Brooks Garth - Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen

Copyright 2008 by Trisha Yearwood
Photographs copyright 2008 by Ben Fink

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House, LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2008

All photographs are by Ben Fink with the exception of those appearing on from the authors collection.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yearwood, Trisha.
Georgia cooking in an Oklahoma kitchen : recipes from my family to yours / Trisha Yearwood, with Gwen Yearwood and Beth Bernard. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Cookery, AmericanSouthern style. 2. CookeryGeorgia.
I. Yearwood, Gwen. II. Bernard, Beth. III. Title.
TX715.2.S69Y43 2008
641.5975dc22 2007024753

eBook ISBN: 9780307485403
Hardcover ISBN: 9780307381378

BOOK DESIGN BY JENNIFER K. DAVIS BEAL
COVER DESIGN BY JENNIFER K. DAVIS BEAL
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY RUSS HARRINGTON

v3.1

In memory of

Jack Howard Yearwood,

a wonderful husband, father, friend,

and one hell of a good cook.

We miss you every second of every minute

of every day.

Love,

your girls,

Gwen, Beth, and Patricia

Why is it that two people can make the same dish, following the same recipe from beginning to end, and one will taste ten times better than the other? We all judge food on how it smells and how it tastes, but when you find a dish that is amazing, there is always that something you cant describe. I believe that something is love. Loving to cook is the difference between making food that is good and food that is great.

Watching Miss Yearwood (as I often call my wife) in the kitchen, it is easy to see how much she loves to cook. In fact, she defines what loving to cook means to me. Peeling potatoes and snapping green beans are chores that I rush through to get them over with; Trisha looks upon these tasks not as chores but as the careful, loving steps she takes on the way to making a meal that will bring joy to whoever is seated at our table.

When I think of Thanksgiving or Christmas, it is always with the pleasure of knowing this years meal will be amazing. The anticipation of the German chocolate cake she bakes each year for my birthday makes me not mind getting a year older. And I know how happy it makes her that all of our friends feel the same way, because she always makes their favorite cake, pie, or pudding for their special days, too.

Be it for family or guests, Trisha always wants the meal to be something worth remembering. Which brings me to this: To make truly delicious meals, not only must you love to cook, you must also love those for whom you are cooking. That is what makes Miss Yearwoods cooking simply the best.

Garth Brooks

Other than for the singing thing I do, Im best known among my friends for my cooking. Its something I take great pride in. I dont think people expect me to be a good cook, so its always fun to watch their expressions as they taste whatever Ive made. Their liking my food gives me the same feeling I get when an audience applauds one of my performancesit feels good!

Food seems to always be a topic of conversation when my friends and I get together. Somebodys got some new recipe we all need to try, or were talking about a new restaurant thats just opened and finding out if anyones been there yet. Sharing recipes and memories about food has always been a great way to connect with friends and family.

When I first moved to Oklahoma, what I missed most of all was my family. We make every effort to see one another often, but there are those times when we cant get together, and I found myself on those lonely days making my moms chicken noodle soup or baking a batch of my niece Ashleys banana bread. For my birthday a few years ago, my mom and my sister put together a notebook full of our favorite family recipes and called it Georgia Recipes for an Oklahoma Kitchen. Ashley even did artwork on her computer, using pictures of both states for the cover. Weve come a long way from that binder full of typed recipes, and we found many lost or never-written-down recipes along the way.

That compilation planted the seed for this very special family cookbook. Some of these recipes go back to my grandmothers, Elizabeth Yearwood and Elizabeth Lizzie Paulk. I love the idea of making a meal I can imagine my grandmother Lizzie making for Grandaddy to enjoy when he came in from working the tobacco fields back in the 1930s. Its yet another way we stay connected from generation to generation. My mom, my sister, and I had a wonderful time organizing, compiling the recipes, and sometimes recreating an old recipe entirely to make it workable for modern kitchens and lives. Youll also find that the ones that do take a bit more time and effort, like the frosted birthday cakes and the super-huge Just Married Pound Cake, create wonderful memories you will share with your family for generations to come.

My sister and I have really high standards when it comes to cooking, because we learned from the best. Mama taught us the basics of cooking and to use what you have available. I think one of the biggest lessons she taught me is that its okay to change a recipe to make it work for me. I used to follow every recipe to the letter, afraid that if I left out something or added something else, it wouldnt turn out right. She also taught us simple rules of thumbthe ratio of flour to fat to liquid in a white sauce or a biscuit dough, for examplethat are at the heart of every successful recipe. I learned that as long as I observed those basic guidelines, I could change the rest around. My husband recently asked if we could try to create a heartier, meatier lasagna recipe, and I said, Sure! Lets experiment. If it turns out well, maybe itll make the next cookbook!