Hometown Appetites : The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled HowAmerica Ate

by Alexander, Kelly; Harris, Cynthia

• ISBN13: 9781592404841
• ISBN10: 1592404847
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-01
• Publisher: Gotham

Summary

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 Tribunetopped 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.

Author Biography

Kelly Alexander is a food writer and was a longtime editor at Saveur magazine. She has won the James Beard Journalism Award. Cynthia Harris is the manuscript/collections archivist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, and the leading authority on the Paddleford archive.