Full Plate Ozark Hospitality: St. Paul's Episcopal Church Fayetteville, Arkansas

Additional Details

Description: When two or more are gathered -- in a kitchen, that is -- the topics of food and recipes inevitably emerge. That is how the idea for this book, Full Plate: Generous Servings of Ozark Hospitality, began. While gathered in St. Paul's Episcopal Church and hosting the Episcopal Church Women's Luncheon for the Diocese of Arkansas, several of the kitchen volunteers, who all loved to cook and share their dishes with others, began to talk about creating a St. Paul's cookbook. And so, sometime between the main course and the dessert, a planning meeting for this project was scheduled. 

The book has been a work in progress for many people over nearly ten years. The benefit of time allowed the cookbook committee to methodically test and retest the recipes that were submitted by parishioners, their friends, and families. Recipes were evaluated and rated in a number of areas, especially for their taste and appearance. With the impressive number of outstanding recipes that the committee had to consider, it became apparent that this was a collection of recipes with a distinct quality to become a "regional cookbook" and hopefully appeal to other communities within our state and beyond. 

Each recipe appearing in this book has gone through a rigorous process of testing and selection. No one prepared his or her own recipe for testing. Recipes for testing had to be prepared with only the list of ingredients and instructions for guidance. Each prepared recipe was tasted and critiqued by an impartial panel. Only dishes judged to be outstanding in taste and appearance were selected for further testing. Titles, ingredient lists, and preparation details were modified and/or clarified based on recommendations of the preparer and panel members to ensure that anyone, novice or expert, who attempts to prepare a recipe from this cookbook will have a successful dish. 

Subsequent rounds of preparation, tasting, and critique resulted in the fine-tuning of recipes considered to be the "best." Any recipe on that list would be worthy of inclusion. Each recipe appearing in the cookbook has been tested at least three times. Since the book would be limited to a fixed number of pages, there was no choice but to reduce the "best" list to a shorter "best of the best" list. The final selection was not easy to perform. As a result, there were some truly excellent recipes omitted because they were simply too similar to others to be included. 

Northwest Arkansas is a melting pot of many different cultures, which has inspired the varied Northwest Arkansas cuisine. These outstanding recipes are favorites of St. Paul's parishioners and no claim is made to their originality. They have all been tested at least three times by impartial members, sometimes altered, sometimes adapted, and sometimes adopted. We hope you enjoy this labor of love. 

---- 

Condition: Good condition.