I'm Frances Lamb and this is The Splendid Table from APM American Public Media,

a show for curious cooks and eaters.

This week we've been having beans and squash or the garden.

And they're the best I've ever tasted.

And I said to my sister, you know, in the city you put a lot of spices and herbs on food.

But you really don't need it.

I don't think people even realize that food is so good out here.

You don't need all that.

That's Edna Lewis, talking about the vegetables that her family grew in rural Virginia.

You know, she was always all about the goodness of country life.

Even though she moved away from the country as a teenager.

She went to New

York City, hung out with artists, made dresses for Marilyn Monroe, and became a chef. She cooked

for regulars like Truman Capote and William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, and then, after

a bad slip broke her leg, she became a writer, a writer who totally remade the image of Southern food in America.

Her most famous book, The Taste of Country Cooking, came out in 1976, deep in the moment

when the rest of America thought Southern food was just all fried chicken and greasy greens.

And all of a sudden, here was this book.

About the South, but that talked about the good flavor

of stewed quinces in winter, or stuffing squab for honored elders, or making biscuits with

homemade baking powder so the flavor is pure butter and wheat, not metallic and chemical.

It's a book about looking at a stream and seeing the water tug at the leaves of wild greens,

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