Sweet potato biscuits, creamy cheesy grits, spicy corn dip...oh man. I'm fairly familiar with these dishes, however it's definitely not something I grew up with and am really looking to get to a point where the dishes I make are reminiscent of visits to the South. I've recently learned about the southern biscuits and the specific type of flour, so little by little, I hope to get there. I Heart Soul Food is a nice reminder of these dishes and I especially like that while the author is from the Pacific Northwest, 'it's all soul food because I use what I have and I put my all into it; I'm serving love on plate'. I think the layout (photos and instructions could've been tweaked a bit more, however it's a homey feel which is really sweet. #IHeartSoulFood #NetGalley

This book makes me hungry. The recipes! Some are so simple and comforting that everyone should give them a go - like Creamy Cheese Grits and Southern Potato Salad. I know I'll be working through the recipes in this book. The pictures are beautiful, the recipes are solid - this cookbook is a keeper!

Lots of great heartwarming comforting recipes. Lots of great easy ways to make your favourite foods so they taste right.

This is a wonderful cookbook that will please anybody looking to make delicious, traditional soul food. Color photos accompany just about every recipe and the dishes are full of flavor. Mayes is imminently likeable and authentic, and the stories she tells before the recipes add to the charm. I love that she calls her readers "cousin" because she comes from such an enormous family that she has oodles of cousins and considers her readers extensions of that family. Every single recipe is likely to be delicious, thanks to overly generous amounts of butter, heavy cream, spice, bacon, sausage, cheese and (in the case of the breakfasts and desserts) sugar.

That brings me to the reason it's a 4 star cookbook (really liked it) rather than 5 for me (it was amazing). I have lived down south and have spent decades learning how to cook the food I love, and I know how to cook food like this. This is the kind of food I cook for company when I want to really impress, but this is not how I would regularly cook for my family because it's frankly so unhealthy. I read this book at the same time I read another soon-to-be-released soul food cookbook with an entirely opposite slant, Vegan Soul Food Cookbook: Plant-Based, No-Fuss Southern Favorites, written by a woman raised on soul food who ran a soul food catering company but who switched to a vegan diet after being diagnosed with hypertension and borderline type 2 diabetes at 35 (it reversed her health issues). I guarantee that the recipes in this book are generally going to taste better than those in that one (to most palates, anyway) but I also really see a place for the other. We need to embrace at least the 80/20 rule -- eat this kind of over-the-top food for special Sunday suppers and holidays, but nobody needs to make macaroni and cheese that has 2 sticks of butter, 6 kinds of cheese and heavy cream for everyday supper. As I was reading this cookbook I kept cringing at how many things were deep fried that didn't need to be, and how incredibly excessive the cheese, cream, sugar, etc. was. There's almost no fiber, the few veggies like yams are cooked in large amounts of sugar and fat, and it relies on the most unhealthy oils like corn oil for frying.

I have a friend whose husband is a former chef who was a double amputee from diabetes by his 40's. I lost both of my paternal grandparents to diabetes before I got a chance to know them. We've seen how COVID-19 is obliterating folks with high blood pressure and diabetes, and doctors are now calling Alzheimer's "type 3 diabetes" because it's so heavily linked with the same food issues and health problems. At some point we have to decide to cook to make our loved ones healthier and not just happier, or we lose them too soon and they sacrifice too much.

Will I buy this cookbook? Yes, I probably will and I will definitely recommend it to others. But it will be for special occasions and I'll serve these dishes in small portions with big old salads. And I'll also serve those vegan spins on these classics too, even if they're not quite as drool worthy.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.