Hallelujah! The Welcome Table

Throughout Maya Angelou's life, food has played a pivotal role at important moments. In Hallelujah! The Welcome Table she tells of dozens of those moments and then gives us the recipes for the food that was served. There was the time she cooked a cassoulet for M.F.K. Fisher on the very day she moved into her new house in California. She tells us how her grandmother made a delicious caramel cake for her when young Maya was expelled from school for refusing to speak. She tells the story of how she once got a job by cooking a down-home meal for a homesick southerner. Recipes include fried meat pies, biscuits, potato salad, smoked pork chops, Beef Wellington, chicken livers, Minnesota wild rice, pot roast, wilted lettuce--you name it. Maya Angelou's kitchen is literally a social center. She cooks while she entertains and is renowned for what she serves.