Joan's Nicoise

I've had two quite extraordinary mothers-in-law, Joan Marie Bontemps Williams, Caroline's grandmother, and Florence Steele Kidd, my second husband's mother. This salad, Joan's Nicoise, was created as a tribute to Joan Williams. In many ways Joan is the founder of the Soul Food Love feast. She left Caroline her immense, over one thousand book strong, cookbook collection. Living  to eat, and eating to live with Joan's cookbook collection sheltering and inspiring us has brought me many of the happiest and healthiest hours of my life.  Thinking about that--I send more thanks up to Joan now buried with her husband and her parents in Nashville's Greenwood Cemetery. Langston Hughes referred to Joan as one of the golden babies of the Harlem Renaissance.  I knew her as a stalwart pillar of the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville, the original kitchen sink warrior, who did battle and financed wars wearing nothing more frightening than a blue and flowery housedress. All the good wishes that rose in the room around her cradle had come true by the time she was laid in her grave. She had her disappointments, but she did not disappoint. I type that without sentiment and without reservation. The woman exceeded all expectations. If was If you want to know more about that, and how it came her husband got the campus of a University named after him, and Joan got a salad take a look at the Nana chapter in Soul Food Love.