From picking oysters with her toes as a youth on Prince Edward Island to preparing luscious dishes for guests in her luxury kitchen on the shores of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, world-traveled and highly successful corporate consultant Astrid Remme Ewing has come to believe one thing for sure: to learn the culture you always need to understand the food.
     In her first book, The Little Girl Can Cook, Ewing draws readers into a fascinating cookbook/storybook shaped by her belief that the food we eat and the menus we follow are a window into much more than hungry taste buds.
     Hailing from a poor but enriching childhood in Nova Scotia, and pursuing nursing in Canada and reporting for public television in South Carolina, the enigmatic Ewing continues to learn the nuances of New Orleans and Louisiana cooking from her home in Kenner whether it is Creole, Cajun, or the local rice.  She can tell you where oysters came from sweet or salt and that crawfish can be destroyed with a boil that is too strong.
     En route to professional success, she has interviewed Ernest Bourgnine and his beautiful wife Tova, the actor George Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy of the dynastic Kennedy family, Tennessee Williams and Itzhak Perlman, sat on the ground beneath a tree at Charlestown Landing with Woody Herman talking about jazz, and spoken with aviation pioneer General Doolittle on the deck of the decommissioned aircraft carrier Yorktown.
     Yet amidst corporate elite, rubbing shoulders with the famous, and visiting noteworthy landmarks across the globe, Ewing has always yearned to know more about food and the culture that lay behind it. The resultant stories in her book dazzle, entertain and inform.
     Today, she and her husband Jim travel to captivating locales worldwide, most recently to England and a long boat where the most challenging entrée was duck la’orange in an English oven on board. Continually seeking to learn about culture and food, she isn't hesitant to coerce a maitre’de to get into any famous kitchen whether in New Orleans, New York or Barcelona.  She's prepared Osco Buco for a birthday and transported it in a cooler, flown a bushel of oysters in a private plane that had a problem landing because of the weight, and shipped in little neck clams and lobster for a clam bake in a driveway for her wedding.
     The Little Girl Can Cook tells us far more than how to prepare a delicious meal, rather, how fascinating life can be.  Ewing’s menus, like all of ours, open a fascinating window. As with fines wines that lead to succulent meals, The Little Girl Can Cook both whets the appetite and provides lasting satisfaction.

 

Interviews with Astrid Ewing and book signing appearances can be arranged through WinPress Publishing by contacting project coordinator Jeffrey Winter at 715-216-8996 or win9133@frontiernet.net.

Pre-orders can be placed here through WinPress Hosting, a division of WinPress Publishing. Shipping & handling charges are $3.50 for U.S. domestic orders, $4.00 for Canadian orders and location-dependent for other international orders. Rates figured per book. Shipping discounts on volume orders.

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