Book Club Night Kit

Good Lookin' Cookin'

Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George with Maurice Miner

Cozy night

Dolly Parton and her sister Rachel open up the family kitchen with Smoky Mountain recipes, childhood memories, and holiday traditions passed down from their mother. It is less a book to analyze than one to settle into, like sitting at a kitchen table while someone tells you how they learned to make biscuits.

Come Sit in the Kitchen a While

We are reading Dolly and Rachel Parton's Good Lookin' Cookin', so we are doing it right: cornbread, soup beans, banana pudding, and cider on the stove. Bring your appetite and one family recipe on a card.

Reading level: Easy

Best for: A club that likes cooking for each other and lingering over seconds more than debating structure

Discussion

Warm-up

1.What is the one dish that, if you smelled it cooking right now, would put you straight back in somebody's kitchen as a kid?
2.Did you flip through this book and immediately mark a recipe to make, or did you read it cover to cover like a story? What does that say about how you use cookbooks?

Digging in

1.The Parton sisters write about a mother feeding a very big family on very little. What did reading that stir up for you about how your own people handled having enough, or not quite enough?
2.So much of this book is food as a way of saying I love you without saying it. Who in your life cooks (or cooked) for you that way, and did you know it at the time?
3.The holiday and Sunday-dinner sections carry a lot of ritual. Which tradition in here made you feel warm, and which made you a little wistful for something your family has let slip?
4.Dolly and Rachel keep the old Smoky Mountain ways and the easier modern shortcuts side by side without apology. How did that land for you, as someone who probably does a little of both?

Going deep

1.There is a difference between a recipe you inherit and a recipe you choose. Which kind of cook are you becoming, and has anything about that changed as you have gotten older?
2.By the time you closed this book, what did it leave you wanting: to call someone, to cook something, or to write something down before it is lost? Sit with that for a second and tell us where it points.

On the table & to sip

To eat

Cast iron skillet cornbread with soft butter and sorghum or honey

The cornerstone of a Smoky Mountain table, cheap to make, impossible not to tear into while it is still hot

A big pot of soup beans with chopped onion and chow-chow on the side

Pure mountain thrift food from the world the Partons grew up in, and it holds all night so latecomers still eat well

Banana pudding in one giant bowl, passed around with serving spoons

The Southern potluck dessert, meant to be communal and slightly excessive, which is exactly the right note to end on

To sip

Spiced apple cider kept warm on the stove (no alcohol)

Smells like the house before anyone arrives and does half the hosting for you

Sweet tea in mason jars with lemon (no alcohol)

The default drink of every Southern kitchen table, and endlessly refillable

Bourbon with a splash of that same warm cider

A gentle, two-ingredient nightcap for anyone who wants one, no cocktail shaking required