The recipes in “Around Our Southern Table” were forty-five years in the making, and almost none of them were written down until Theresa Jensen Lacey wrote them herself. The Fairhope author’s 21st book — published in 2022 by Moon Howler Publishing — is a family cookbook drawn from four generations of Southern cooks, and its origin story is one that anyone who has ever tried to capture a grandmother’s cooking will recognize.
“None of My People Used a Cookbook”
“It was back in 1982 that I realized none of my people used a cookbook,” Lacey says. When she approached her grandmother about collecting recipes, the answer was that she simply “knew” when a dish was right — she had never written one down, though every dish she put on the family’s farm table was excellent. The great-aunts and uncles were the same. What they offered was an apprenticeship instead: “You can come to watch what we do, but stay out of our way in the kitchen.”
So Lacey watched. For more than three decades she kept adding to the recipes she recorded in her family’s kitchens, while the manuscript stayed unfinished and, one by one, the original contributors passed away. What finally pushed the project to completion was a reading by Alabama author Rick Bragg, whose own 2018 book, “The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table,” told a strikingly similar story of recipes preserved by memory rather than measurement. Lacey took the hint, added her husband Eric’s favorite dishes and a few cherished recipes from friends, and declared the manuscript done.
An Escoffier, Not Just a Recipe Box
What sets the book apart from a standard family cookbook, Lacey says, is its practical layer. “It’s also an Escoffier,” she says — a reference to the French master chef’s systematic approach — meaning the book offers variations on recipes and, crucially, instructions for rescuing a dish that has gone wrong.
Her favorite example is Hollandaise, the sauce that defeats so many home cooks when a moment of distraction turns it into what looks like rich scrambled eggs. “There’s a secret to returning the sauce to its creamy and smooth origin,” she says, “and that’s in the cookbook.”
The recipes themselves span four generations of Southern family cooks, presented at two levels: a simple gumbo designed for beginners sits alongside a full-fledged version “for those who know their way around the kitchen.” The longest chapter is seafood — “that’s natural for where we live,” Lacey says, a nod to the Gulf’s place at the center of coastal Alabama cooking.
Local Hands on Every Page
The book’s production is a Fairhope story in itself. Local artist, designer and musician Charles Hudson Davis — who plays with The Leavin’ Brothers — served as art director for the book’s graphics, and regional cartoonist J.D. Crowe, the longtime newspaper cartoonist, created the artwork for the front and back covers. “I think the art helps make the cookbook special,” Lacey says.
Purchasing it keeps things local, too: “Around Our Southern Table” is available from Moon Howler Publishing directly and on the shelves locally at Ahi Seafood Market, Page & Palette — Fairhope’s beloved independent bookstore — and Fairhope Pharmacy.
A Legacy, in Bragg’s Words
Lacey’s publishing career has run from crime fiction to humor to cooking, but the family cookbook is the one she calls a life project — the collected knowledge of cooks who never measured anything, preserved before it could vanish. Bragg’s own blurb gets at why it matters: “This is a real legacy for generations to come,” he said. “I think that’s the best compliment I could get,” Lacey says.
For anyone who has ever wished they had written down what a grandmother ‘just knew,’ the book makes the case that it is never too late — and that the best Southern cookbooks are, in the end, family histories disguised as recipes.