"I grew up in the fifties, an era when cellulite existed but had no name. In our household, tucked away in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, the sixties were noted for its grapefruit diets and ice cold cans of Metracal. My people loved food, and every meal was a celebration." So begins Michael Lee West in Consuming Passions, her deliciously funny look at family, food, and Southern life. Brimming with lively anecdotes about aunts, uncles, cousins, and all manner of eccentric locals, it is also filled with a classic selection of recipes for the gumbos, barbecue, cakes, and pies that reflect this region¹s, and the author¹s, devotion to real "down-home" food.

The reader is transported from West¹s first attempt at "No-Fail Rice and Pork Casserole" to her "internship" in Miss Johnnie¹s kitchen, as she launches on her own food explorations, making croutons, bravely frying, ordering exotic spices and taking cookbooks to bed to "read, study, and dissect. I knew my kitchen, perhaps my life, would never be the same. I had a destiny, a food obsessed life."