The food of the Heartland is comfort food - and is certainly back in style. Judith Fertig interprets and perfects 400 homespun classics of the prairie table, from Homesteaders' Bean Soup to Breslauer Steaks and Chicken and Wild Rice Hot Dish. She serves up new dishes like Walleye Pike with Fennel and Herbs and Herb-Crusted Loin of Veal. Also included are the very best ethnic dishes, such as Bohemian Spaetzle, Czech Potato Dumplings, and Swedish Turnip and Carrot Charlotte.
Get a taste of Texas culinary history with this quirky, diverse community cookbook from Austin’s nineteenth-century residents, plus photos and informative essays. Tacos and barbecue command appetites today, but early Austinites indulged in peppered mangoes, roast partridge, and cucumber catsup. Those are just a few of the fascinating historic recipes in this new edition of the first cookbook published in the city. Written by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1891, Our Home Cookbook aimed to “cause frowns to dispel and dimple into ripples of laughter” with myriad “receipts” from the early Austin community. From dandy pudding to home remedies “worth knowing,” these are hearty helpings featuring local game and diverse heritage, including German, Czech and Mexican. With informative essays and a cookbook bibliography, city archivist Mike Miller and the Austin History Center present this curious collection that's sure to raise eyebrows, if not cravings.
This book is written primarily for the family to help solve the meat problem and to augment the food supply. Producing and preserving meats for family meals are sound practices for farm families and some city folks as well-they make possible a wider variety of meats, which can be of the best quality, at less cost. Meat is an essential part of the American diet. It is also an ex pensive food. With the costs high, many persons cannot afford to buy the better cuts; others are being forced to restrict the meat portion of the diet to a minimum, or to use ineffectual substitutes. Commercially in the United States, meat means the flesh of cattle, hogs, and sheep, except where used with a qualifying word such as reindeer meat, crab meat, whale meat, and so on. Meat in this book is used in a broader sense, although not quite so general as to com prise anything and everything eaten for nourishment either by man or beast. To be sure, it includes the flesh of domestic animals and large and small game animals as well; also poultry, domestic fowl raised for their meat and eggs, and game birds, all wild upland birds, shore birds, and waterfowl; and fish.
Here is the book that answers the age-old question: What should I bring? Foodies Rae Katherine Eighmey and Debbie Miller combed through hundreds of folksy cookbooks--often spiral-bound or homemade --compiled by groups around the Midwest. Then they tested hundreds of the most popular recipes before winnowing the list to 125 of the tastiest crowd-pleasing dishes: treats such as Swedish Tea Ring, Oven Barbecue Spareribs, Blueberry Buckle, and Party Punch. Recipes are organized by course, so it's as easy as pie for the reader to find the perfect dish for the long community table. Seven 1950s menus-with-recipes for gatherings such as a Card Party and a Ladies Club Luncheon will help today's savvy host create memorable retro gatherings for friends and family. Food and entertaining lore gleaned from the cookbooks and the authors' recollections of growing up in the Fabulous Fifties transport readers back to a time when shared food and hospitality reigned supreme. Rae Katherine Eighmey is a food historian who has written several books of recipes and lore, including Hearts and Homes and A Prairie Kitchen (MHS Press). Debbie Miller is a historian and aficionado of community cookbooks who works as a reference specialist at the Minnesota Historical Society. Dave Wood is the author of numerous books about midwestern culture.
