Delights and Prejudices

James Beard was America's most beloved food authority. He was born to a tradition of good food. The Beard family household in Portland, Oregon, centered around a flourishing kitchen, which functioned with the seasons: in the spring, mammoth white asparagus was canned, and in the summer, fruits of all varieties; in the fall, mincemeat was made for the winter holidays. Almost daily, the aroma of fresh baking filled the air. With the assistance of a Chinese chef, the kitchen was supervised by Mr. Beard's mother. Elizabeth Beard was a gifted woman with a flair for food, who believed that a well-stocked larder was a necessary condition of life. Each summer the Beards moved to the Oregon seaside, where the bountiful Pacific provisioned their table with incomparable Dungeness crab, razor clams, and Olympia oysters; salmon "flowed into the Beard household as though it were a tributary of the Columbia River."

Mr. Beard's epicurean autobiographical journal leads him to informal discussions of markets and restaurants around the world. As always, he is outspoken about his preferences in food--a characteristic which provides the title for this book and which helped to make him a leading proponent of sensible food habits uncompromising in quality. Not only does Mr. Beard evoke the smells and tastes of wonderful food during his narration, but he provides recipes as well, more than 150 of them, many from his mother's kitchen. It is that "most memorable of kitchens"--a symbol of America's regional vitality at the turn of the century--which will linger longest with the reader.