Hometown Appetites
The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer
who Chronicled How America Ate
Written by Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris,
Foreword by Colman Andrews

In Hometown Appetites: The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled How America Ate, an award-winning food writer and a leading university archivist come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of.

Clementine Paddleford was an eccentric. A Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle America’s culinary traditions, she was charmingly offbeat in her swirling capes and skirts – and she wrote florid food prose to match. And yet, she was the first journalist in American history to take food seriously. She pioneered a smart, sassy reporting style that managed to elevate food writing from the dull formulas of home economists to must-read material.

Flying around the country, sometimes in a Piper Cub plane that she herself piloted, she worked tirelessly to gather the best recipes from cooks in every region. That meant divining the best cheesecake in New York City, hunkering down in chili parlors in Texas, and touring salmon canneries in Alaska - and tasting everything she could fin in between. It also meant that between 1948-1960, she traveled more than 800,000 miles in pursuit of food – more than three times the distance from the earth to the moon.

All that orbiting paid off: Paddleford’s weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953, Time magazine named her America’s “best-known food editor.” At the height of her career, Paddleford pulled down a salary of $250,000 – an almost unheard of sum, especially for a woman, in that day. In 1960, Paddleford published her tome How America Eats, a collection of 12 years of columns, which became a seminal work. So why haven’t you heard of her?

Hometown Appetites explores how the legacy of such a colorful and important character in the world of food has been lost. It also contains updated versions of more than 50 of Paddleford’s recipes for classic American dishes, and tow photo inserts from her meticulously curated archive. This book restores Paddleford’s name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside those of James Beard and Julia Child. It’s a five-star read in the spirit of national bestsellers such as Heat and The United States of Arugula. Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group USA, Hometown Appetites is available wherever books are sold. Kelly Alexander was a guest on our online radio show Eat, Drink & Be Merry! on November 7, 2008. To listen to the entire, unedited show, please click here. To listen to Kelly's interview, please double click on the Play Button below.

The Orville Burtis Ranch Chili
As featured in Hometown Appetites
1 pound dry red kidney beans
4 quarts cold water
5 cups tomato juice
1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 ½ pounds ground chuck
1 large onion, grated, about 2 cups

Rinse beans; cover with cold water and soak overnight in a heavy 6-quart casserole. Cover beans and simmer in their soaking water 1 ½ to 2 hours or until they are tender, adding tomato juice from time to time to keep beans covered as liquid boils away. If tomato juice runs out, add more water if necessary to keep liquid an inch above the beans. Add ½ tablespoon of the salt.
Divide meat into batches. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat ½ tablespoon of the vegetable oil and brown meat, stirring the next batch into the earlier one. Divide chili powder evenly among batches and stir continuously until evenly browned. After the meat is browned, add remaining salt. Remove beef from heat.
In the remaining 2 teaspoons vegetable oil, sauté onions until golden brown. Add beef and onion to casserole of beans. Cook mixture over low heat, stirring continuously, about 10 minutes longer. Serve with rolls or crackers.
Yield: 8 generous servings

About the Authors
Kelly Alexander was an editor at Saveur magazine for many years; her article for that publication on Clementine Paddleford won the James Beard Journalism Award. Her work has also appeared in Food & Wine, New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, New York, Slate, Real Simple, Travel + Leisure, Newsweek, and many other publications. Alexander is also a regular contributor on the subject of food to the NPR program “The State of Things,” which airs daily on WUNC, North Carolina Public Radio. Currently she teaches foo writing at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Photo of Kelly Alexander courtesy of Robert Adam Mayer

Cynthia Harris is the manuscript/collections archivist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, and is the leading authority on the Clementine Paddleford archive. Photo of Cynthia Harris courtesy of Swinton Photography