Hallelujah! The Welcome Table

Rating:
Summary: Angelou cooks up a new fave for fans....
Review: ....and it's not one of her stellar novels. This is a great collection of timeless southern recipes that are a delight to consume over your copy of "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". As luscious as her books!

Rating:
Summary: The recipes: 4 stars, the stories about recipes - 5 stars!
Review: Even if you don't enjoy cooking all that much, you will absolutely LOVE this book because of the detailed accounts of each recipe's beginnings and the special events and people behind them. The recipes aren't anything to sneeze at, either - not fancy or "gourmet" but good, tasty home cooking with some special touches from Angelou that set them apart from the average. Caramel lovers will have a field day here since there are a number of recipes, such as caramel cake, that have caramel as a main ingredient.
What makes this book REALLY special are the stories that Maya Angelou tells about how and when she discovered certain recipes, memories of family togetherness or of affairs gone terribly wrong (the latter inspired her to go home and create a wonderful banana pudding). Her Smothered Chicken won raves from Oprah Winfrey and was featured on a recent show.
As always, Angelou is opinionated and straightforward about what she likes in a recipe and what makes for good cooking - and eating. Readers are likely to learn something along the way, not only about what makes for good eating but what being a gracious, generous host is all about.

Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed the recipes and memories in this book
Review: I love food, so naturally I was interested in this book when I saw it. This is an excellent book with many good recipes in it. I can't wait to try some of these recipes out and make some of these dishes for myself. I enjoyed reading about the memories from Maya Angelou's life that accompany these recipes too. Food has played such an important part in her life. I enjoyed reading about how she got over her writer's block once by making custard and chocolate eclairs. There is a delicious recipe for a caramel cake that Maya learned from her grandmother. Caramel cake is a reminder to the author about how much she was loved by her grandmother. I learned a lot of recipes for dishes I never even heard of. Chakchouka is a vegetarian stew that consists of eggplant, tomatoes and onions. I also learned a recipe for a dish called Cassoulet which has pea beans served with various meats like pork, duck, chicken and sausage.

There is a good recipe for chicken tamales that Maya learned from her girlfriend who was trying to impress a doctor that she really liked. I love Mexican food so I appreciated this recipe very much. There are pictures for some of these dishes in this book. My favorite picture is the one of porkchops. Maya learned to cook pork chops from her older brother Bailey. The picture in the book shows pork chops served with apples on top of it, and it looks delicious.

Respect for good food can eliminate distances between sexes and languages. Maya recalls the time when she cooked Thanksgiving dinner for a group of Italian scholars in Italy. I recommend this book to anybody who enjoys good food. I enjoyed the recipes and stories in this book very much.


Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Memories, and Hearty Recipes
Review: I went through the "look inside" feature of this book, and I read the first story. I enjoyed the story very much. The fact that there was a recipe for the pie featured in the story made me even more excited, but when I saw the photo, I didnt have to think about it, I ordered the book immediately.
Imagine my disappointment when I found that out of the 73 recipes there were less than 20 photos in the book. Less than 20. I keep on hoping that maybe my book is a mistake, but now, Im thinking perhaps not. It gives the book a very "rushed" look, there are many pages with nothing on them at all. Poor pages, just begging for pictures. This is why at first I thought it was a complete mistake.
Im so surprised no one mentioned it. I know, Im a very visual person, who truly appreciates reference photos. I would have loved to know what the tamales looked like. I just thought I would mention it for those of you who are also visually stimulated. Lack of photos is the reason I didnt give the book 5 stars.
Despite the lack of gorgeous pictures, the stories are wonderfully written, and the range of recipes is also wonderful. You could whip up a simple hearty meal for close friends, or an elegant meal to entertain guests. And you have a story to tell behind each dish. I dont regret my decision to get this book at all, I also think it would be a great gift.

Rating:
Summary: Great cook book!
Review: I've tried about a dozen of these recipes so far. Every one of them was deeeelicious. (Start with the drunkard chicken!) Two were a bit complicated, but the rest were amzingly easy because the writing is so clear. Great cook book!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Memoir
Review: If you thought her book "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" was an excellent book, then you will find "Hallelujah" to be even better. Part memoir and part recipes of life, it is poetic,wonderful and unusual in style...yet so in keeping with Ms. Angelou's wonderful writing style.
A Couple of other books that I agree are great books to read are: Skywriting and Nightmares Echo

Rating:
Summary: Maya Angelou's WELCOME TABLE Sumptuous
Review: Kudos to Maya Angelou for her exquisite HALLELUJAH! THE WELCOME TABLE: A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES WITH RECIPES.

You don't have to be a cook to love this book, but if you are, you will appreciate how Ms. Angelou, herself a chef, creates a cookbook that is also a memoir of food and culture, sharing a lifetime of memories from her extraordinary life.

Ms. Angelou precedes her recipes with stories revealing how deeply entwined the foods we cook and the way we cook them are with our the stories of our culture and our deepest sense of who we are.

The Author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS and THE HEART OF A WOMAN brings her enormous open-heartedness and expansive vision to this beautiful book that is much more than a cookbook.

The pictures of the food are scrumptious, making it hard to read through all the stories before trying some out. Ms. Angelou's recipes are clearly written, straightforward, and easy to follow.

Ms. Angelou's vividly describes how her mom always preceeded the making of her Lemon Merinque Pie with the story about an old woman who lured young men with Sunday dinner and Lemon Meringue Pie.

Pie making was also central to my French Canadian culture in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The femmes in my family make the best pies, and the ma tantes competed good naturedly with each other for recognition from their many children and grandchildren who gathered with big eyes and open mouths around holiday tables piled with thirty to forty different pies. My mother's delectable "Colleen's Lemon Chiffon Pie" inspired "The Pie Queens," which begins my forthcoming WOMEN COOKING: FROM CREPES to KNISHES, FRYBREAD & TORTILLAS(TouchArt Books, 2006).

Like MIRIAM'S KITCHEN and WOMEN COOKING, The WELCOME TABLE combines memoir, storytelling, and photos with recipes. Angelou's cooking memoir is sumptuous as one would expect from the Author of so much poetry and prose that has spoken to our collective hearts and minds.

With THE WELCOME TABLE, Ms. Angelou reaffirms how central food and cooking are to culture and its practice, preservation and perpetuation.

Who we are as individuals and as peoples is connected to our relationship to food and the diverse ways we prepare it. In THE WELCOME TABLE, Ms. Angelou shares her cultural, class and personal journey with food to nurture us all. Milles Mercis, Ms. Angelou.

Charleen Touchette Author of IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANUCK GIRL (2004) and WOMEN COOKING: FROM CREPES TO KNISHES, FRYBREAD & TORTILLAS (2006).

Rating:
Summary: A tasty memoir
Review: Maya Angelou is well-known for her literary prose, her singing, and even time spent in the company of many celebrities, however it's not commonly known that she was also a cook. In her latest book, HALLELUJAH! THE WELCOME TABLE, she shares not only her delectable recipes, but also a bit more about her life, making this book stand out as a memoir as well.

Ms. Angelou takes the reader on a journey through growing up under the tutelage of her grandmother along with her brother Bailey. The warmth felt for family spreads throughout her memories and wafts into each of the recipes presented in the book. After each story, she shares recipes for all types of food, all of which appear easy to prepare, with ingredients easily found in the aisles of your favorite grocery store.

I enjoyed my time spent in Ms. Angelou's kitchen and would recommend this book to those who have a knack for cooking and also those with zeal for life. I'm a Southern girl -- also raised in Arkansas, not too far from Stamps -- and some of the recipes such as the crackling corn bread and the hog head cheese brought back memories from my own childhood and how I refused to eat both. This book is not just a simple cookbook, but is filled with remembrances of times past, of a wonderful family, and the historical background of the recipes. It was heartwarming, funny at times, and left me anxious to try out the recipes. First on my list is the caramel cake and then either the coconut cake or the chocolate fudge.

Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers


Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: She's a wonderful writer and the stories are really nice but the pictures altho beautiful didn't match recipes the potatoe salad is a perfect example the picture is very yellow ...eggs yolks alone will not make it that yellow, also the red rice ball ...I personally felt there was too much empty space in the book ...and too much sugar in the southern veggies...I really did enjoy reading the complete book (which I rarely read a complete cook book) it was a lovely book but she seem to have writer block ..I could feel it ...I wish her much love

Rating:
Summary: I Love Ms. Angelou
Review: What a wonderful book, to mix wonderful recipes with a memoir style of flair is truly Ms. Angelou's gift. Every book she has ever written is a beautiful gift of writing captured within the context of the bound pages.
You will enjoy this book.
also look for other books for some great reading, namely: I Know Why Te Caged Bird Sings-Maya Angelou, Nightmares Echo-Katlyn Stewart and If I Knew Then-Amy Fisher