Today, I’m so excited to bring you an EXCLUSIVE sneak peek at the cover and the inside of my cookbook before anyone else sees it!

Southern Plate: Classic Comfort Food That Makes Everyone Feel Like Family

Some amazingly talented people have worked very hard on this book and I want to give special thanks to the photography team and my wonderful publishers at Harper Collins! Today I’m also going to show you a glimpse of the interior, right off the design boards! These are the sample designs of the interior, they aren’t finalized yet (you’ll notice the page numbers aren’t there and it’s only a sampling of a  few pages so we could get a feel for the final product) but I knew you’d be just as tickled as I was to see them firsthand. I’ve been DYING wanting to show you the book and I’d love to hear back from you – I hope you love it as much as I do!

If you’d like to see the inside (oh my, SO EXCITED about the inside!) click below.

To preview the initial design layout samples hot off the presses, click here.

The book is already available for pre-order. We don’t have all of the extras up there yet (See how neat it is that you can see them here first?) but you can click here or on the book cover to pre-order your copy now and have it delivered to your home as soon as it debuts in October. All pre-order sales count towards the first week’s sales so if we get enough pre-orders our book could actually debut on the lists with all the other “big boys”. I say “our book” because I really do think of this book as yours and mine. I even dedicated the book to you (in my usual long winded fashion), but you’ll have to see the actual book to read that. You know who I’m talking about when I say “big boys”, the fancy schmancy cookbooks that have all those ingredients we can’t pronounce! ~grins~.

Our cookbook features over 160 recipes, all from my family to yours and yes, many of them will be exclusive to the cookbook (never before published on Southern Plate) but per your feedback, I was sure to include many of your Southern Plate favorites as well so you could have them all in one handy place. I even have  a whole section in there on gravies- Of course I have red-eye!

I tried to write the “go to” cookbook I’ve always wanted to have when it comes to simple, old fashioned recipes that I grew up with and I could not be happier with the finished product. In this day and age of entire networks dedicated to food – I think most of us just want to come home to the kind of meal our Mama’s and Grandmama’s made, put on the table by someone who loves us. I’ve included the stories with every recipe so you know where it came from, why I love it so much, and why I think you’ll like it to. This isn’t just a cookbook with ingredients and instructions, it’s a collection of recipes and remembrances shared with you just like a friend would.

I hope you’ll feel as if you’re sitting at my table chatting with me when you read it because that is just where my heart was as I wrote it.

More Great News! (click more to read)

Harper Collins has moved our book to a larger imprint. Southern Plate will now be printed under William Morrow! Some amazing books have been published under this imprint and I’m honored to be among them.

The William Morrow folks are new to the Southern Plate Family so I’d dearly love it if you’d say “hi” to them in the comments section of this post and let them know how much we all appreciate their faith in us and our book!

“Southerners like to feed people. Doing so nourishes the soul of the giver.”

Submit your quote here.