When country music star Kimberly Schlapman of Little Big Town set out to write a cookbook, she tapped Greenwood’s own award-winning author and cook Martha Foose to help weave the stories through the pages of family recipes and dishes from Schlapman’s “Kimberly’s Simply Southern” cooking show.
Released last month, “Oh Gussie! Cooking and Visiting in Kimberly’s Southern Kitchen” — co-written by Schlapman and Foose — shows off some of the star singer’s very real prowess in the kitchen. In Foose, a James Beard Award-winning cookbook writer, Schlapman said she found the “perfect partner” to help put together her first cookbook.
“I knew I wanted someone to guide me along and mentor me through this process,” Schlapman said. “The first time we spoke on the phone, I knew we were kindred spirits. It was such an incredible delight to work with her on this. She was just incredible.”
Working on the cookbook together, Foose said she had to squeeze in opportunities to work on the book between Schlapman’s relentless touring schedule with Little Big Town and numerous other commitments: meeting in parking lots of coliseums and catching up between concerts over the course of two years to piece together some of the stories of Kimberly’s life that bind the recipes together in the book.
“It did take a lot of time, but I’m so happy and proud of the finished product and grateful that I had the opportunity,” Schlapman said. “I have cooked and loved to cook all my life, ever since I could stand at the counter on a stool and hold a spoon. As busy as my life is, it’s the one thing I always do.”
Despite the hectic scheduling, Foose said she found working with Schlapman an absolute delight. “She was a complete joy to work with, even with all of her crazy time constraints. Just completely charming.”
The recipes in “Oh Gussie!” are organized into chapters — Family, Friends, Music, Home and Away — with each dish tied to heartfelt stories from Schlapman’s life. “It’s a cookbook, but it’s also a memoir,” Schlapman said. “The recipes went along with making me who I am and with my life with Little Big Town. I’m just so grateful that I was able to tell those stories.”
Part of Foose’s work on the project was helping arrange the narrative and tie each recipe together. “You want to make sure you do their story justice,” Foose said.
Among the book’s more bittersweet moments is a recipe tied to the death of Schlapman’s first husband, Steve Rich, who was felled by a sudden heart attack in 2005. “It was such a major part of her life that we had to address it in some way in the book,” Foose said. “She had mentioned in passing that the only thing she’d eat at that time was this black walnut cake.”
That particular recipe, Foose said, is an example of the emotions that often go into cooking — and how heartfelt the work of putting together the cookbook was. “You get really close to the person you’re working on a cookbook with,” Foose said. “Cooking and eating with someone really is an intimate relationship.”
For Schlapman, the walnut cake — given to her by a friend’s mother — is indicative of the comforting and caring relationship we have with food. “My mother taught me as a little girl to take care of people by cooking for them. She would come to their door, whether they were in grief or celebration, and she’d have some baked good in hand. I’ve adopted that. I cook for people whenever I can,” she said. “I really wanted the stories to be a big part of the book because I feel like I have some stories to tell, and I feel like some of my stories will encourage people when they come through hard times.
“My whole goal with the book is just to inspire people to take care of the people around them a little bit more and a little bit better.”
In selecting the recipes, Foose said she also had to keep an eye out for balancing healthy ingredients with a handful of more decadent dishes — “Kimberly’s played at so many state fairs, so fried food is her guilty pleasure” — and adding as many personal touches to the book as possible. A plate used in some of the photographs in the cookbook, for instance, was handmade by Schlapman’s father, an amateur potter. “You try to make the book as personal as possible, even if it’s something nobody notices but you and the person you’re working with,” Foose said.
Schlapman said she’s been pleased with the glowing reception the book has received so far — and also said she hopes it’ll prove a cherished possession for Daisy Pearl, her 7-year-old daughter. “I hope it’s something my little girl will treasure her whole life,” Schlapman said. “She loves to cook, too, and now that she has these recipes in a collection, I hope that will be a treasure for her.”
Foose, who started her culinary career leafing through cookbooks while working at the cafe in Square Books in Oxford, has carved out her niche writing cookbooks and has launched a new career of sorts co-writing with a number of celebrity authors. With “Oh Gussie!” out on shelves, Foose said she’s at work on a new cookbook with Indian-American chef Asha Gomez, an Atlanta cooking star, tentatively titled “My Two Souths.” Another book proposal in the works would have Foose teaming up with a well-known pop star to bring out a collection of family recipes.
Foose said she cut her recipe-writing teeth while working in the cookbook division of Pillsbury in Minnesota, where her office was a test kitchen and she worked with a team of food testers to streamline a wide variety of dishes. “That was a really good learning experience because you really try to simplify recipes so that, even if you’re doing cajun food, Susie from Topeka can still make it and have a good experience,” Foose said.
Those experiences clicked when Foose came out with two cookbooks of her own, 2009’s “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea,” which won the James Beard Award, one of the industry’s highest honors, and her 2011 cookbook “Southerly Course,” which also garnered rave reviews. Working with a co-author, Foose said she’s able to focus on one of the things she enjoys most about cookbook writing: pulling the disparate dishes together into a natural collection.
“A cookbook is a book; it needs to have narrative to bring it through,” Foose said. “That’s my role when I’m doing it for someone else.
•Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
