A Long Way from the Strawberry Patch: The Life of Leah Chase

Carol Allen began her career as an educator and school administrator in public schools in Louisiana and Nebraska and as a university professor in South Carolina. She founded and, for six years, directed the Paris Writers Workshop and organized the international conference, Women on the Move. She is the author of a book of children's poetry and has edited a collection of essays by women on living abroad. Allen divides her time between Provence and Paris, France, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Loyal to the tenets of Creole cuisine and mindful of her country roots, Leah Chase has been featured in hundreds of publications, including Food & Wine and Saveur. In addition to having hosted her own television program, she appeared numerous times on NPR, CNN, CBS, the Food Network, and many other programs. She was a driving force in the culinary and cultural revival of New Orleans and in the international popularity of Creole cuisine. Leah Chase's accolades include honorary degrees from schools across the country. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Ella Brennan Savoir Faire Award for Excellence from the American Culinary Federation, and the Outstanding Woman Award from the National Council of Negro Women. For her contributions to the culinary world, she was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverages in America in 2010. In 2016, just after her ninety-third birthday, she received the Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. As a cultural icon, her portrait hangs in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Her beloved husband died in 2016 and Leah Chase reigned over her kitchen every day until her death in 2019 at the age of ninety-six, still surrounded by family and friends. Her joie de vivre remains as an inspiration to all in her cookbooks, a biography, Leah Chase: Listen, I Say Like This, and an inspirational children's book, A Long Way from the Strawberry Patch: The Life of Leah Chase, both written through interviews with the author, Carol Allen.