Synopses & Reviews
The rollicking biography of Clementine Paddleford: a go- anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of stories. . . . matched as a regional-food pioneer only by James Beard. (R. W. Apple , Jr., The New York Times) In Hometown Appetites, an award-winning food writer and a leading university archivist 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 Americas 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 Americas bestknown food editor passed away, she had been forgotten until now.
At a time when few women worked outside the home, Paddleford flew her own Piper Cub to meet her readers and find out what was for dinner. 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. Her magnum opus, a book called How America Eats, published in 1960, reveals an appetite for life that was insatiable. This book restores Paddlefords name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside those of James Beard and Julia Child. Its a five-star read in the spirit of national bestsellers such as Heat and The United States of Arugula.
Review
If the U.S.A. can be said to have a national palate, then it was Ms. Clementine Paddleford, from Manhattan, Kansas, who invented it. This colorful, lively, intricately researched biography brings this forgotten hero of the great American food revolution, vividly to life.
Adam Platt, food and restaurant columnist, New York magazine
Finally a wonderful book about the missing great presence in American food, Clementine Paddlefor, the flaky and adventurous original.
Barbara Kafka, author of Vegetable Love and Soup, A Way of Life
The next best thing to a dinner invitation from Clementine Paddleford herself, Hometown Appetites is a riveting three-dimensional portrait of this iconic American food personality.
Steven Shaw, author of Turning the Tables and Asian Dining Rules
"Alexander and Harriss excellent biography tells the story foremost of a journalist, a writer who travelled tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of first hand accounts of the way we live. Clementine Paddleford was among the first American writers to sense that what and how we ate day to day, whether in Hawaii, Louisiana or Kansas, or New York, provided a clear view of what America was as a nation. Hometown Appetites is fascinating, long overdue account of a seminal figure in America's food revolution."
Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking
Decades before Anthony Bourdain and The Galloping Gourmet, the indomitable Clementine Paddleford traveled the globe (sometimes piloting the airplane herself!) to deliver stories and recipes to millions of readers of the The New York Herald Tribune. Kelly Alexander's superb, engaging biography of this pioneering food- writer--a Kansas farmer's daughter--is essential reading, not only for today's foodies and feminists, but really for anyone who yearns to know more about American regional cooking.
Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
Reading Clementine Paddleford as a kid taught me the value of a bizarre byline. Now she's been rediscovered for a new generation as a character worthy of that singular name.
Regina Shrambling, Gastropoda.com
Review
Selected as one of the 2009 Kansas Notable Books In "Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris's smartly drawn, surprisingly uplifting biography [...] the authors share Paddleford's eye for a good story, deftly documenting their subject's well-deserved contributions to food journalism, but balancing them with biographical color."
-New York Post
"Alexander and Harris paint an affectionate portrait of the eccentric writer, an ebullient yet imposing individualist and charismatic adventurer...Rich, flavorful and spirited, like its subject and the cuisines she chronicled."
-Kirkus
"At long last, an enthusiastic, significant rehabilitation of Paddleford's career as food writer from 1936 to 1966 at the New York Herald Tribune...The authors make an upbeat case for reconsidering Paddleford's achievement in this enjoyable read, and include a slew of her comfort recipes."
-Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
An award-winning food writer and a university archivist come together to revive the legacy of Clementine Paddleford, a go-anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter, who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of [food] stories ("The New York Times"). Two 8-page b&w inserts.
Synopsis
A rollicking biography of a pioneering American woman and one of our greatest culinary figures 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.
About the Author
Kelly Alexander is a food writer and was a longtime editor at
Saveur magazine; she has written for
The New Republic, Food & Wine, The New York Times, and numerous other publications. She won the James Beard Journalism Award for her feature writing on Clementine Paddleford.
CYNTHIA HARIS is the manuscript/collections archivist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, and the leading authority on the Paddleford archive.