Big Food Big LoveDown-Home Southern Cooking Full of Heart from Seattle's Wandering Goose

Born in North Carolina, Heather Earnhardt grew up with thick red dirt on her toes and food, food, and more food. Heather owns The Wandering Goose café and lives in Seattle with her husband and five children.

“Filled with heartwarming and personal stories, Heather Earnhardt expresses pride in her Southern roots through Big Food Big Love. Her recipes and witty stories are a celebration of Southern hospitality, local ingredients, and good cooking.” 
—Chef Emeril Lagasse
 
“Heather calls her Southern-inflected food messy and loud. Try cooking a meal out of the book—from a platter of crispy hush puppies fried in a cast-iron skillet to a towering layer cake oozing with coconut frosting—and then squeeze everyone you care for around your table. Boisterous conversation, laughter, and memory-making festivities will ensue. Big Food Big Love indeed.” 
—Tom Douglas, chef/restaurateur
 
“Big Food Big Love is more than a cookbook—Heather Earnhardt takes us on a journey into a way of life, featuring soulful recipes from The Wandering Goose matched with utterly delectable photos and interwoven with stories of people, places, and growing up in the South. Reading it makes me want to be in her world, live it, and cook every recipe in it, from simple biscuits and all the variations to classic American condiment staples—and of course the fantastic Brownstone Front Cake.”
—Pichet Ong, chef consultant and author of The Sweet Spot

“I’ve been lucky enough to know Heather from our early restaurant days in Seattle, and from day one her warmth impressed me. The Wandering Goose truly shines with hospitality and big, bold flavors, and the recipes are so approachable and delicious. Heather’s book is playful, soulful, and generous—just like her!”
—John Sundstrom, chef/owner of Lark

“Heather serves food with the same affection and generosity she gives to writing about people, like her indefatigable Carolina grandmother who first lured her into the kitchen. With these recipes, I may at last begin to make biscuits as tender crumbed, collards as savory, and grits as creamy as the ones I’ve long enjoyed at The Wandering Goose.”
—Sara Dickerman, author of Bon Appétit: The Food Lover’s Cleanse and Dried and True

“As an Alaskan boy with Southern roots, Heather’s food speaks to my DNA. This book makes me yearn for sweet humid air, cold tea, crispy fried chicken, a soft buttermilk biscuit, and a warm embrace from any one of one hundred cousins. Big Food Big Love is right. It’s hard for a yankee to put a finger on what makes something or someone quintessentially Southern; Heather’s food and writing immerses you in it.”
—Brendan McGill, chef/owner of Hitchcock Restaurant Group

“Heather is not only an awesome baker but an awesome person as well. Her southern spirit really shines through in both the sweet and savory food she makes and the way she lives her life! Buy this book, you’ll love it and her!”
—Ethan Stowell, restaurateur

“No place in the bottom 48 states could be as removed from the South as Seattle, Washington; yet chef Earnhardt’s Wandering Goose restaurant is one of the city’s top tables, where fans find a huge variety of biscuits, including an over-the-top maple, bacon, and date version. Earnhardt’s recipes are accompanied by full-color photographs throughout.”
—Booklist

“Big Food Big Love is a mouthwatering must for anyone who wants to master cooking, and devouring, Southern fare.”
—Foreword Reviews

“Southern favorites get a modern twist in this approachable, highly recommended bakery-cafe cookbook.”
—Library Journal

“Chef Heather Earnhardt’s hefty, buttery biscuits are drawing ever-longer lines of hungry customers to her Seattle restaurant, the Wandering Goose. In…Big Food Big Love, Earnhardt shares the secrets to their fluffy perfection. Whether you whip up the classic buttermilk version or the sweet and savory variations, get ready to have friends gathering outside your door, too.” 
—The Oprah Magazine

“Southern transplant Earnhardt brings a bit of North Carolina to the Pacific Northwest.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Big Food Big Love…seems on brand for Reese!”
—Go Fug Yourself (on an image of Reese Witherspoon carrying the book)

“[Reese Witherspoon is] in the market for new recipes.”
—InStyle (on an image of Reese Witherspoon carrying a copy of the book)

“[O]ne of [Andy Samburg’s] favorite Seattle restaraunts.”
—Scott Carty

“Southern treats.”
—Daily Mail

“[I]t’s time to get on board.”
—E!

“[A] blend [of] Pacific Northwest food with southern comfort classics.”
—Seattle Met

“Big Food Big Love is a mouthwatering must for anyone who wants to master cooking, and devouring, Southern fare.” 
—Foreword

“[A] little slice of country.”
—Seattle Met

“Lots of recipes for southern dishes: hams, fried chicken, biscuits.”
—Capitol Hill Times

“[Y]ou can almost hear her slight Southern accent in her lovely, fluid style of writing. Reading it is like talking to a lifelong friend who happens to know all the stuff about cooking.”
—Seattle Times