Below is a press release from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History:
On July 28, 2021, Amy Cameron Evans and Martha Hall Foose presented “A Good Meal Is Hard To Find—Unless You Know where To Look" as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Evans and Foose are the authors of A Good Meal Is Hard To Find: Storied Recipes from the Deep South. The book features sixty recipes written by award-winning cookbook author Foose and inspired by the paintings of Evans.
“We wanted the book to be more than a cookbook,” said Foose. “It’s really a love letter to the women and food of the Deep South.”
“It’s also a reflection of the South’s culinary culture, from community cookbooks filled with recipes that feature cans of mushroom soup to the history of the Delta’s most well-known handmade food, hot tamales,” said Evans. “Mississippi references in A Good Meal Is Hard to Find include Lenore Anne’s Hot Tamale Balls, a celebration of Delta tamales, and Frank’s Collard Green and Field Pea Fried Rice, a nod to the Delta’s Chinese community.”
Amy C. Evans is an award-winning artist, writer, and documentarian based in Houston, Texas. Evans built the documentary program at the Southern Foodways Alliance, headquartered at the University of Mississippi, where she served as their lead oral historian for more than a decade. Her paintings have appeared in Southern Living, Southern Cultures, and on CNN’s Eatocracy, and her writing has appeared in Saveur, The Bitter Southerner, The Local Palate, and Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Evans’s latest documentary project is “Houston in 2020: Self-employed Black Artists” and is funded by a grant from the Houston Arts Alliance and the City of Houston.
Martha Hall Foose’s cookbook career began with Screen Doors & Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales of a Southern Cook, which won the James Beard Award for American Cooking and The Southern Independent Booksellers Award. Her follow-up, A Southerly Course: Recipes & Stories from Close to Home, found its way on to Best of the Best lists from NPR and Food & Wine. She co-authored My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen with chef Asha Gomez, as well as the follow-up Cook in Color: Bright Flavors from My Kitchen and Around the World. In 2020, Foose received the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award from the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson.
