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SID EVANS
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NOVEMBER 2019 / SOUTHERNLIVING.COM
12
WHEN WE SPEND Thanksgiving with
my family in Memphis, as we’re doing
this year, my mother always pulls
down the same three spiral-bound
cookbooks: River Road Recipes by the
Junior League of Baton Rouge (1959),
Party Potpourri by the Junior League
of Memphis (1971), and Jambalaya
by the Junior League of New Orleans
(1980). As you might expect, they are
stained and spattered, with yellowing
pages, broken bindings, and plenty of
scrawled notes in Mom’s elegant script
(usually “needs more spice”). There
are others she turns to, but these are
the old faithfuls, the ones she trusts
when everything is on the line—in
other words, when family is coming.
Given how many copies of these
cookbooks were sold, there’s a good
chance you have one in your kitchen
too. River Road Recipes is the gold
standard, with more than 1.3 million
copies purchased, and the other two
sold well over 100,000, channeling
millions of dollars back into funding
Junior League projects. They taught
generations of Southern women how
to cook, championed the traditions
and ingredients that make these
communities unique, and turned
some of their contributors into local
celebrities. But what’s the secret to
their staying power?
For Marsha Evans, it’s all about
the Gruyère Cheese Grits in Party
Potpourri. “It’s my go-to starch for
all my fancy dinners,” she told me
recently. In River Road
Recipes, she loves the
Oyster Casserole (page 105,
if you have it handy), with
Worcestershire sauce,
cracker crumbs, butter,
and lemon. “The kids never
ate it,” she says, “but that
just meant more for us.”
And in Jambalaya, she
loves the Cold Crabmeat
Salad, a lunchtime main-
stay that’s always a hit. In an age
when there are hundreds of millions
of recipes online, she returns to these
because they work—every time. They’re
also part of the Evans tradition now,
as familiar as aunts and uncles.
I’ve been spending some time with
Party Potpourri, which is sadly out of
print, because of an invitation to speak
at a celebration of the book by the
Junior League of Memphis. This is
not the first time it’s been recognized
by us. In 1993, we named it to the
Southern Living Community Cook-
book Hall of Fame. The book’s editors,
Mary Joy Knowlton and Barbara Prest,
made the trip to our offices in Birming-
ham, where they were feted with a
dinner and treated like rock stars. Of
course, they were representing the
work of dozens of women—editors,
writers, typists (six of them!), and
recipe testers—who worked on the
book for three years.
I hear a lot of people talk about
making the South a better place, but
these cookbooks—and the women
behind them—actually did it, and
Junior Leagues around
the world continue to do
it. Over 140,000 Junior
League members are
volunteering in their
communities, working
to solve problems of
poverty, hunger, addiction,
and many other issues
that challenge society.
They’ve also embraced
diversity and inclusion,
both in terms of their membership
and their leadership. In my book,
that’s something to be grateful for.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Cooking That Counts
There’s a reason we turn to these Junior League classics year after year
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