Dinner at Miss Lady's

Back when people spent their whole lives in one place, life was all about family and family rituals. It was about the whole clan gathering at dinnertime over meals to be remembered forever. Luann Landon's cookbook/memoir transports us to that world of formal midday dinners, closely guarded recipes, and competitive cooks. Dinner at Miss Lady's takes us back there through the memories, meals, and recipes of one Southern family. Landon recreates the old Southern way of life in comic and tender anecdotes--from the near disaster of losing the tiny dinner bell to revenge exacted by giving the wrong recipe for a cake. This is the world of Landon's extended family: the glamorous and indolent Aunt Clare; the industrious, proud grandmother Murlo; the other grandmother, spoiled, indulgent Miss Lady and her good-humored husband, Judge; and most important, Henretta, the protective cook, able to mend family battles with a perfect blackberry-rhubarb cobbler. Adding to the vividness of this memoir are menus from those memorable meals, including birthday dinners, homecoming feasts, graduation celebrations, and sumptuous spring and fall parties. Landon shares detailed recipes for over sixty heirloom dishes: Cousin Catherine's Chicken Vermouth with Walnuts and Green Grapes, Beets in Orange and Ginger Sauce, Tennessee Jam Cake, Caramel Ice Cream. A rich portrait of a life almost lost to us, Dinner at Miss Lady's is a memoir cooked to perfection, one to savor both for its stories and for its food.

Luann Landon grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and spent every summer until she left for college in the small town of Greensboro, Georgia, with her extended family. She studied literature at Radcliffe, and has lived since then in France and Nashville. She taught French at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville and has won prizes in various poetry competitions. She lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with her husband.

SUPPER AT SEVEN, DINNER AT ONE O'CLOCK At one o'clock Henretta rings first the little brass dinner bell in the shape of a lady in a hoop skirt, and then the old black iron bell at the back door. We gather in the dining room, weaving together the individual threads of our mornings and our lives. We seat ourselves and Judge says grace. Typically, Miss Lady has had an attack of "nerves" and is dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. ...Judge is peeved because it might be necessary to call in Dr. parker (who gives Miss Lady a sugar pill), and he could miss his fishing trip to the lake this afternoon. My mother's young and beautiful face is crossed with frowns--Susan, nine years old, will eat only grilled cheese sandwiches and Coca-Cola, and I, eleven years old, will eat only biscuits and dessert. She thinks of my father, who died three years before, after serving in World War II. She thinks of his beautiful hands, his elegant clothes, his wit. He was too sensitive to live, and now she must live for both of them...Henretta sets the platters and bowls of food on the table. She passes the biscuits (small, short, and delicate, the best biscuits I will ever taste in my life) and Miss Lady says through her tears, "Take two and butter them while they are hot," as if taking two biscuits and buttering while they are hot is an action likely to have tragic consequences. --from Dinner at Miss Lady's

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