Writing about the various ingredients was inspired partly by Zingerman’s Roadhouse and my daughters who worked there. My daughter Melina Hinton discussed the production of produce and meats, and increased my awareness of food production methods and animal care. At the encouragement of Ari Weinzweig, my daughter Elizabeth Hinton wrote the story of African American cooking during Reconstruction by following two cooks’ lives. Recipes from their cookbooks and the tale of their lives were presented at a dinner that reminded me of the motivation of food as a determiner of our culture and evolution. After all, from the plants’ point of view, if they have one, it’s all about reproduction. And from ours, it’s all about staying alive combined with our great lust for variety and pleasure, both responsible for the fact that we’re able to walk into a grocery store and buy food that was native to far-flung parts of the world. Each food I studied pulled out a whole stream of history and provided a window into the forces and events that provoked our civilization and culture. After all, it was the cultivation of wheat that made settlements possible, and our lust for cinnamon that led to the discovery of the New World, and our addiction to sugar that was made possible only through slavery, crucial for the United States to be the great diverse country it is.

I need to acknowledge several books that I used: Bruce D. Smith’s The Emergence of Agriculture; Richard Manning’s Against the Grain; Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel; The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson; and The Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Natalie Angier’s Woman: an Intimate Geography and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection were helpful in honing my understanding of the importance of grandmothers to human evolution.

And this book would not have been written quite this way without Ruth Behar, Elizabeth Hinton, and Tim Kornegay. Tim wrote the rap lyrics that Special Intent sang; particular gratitude to you, Tim, as well as thanks for your suggestions on the entire manuscript. Good lookin’ out! Special thanks also to Ruth who read this, sometimes with only a few hours notice, as each chapter was finished. And Elizabeth, your ideas are here from the beginning, thanks again for reading this over your winter break. Kieron Hales, sous chef extraordinaire, helped me perfect the fortune cookie recipe while Bev Pearlman and Gail Farley made suggestions that are incorporated, and Mike De Simone and Jeff Jenssen graciously tested each recipe. Thanks so much. All their support, criticisms, love, and friendship were invaluable.