Kindle Edition Amazon Category:  Biography Publisher: Gotham/Penguin Group ISBN-10:  1592404847 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 352 Copyright: September 18, 2008 ISBN-13: 9781592404841 Price: $14.99 (eBook) A biography of Clementine Paddleford (1898-1967), who was a food editor for The New York Herald Tribune and This Week magazine. In Hometown Appetites, Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of. Clementine Paddleford was a Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle America's culinary habits. Her weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s and she earned a salary of $250,000. Yet twenty years after "America's best-known food editor" passed away, she had been forgotten--until now. Before Paddleford, newspaper food sections were dull primers on home economy. But she changed all of that, composing her own brand of sassy, unerringly authoritative prose designed to celebrate regional home cooking. This book restores Paddleford's name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside greats like James Beard and Julia Child.

Every Cook Needs to Know Their Roots
I grew up with the recipes collected by Clementine Paddleford. Although my mother liked to fiddle with the recipes (for example, Mom added finely minced candied fruitcake mix to the Joe Froggers recipe) I avidly read Ms. Paddleford's columns in the Sunday "This Week" magazine insert to our local newspaper. What I enjoyed most about this biography was the inclusion of recipes along with the story, just like the stories Clementine wrote for This Week. I guess it was training for me to learn how to taste what I was reading.

Now that I have 20/20 hindsight, I see that Clementine captured the food ways and culture from what are now by-gone days, and has given us a window--kitchen window, that is--on the past.

This volume is a valued addition to any cookbook or American history collection. Right up there with MFK Fisher, et.al. And what I meant by "know our roots" is to say that she was one of the driving forces to promote good food and the "culinary enthusiasm" we know and love today (such as the Food Channel).

Congratulations to Cynthia Harris and Kelly Alexander for their hard work in sharing with us the biography of one of the forerunner feminists of America. (April M. Love - from Amazon)