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*Starred Review* Many an adoring son thinks his momma is the world's best cook, but that opinion usually springs from affection more than objective evaluation. In this case, Pulitzer Prize-winner Bragg (who previously paid tribute to his mother in All over but the Shoutin', 1997) has credentials to back up the claim. Bound by scarcity, provincialism, and personal adversity, Bragg's momma produced remarkably good, tasty food for family and community from aging, unreliable stoves and well-seasoned, cast-iron cookware. Although his momma never cooked from a book, Bragg has penned recipes to give readers essential instruction for emulating her kitchen accomplishments. This is genuine locavore cuisine without pretense, art without artifice. Bragg's translation of the uncertainties of his mother's cooking into modern, scientific recipes may sap some spontaneity, but he generously preserves a way of life that has endured in America's backcountry. His prose evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of a rural Alabama kitchen and transforms apparent poverty into soul-satisfying plenty.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2018 Booklist

Library Journal
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Here is a beautifully written memoir by a man who can't cook very well-at least according to his mother. And that mother, Margaret Bragg, is the central figure in this culinary history from author Bragg, who is known for family stories (All over but the Shoutin'). Bragg comes from a long line of adept cooks, and this story begins with his great-grandfather Jimmy Jim teaching Bragg's grandmother Ava to cook when she was a newlywed. Other legendary family cooks make appearances, along with family legends of all kinds. For Bragg, food and stories go hand in hand, and Margaret is not only the chief cook, she is also the chief storyteller. These accounts are more than entertainment; they are a way for people to survive hard times. We should all be so lucky to sit at the elbow of a great cook as they work and pass along family knowledge. VERDICT For readers who crave soul with their recipes (some 75 here), this is a fitting tribute to foodways that are fast slipping away.-Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly
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For Southerners, notes Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin'), every recipe is a story, not simply a list of ingredients, and he cannily shares the stories of the meals of his mother's Alabama upbringing. For the book, Bragg asked his mother to share the secrets of her cooking, only to realize that she follows no rules or recipes: "She cooks in dabs, and smidgens, and tads, and a measurement she mysteriously refers to as 'you know, hon, just some.'" Bragg recalls his grandmother Ava's first real feast-cornbread, carrot and red cabbage slaw, creamed onions, boiled red potatoes and butter, and pinto beans and ham bone-and the impression it made on his mother. Bragg intersperses his memoir with recipes, including for pinto beans and ham bone (a main course, not a side), collard greens (which are sweeter after the first frost), pan-roasted pig's feet, cracklin' corn bread, baked possum, and pecan pie. In a disturbing though hilarious story, his father, speeding down a country road so he can make it home in time for supper, hits a body and leaves it there (it turns out that the body was that of a dog that miraculously survived and made its way home). Bragg's entertaining memoir is a testament that cooking and food still bind culture together. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Heartfelt, often hilarious stories from an Alabama kitchen, a place from which issue wondrous remembrances and wondrous foods alike.Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Bragg (My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South, 2015, etc.) matches the tales he assembled about his father in The Prince of Frogtown (2008) with an equally rough-and-tumble collection of folk wisdom served up courtesy of his mother, who "cooked for people she'd have just as soon poisoned, and for the loves of her life." There's an aching nostalgia throughout, not just for years gone, but also for a way of life that seems to have faded away, a Southernism of which "our food may be the best part left." It's a food that African-Americans call "soul food" because it transcends bodily pain and torment and, Bragg writes, offers "a richness for a people without riches." Over the course of this long narrative, the author's mother turns over the stage to other relatives, and webs of stories are spun, to say nothing of well-observed notes on old-fashioned Southern foodways: raccoon is stinky, snapping turtle is sometimes eaten, "but that, too, is complicated," and tomatoes are to be cherished if you can find one that tastes like a tomato, to say nothing of a chicken that tastes like a chicken. Bragg's mother is a worthy guide throughout, unyielding in her judgment: "Use brown eggs when you can get 'em," she warns. "They're more like real eggs." In this inauthentic world, there's nothing like some comfort food: greens, grits with just a little hint of cheese, fried chicken, and black-eyed peasnot to mention ham and redeye gravy ("smoked ham steaks can be used as a shortcut, if you are a Philistine"), government cheese, fried bologna sandwiches, and fried okra (not battered, since it "defeats the purpose of fresh food").Affectionate, funny, and beautifully written: a book for every fan of real food. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.