves—by eating. That year we

welcomed students to campus with Laura

Lea’s delicious coconut chia pudding with

granola and fresh peaches, and invited them

to engage in hard conversations sustained

by the pure deliciousness of no-bake