The Laura Lea Balanced Cookbook. Laura Lea

      foreword

      We’ve all been at a place where our life is

       in the balance; a place where our future is

       undetermined and at risk. America is at that

       place with food. Many of us have managed to

       get into a precarious, unbalanced relationship

       with our plate, our table, and our kitchens.

       This cookbook will teach you how to find

       balance again—and, if necessary, again and

       again. Balance is not something you get stuck

       in—it must be restored, over and over, bite

       after bite, meal after meal. It’s something you

       work to achieve. No one does it better than

       Laura Lea.

      Laura Lea cooks edible poems. Her recipes

       break with convention and established food

       culture. They express her vision of a lush life:

       a life both serene and exciting, a world full

       of surprises—all of them good. Simply put,

       that is the essence of the recipes in this book

       and the theme of Laura Lea’s kitchen—the

       surprises will be good for and to you.

      Laura Lea creates recipes that work, that

       tell you exactly how to create a delicious

       dish, but they will not be expected recipes—

       they will be Laura Lea innovations. You will

       treasure this cookbook. The woman is non-

       stop when it comes to recipe development.

      Laura Lea and I began working together at

       the end of the 20th century. When still a teen,

      she was part of a workshop examining the

       impact improbable alliances and friendships

       had had on the shaping of Nashville.

      Ours is one such friendship. I am a black

       woman who writes about putting health and

       history on a tasty soul food plate, and I am

       particularly concerned with great food on a

       budget. There are budget and splurge items

       in this cookbook, easy- and harder-to-get

       ingredients, but Laura Lea and I have a

       common cause: food that’s good to you and

       good for you; food that sustains by delighting.

       I am proud to say, my daughter Caroline

       Randall Williams and I put one of Laura Lea’s

       chia pudding recipes into our cookbook

       Soul Food Love, and cooked that pudding

       for food justice workers in Baltimore.

      When I was appointed Faculty Head of

       Stambaugh House at Vanderbilt University,

       one of my first acts would be to hire Laura

       Lea to curate a syllabus of food for the

       house so that my students could learn

       more about the world they lived in—and

       about themselves—by eating. That year we

       welcomed students to campus with Laura

       Lea’s delicious coconut chia pudding with

       granola and fresh peaches, and invited them

       to engage in hard conversations sustained

       by the pure deliciousness of no-bake