Hi listeners it's Tony Tipton Martin let's try something real quick

picture someone cooking meat over a grill or live fire

Conjure the image in your mind.

Now tell me the gender of the cook you just pictured.

I'm willing to bet you've got the image of a man in your head.

And that's understandable. Throughout a lot of history, grilling and

barbecuing was primarily seen as man's work. But women were cooking with fire in

early US history too. As a journalist in food history scholar, I've always been struck

by the ways that women's contributions in and out of the kitchen have been sidelined. Our

latest book aims to change that. It's called When Southern Women Cook, History,

LORE, and 300 recipes from every corner of the American South. I worked on this

project with one of my favorite southern

women, my cooks country colleague Morgan bowling. This book was a real labor of

love for us Tony and while it covers all kinds of cooking grilling is a special passion of mine.

And it's a type of cooking where we see women's contributions have been especially

undervalued. Again there's this perception that grilling is a man's domain,

and we're here to change that.

But of course, there was no way we can include the stories

of every amazing woman making an impact

on Southern cooking in our book.

So that's where this podcast mini series comes in.

Over the next four weeks, we're sharing the stories of some of the amazing women cooking

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