Covers

Friday, September 14, 2012

From Deep in the Heart of Texas

by J.D. Faver

A few years back, I wrote a cookbook. This idea was born when my son married a gorgeous girl from New York and he moved up there from Texas with all his worldly possessions in his pick up. My daughter-in-law is a lovely young woman and when she called me one day to ask if my son was pulling her leg about chicken fried steak, I wasn't sure how to answer. 
"I mean, you don't actually put batter and gravy on a perfectly good steak do you?" she insisted.
This gave me pause for thought. There are so many things we take for granted, and certainly the foods we grow up with are a part of our comfort zone. So I set about chronicling our lives in food. 
The oldest recipe in my possession had been an old recipe when I was a little girl. My grandmother had a box of index-size cards and papers folded to fit. One such paper had yellowed with age and was hand written in loopy cursive. My grandmother informed me that this recipe had come over on the boat from Ireland when one of our foremothers (yes, that's my word and I'm sticking with it) immigrated during the potato famine. My grandmother frequently prepared this version of Irish Potato Soup, especially when someone was feeling under the weather. I know from experience that this soup will fix you right up, no matter  the ailment. 
In our family this is known as "Irish Penicillin."
I wrote down every recipe I could think of that I had ever fed my son. Now he grew to be a great big 6'4" strapping, Texan who ate everything that wasn't nailed down when he was growing up. I swear I never knew what leftovers were until he left home.
Then I expanded my recipe collection as I went along. When my mother was alive, I asked her for some of the recipes she had made and I wrote them down as she dictated. I also contacted my mother's youngest sister and she contributed some of her favorites. My collection ended up being quite a large tome. I printed it out and bound it as a cookbook for both my daughter and daughter-in-law one Christmas. I also made a CD for them in case they wanted to add their own recipes.
Recently, my friends and fellow authors, Tara Manderino and Stephanie Bancroft Berg were chatting with me about our recipe collections. The upshot is that we decided to publish our individual recipe collections. 
I am going to put out four seasonal cookbooks from my own perspective here in Texas. Tara, a Pennsylvanian of Italian descent cooks and bakes all the time for her family. Stephanie is of German/French ancestry and lives in Michigan. So we are all working hard to share our love of cooking with the world at large. 
Next week, I will be sharing a peek with from the first to be published: A TEXAN IN THE KITCHEN~Autumn Recipes. I sincerely hope you like this because it comes from deep in my heart...
*hugs*
~J.D. 

11 comments:

  1. Good for you, J.D.!

    There's nothing like old family recipes. I made soup beans 'n' ham (usually the last bits of ham on the bone and navy beans) and cornbread the other night for dinner. The first time I ever made it for my flatlander hubby years ago, he asked, "What the h*** is a soup bean?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hehehehe! Too funny, Suzan. My son is quite a cook and he usually cooks right alongside his wife. Love soup beans. I made a vegan chili for my daughter and her family. Threw it together out of the pantry and they all loved it. The problem was when they came the next time and wanted to be sure I made that recipe again. I had to scramble to recall what I had tossed in the pot. Love the soup beans.
      *hugs*
      ~J

      Delete
  2. Hey, JD. You do have some wonderful recipes. Congrats on getting together with friends to publish your cook books. They should be a hit! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey Carol!
      I know you've had your hands full lately. Hope things are getting better.
      Tara, Steph and I attended a webinar and got the brilliant idea that we too could produce cookbooks. We all got busy in our different locales (Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan) and put together (or in my case, tore apart) our cookbooks. It's been a lot of fun, very much like the actual entertaining of friends with food. Instead we're sharing our recipes. Hope our readers will eat them up...literally.
      *hugs*

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fun post, June. Can so relate to the son bit. Mine is 6'3" and ditto on the food. My favorite was when he stopped by one day after moving out and there was bread pudding. He loves bread pudding. So he's gobbling some of it down and asking why I didn't make it when he was growing up. Told him. First you have to start with leftover bread...

    Can't wait to check out your cookbook, June.

    ~Tara

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had a laughing fit over your comment about the leftover bread. There were NO leftovers at the Faver household either. It took me a while to learn to cook smaller portions after my son moved up north. I swear, I could have fed a small village with the food I threw out.
      I can't wait to check out your cookbook, Tara.
      ~J

      Delete
  5. Great post, JD. I was lucky enough to have individual cooking lessons from both of my grandmothers who were fabulous cooks. One was from St. Louis and cooked what I would consider Yankee food. She taught me to make chicken soup with homemade noodles, homemade raisin bread and hearty vegetable beef soup and. She also taught me how to make our one ethnic dish of cabbage balls and sauerkraut, which we call Kapusta (sp).

    My maternal grandmother was from up in the Texas panhandle and she taught me to make jams and jellies, cornbread, fried chicken and creamed gravy, Texas Hot Cocoa cake and various meringue pies.

    Food plays an important part of our lives, doesn't it?

    Cheers!!!

    AM :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Anne Marie!
      You were lucky indeed. My cooking lessons were sort of accidental, but I managed to absorb the information. Just let me know when you're cooking and I'll hitch up the team and drive down for dinner. Yum! All of those recipes sound mighty tasty.
      Food is an important part of most lives. There are people who aren't food-oriented. Of course, they wear a size two and only eat to stay alive. Then there's me. I love the way food smells and looks and tastes. A total foodie in every way.
      *hugs*
      ~J

      Delete
  6. You made this naturalized Texan remember her two big Texas food discoveries! Chicken-fried steak and queso. Would you believe I learned how to make queso in a third grade classroom while teaching a healthy snack foods lesson? I've never attempted making chicken-fried steak but my mom promises my grandmother in Illinois used to make chicken-fried chicken. On a trip back to suburban Illinois (let's say, back in pre-cell phone days)my husband taught a cook at a Bennigan's how to make queso--and convinced the manager a huge plate of nachos only cost $2 back in Texas.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Nancy!
      Luvs me some chicken-fried steak.
      My friend JoAnne Banker and I made a trip to San Antonio once on a scientific quest to determine the best restaurant made queso. The resulting scientific information led us to believe that we needed more research. :-)
      Your hubby must be one smooth talker. Let's get together over a plate of nachos soon. All in the name of science, of course.
      *hugs*
      ~J

      Delete