[.ca] Fannie Flagg's Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook: ... (ISBN 0449910288)

YANKEES, BEWARE! This will kill y'all.:
Lots of folk have read "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe," by Fannie Flagg. Even more have seen the movie, "Fried Green Tomatoes" . I read Ms. Flagg's cookbook with delight, anticipation, more than a few hunger pangs, and a profound sense of relief that somebody, somewhere had the good sense to preserve these fine old dishes of the deep South and pass them on. Her recipe for "Chicken'n'Dumplings" matches the faded 3x5 card version I inherited from my mother almost to a tee. Her "Fried Chicken" is enough to send the health-conscious into a coma! Well, y'all. Welcome south. We fry things down here, but at least the food has some flavor and texture. Take "Fried Green Tomatoes," as one example. You can't "boil" green tomatoes; nor can they be broiled, roasted, or baked. Honey, they gots to be FRIED. But one bite, and your taste buds done boarded the glory train to paradise, 'specially if you wash it down with the "house wine of the south" , a big tall glass of homemade ice-tea. Miss Flagg's cookbook brought back a comforting time of nostalgia, when momma's Sunday dinners were a treat looked for all week long, and us kids hated it when the preacher came by of a Sunday evening. It also brought back several dishes I thought had perished when the Interstate Highway system destroyed the back byways and unimproved roads that lead to the "old home place(s)" throughout the South. The ham and "red-eye" gravy recipe alone is worth the cost of the book, and even a Yankee girl can make it if she takes her time and doesn't try to "fix" it. Salt abounds. Calories flourish. Fats lurk everywhere. And cholesterol and other nefarious substances are omnipresent. But the things that'll come out of your kitchen will amaze you, content your spouse, make your children smarter and more obedient, and fill your house with the smells associated with happier simpler times, when meals were shared by the family, enjoyed by all, and digested sitting on the porch with an old AM radio tuned to the only clear channel, and the night creeping up out of the ground. Thank you, Ms. Flagg.

No longer do I put store bought food in a piece of Pyrex...:
No longer do I have to put store bought food in a piece of Pyrex and take it to a family reunion. I am happy to say that I can make all the delicious food from 'down home". The biscuits, gravy, pies, chicken and dumplings, the list goes on and on, all are easy to make with a short list of ingredients. Now, if I could learn to talk southern...

More than just a great cookbook, Much, much more!:
I know how to boil water, but beyond that, I know nothing about cooking. However, I have the good fortune to be married to the best cook in the western hemisphere, and she loves cookbooks. I bought this one for her, but as it turns out, I have enjoyed reading it more than my wife has. Fannie Flagg is the best novelist ever, of all time, having written the best novel of all time, "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe". Not only does this cookbook reveal the secrets of down home southern cooking, which makes all other cooking around the world seem, well, second rate, it is also chock filled with all kinds of funny, wise, make you want to laugh and cry at the samet time, literary nuggets that only Fannie can do in her unimitatable style. (Ok, Ok, I'm from Alabama, so maybe I'm a little bit prejudiced) I promise you, you need to order this book. You will love the little tidbits of info that is sprinkled into this book like a master chef sprinkling spice onto a materpiece dish. For example, did you know that "Hush puppies", a southern treat made of corn meal, onions, etc. was originally created as a cheap food made to feed to dogs to make them quit barking from hunger? No matter where you are from, North, South, or some foriegn place like France or California, I guarantee you will love the recipes, the wonderful photograghs of the rural, southern cafes, and the incomparable anecdotes by America's literary equivalent of Norman Rockwell.

Great book for many reasons:
I bought this book over 10 years ago because I was such a huge fan of the movie (and still am!). I also love to cook, and consistently, I pull this cookbook out more than any other. As others have recognized, this book contains those recipes that you wish you had from your own great-grandmother, and are all very practical but delicious. Even if you never mixed up a single recipe, the humor and wonderful old photographs and stories in this book would be worth its price, and then some. I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the movie, country cooking, or the South.

Good Eatin' Is Death to Yankees:
Back home in Georgia, we'd get together and eat. Sometimes, we'd eat each other, but mostly we ate Momma's fried chicken, some of Gladis's potato salad, and a mess of Mother Burnside's turnip greens. . .We'd eat until we was about to bust. . .then we'd have homemade ice-cream and watermelon cooled in the stream. . .then we'd sit on the porch and just talk. . . Ms. Flagg's cookbook calls back those days, when the parson would stop by for Sunday Dinner, and us kids would be jealous and angry because the reverend would ask us a bible study question, and the child that got it right would get that last runner < a chicken leg for you Yankee readers>. . . and if we missed, that leg went to the parson, and we went just a little bit hungry. Ms. Flagg's recipes are "comfort food." Read as "Southern Comfort Food." Need a snack? Sipsey's "Fried Green Tomatoes" will lift you to realms unknown. Depressed? Try the "Chicken 'N' Dumplings." Go to taste heaven you never dreamed existed! And you think you know bar-be-que? You don't know jack, sailor. . .In the south, it's bar-b-q. . . And bar-be-que starts with half a hog. . .Yankess don't have hogs, they have "pigs," and there, as Shakespeare observed, "lies all the diference." Buy this book. . .Eat some "good eatin'" You yankees come down, ya hear. . .you'll go home fatter, happier, and a li'll bit fatter. . .but that boild stuff y'all eat. . .never gonna taste good again. . . Y'all just remember. . ."Secret's in the Sauce!" bookworm