Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. She measures by "dabs" and "smidgens" and "tads" and "you know, hon, just some." Her notion of farm-to-table is a flatbed truck. Many of her recipes, recorded here for the first time, pre-date the Civil War-- handed down skillet by skillet from one generation of Braggs to the next. Here Rick Bragg finally preserves his heritage by telling stories that framed his mother's cooking and education, from childhood into old age. Because a recipe, writes Bragg, is story like anything else.

Prologue: It takes a lot of rust to wipe away a General Electric -- "Them shadows get to dancin'" -- "Salt is good" -- A man who knew beans -- Sweeter, after the frost -- "A chicken... ain't likely to ketch on" -- The fourth bear -- The falling cow -- "Hard times, come around no more" -- "A ham hock don't call for help" -- Cakes of gold -- Sis -- The second ghost -- Bitter weeds -- Still hard times for an honest man -- The pie that never was -- Ribs in the dead of night -- Clementine -- Tomatoes without taste, tomatoes without end -- Didelphis Virginiana -- Stairway to nowhere -- People who cook -- Blackberry winter -- Till it thunders -- Offerings -- Government cheese -- Sometimes the pies just call your name -- Red's -- "When Momma was all right" -- Monkey on a string -- Edna's ark -- Staggering to glory -- The runaway -- "Untimely figs" -- Spring -- Epilogue: The recipe that never was.