Eating High on the Hog

    I sometimes like to mention books that are not new. They may, in fact, be pretty old and hard to find. I guess I'm perverse that way. I like to give attention to authors from the past. If you are able to find the same book, great. If not, perhaps you will find something equally interesting if you're open to it. A lot of my finds come from thrift stores, garage sales, Goodwill, and Half Price Books.
    HPB is our largest purveyor of used books in the Austin area. For the most part they sell books at half of the cover price, just like the title says. They have lots of specials and sales, though. I'm rarely happy with what they pay me when I sell to them, but I do shop there fairly often.
    Another of my interests is eating, as my waistline will bear out. So, what could be more appropriate than talking about cookbooks?
    Don't get me wrong. I don't cook much. I can get by okay making a few standards: Chili, pinto beans and cornbread, biscuits, gravy, bread, omelets, bannock, pancakes, things like that. It has always been my luck to pair up with partners who are excellent cooks.
    However, for some reason I'm a sucker for cookbooks. I've built up a small library of cookbooks I've picked up here and there, mostly old ones. Today we'll talk about some of them.
    Before I begin, a caveat. Few of the following cookbooks would be considered particularly "healthy" currently. They were great for the time. Not so many folks now are inclined to cook with lard, or bacon grease. Frying is less in favor for a lot of reasons I won't go into. That being said, many of the recipes can be adapted to healthier cooking. Before you cringe in horror, just remember, it was a simpler time. The higher priority was more often to put food on the table using what you had available. Today we have a lot more choices. End of caveat.
      We tend to eat much healthier at my home now. We use less saturated fats, more fresh vegetables, less meat overall, no gluten, less sugars. It is all very good, really. I agree totally with the concept. I must admit, however, that my "druthers" are a bit unreconstructed. I still yearn for biscuits and gravy, fried chicken and so on. True comfort food. Okay, maybe I'm just a guy. A "boomer" at that.
Back to cookbooks:
   First up is "Mrs. Blackwell's Heart of Texas Cookbook" by Louise B. Dillow & Deenie B. Carver. Corona Publishing, 1980. The subtitle is "A Tasty Memoir of the Depression."  My copy is a paperback, 107 pages.
    This cookbook appealed for one big reason. I was raised by my grandparents. When she married W.K. Seward in 1929, my grandmother, Mildred Adams, could barely cook. All the meals she learned to cook were, therefore, shaped by the Great Depression in Texas. "Mrs. Blackwell's" is therefore a taste of home. Most of the recipes   included were very familiar to me. These are the recipes I wished I had paid attention to when I lived at home.  Here is that comfort food, all the familiar dishes: Chicken and Dumplings, Fried Chicken, Pecan Pie, Chow-chow and others. All are served up with candid memories of family life around the table.
    The book is a good read. There is a foreward by John Henry Faulk, a Texas legend himself. If you're not hungry when you start reading, you will be when you finish. Especially if your grandma cooked for you!
    Next:
    "Williamson County Extension Homemaker's Cookbook", North

American Press, Kansas City, MO. About 1980. IBC binding, paperback, 171 pages.
    This one really takes me back too. This was published by one of those "community cookbook publishers" that offered a package deal to groups. Gather up all your recipes, put together a cookbook to print, sell copies as a fundraiser. They have a certain amount of boilerplate in them. Common measurements, terms, so forth for filler.  It is only natural that a social group, church, club or whatever that routinely socializes and shares potluck would also share and compare recipes. Why not, after all, put out a book? When I hold something like this in my hand I fondly remember "all day preaching and dinner on the grounds". Churches used to have outdoor tabernacles for camp meetings and trestle tables permanently set up under the trees for the food. Yummy! Okay, often the preaching was boring, especially to us kids, but the singing and eating was fun.
    Less religious but no less social was the Home Demonstration Club!
    The Home Demonstration movement in Texas started in Milam County in 1912 as a club devoted to growing and canning tomatoes. World War I brought food conservation and the clubs were spreading and adding sewing and other homemaking activities. After the war the clubs came under the umbrella of the various county Agricultural Extension Agents with the backing of Texas A&M and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Each club meeting would focus on learning or sharing techniques on many homemaking activities. Of course, growing, preserving, and preparing food were also part of  that endeavor. 
    Many rural communities had their own "Home Demonstration Club". The Union Hall Home Demonstration Club drew housewives from an area roughly ten miles across. Union Hall was the name of a church and one-time school for our area. The school was gone by the mid 1930's, I believe. The Union Hall Baptist Church is still there near Seward Junction, in the southeastern wedge of the U.S. 183 and State Highway 29 intersection, between Leander and Liberty Hill in Williamson County.
    My grandmother was a member of the club. I would often accompany her to meetings. Of course I was more interested in playing at that age, but I still remember the meetings and some of the things they learned. And, of course, the food.
    The "Williamson County Extension Homemaker's Cookbook" was compiled from several of those clubs, which by the time of printing had taken on the name of Extension Homemaker Clubs.
    The book is a mixed bag of all those country recipes that we would have enjoyed back then. Some of the slightly more modern products can be seen in use. Margarine, bouillon cubes, canned soups, Doritos, Bisquick baking mix.
    I have to admit, my palate was formed during the '50's and '60's. I grew up eating oleo-margarine instead of butter, skim milk instead of whole, Miracle Whip instead of mayonaise. In those days it was considered more healthy, actually. In consequence I don't remember ever tasting real butter until I was in my 20's, or mayonaise. My taste buds still prefer those things, logic has no bearing on taste. Cringe if you want, that's the way it is. We use the real stuff now, only rarely does the chemical substitute pass my lips.
      Next book:  "The Only Texas Cookbook", by Linda West Eckhardt. 1981. Lone Star Publishing. Paperback. 284 Pages. This is a good basic and relatively modern cookbook. I think I originally got it for the Tex -Mex and Chili sections. It has one of the few variations of the Chile Relleno that I really like. Cooked the right way with pecans, raisins, ground beef, ranchero sauce and sour cream. MMMMMMMM! More work than I want to tackle but I haven't found a restaurant that does them this way since the first one I found closed. Sigh!
    "The Husband's Cookbook". by Mike McGrady. 1979. J.B. Lippincott Company. Hardback. 228 pages. I have no picture for this one. The dust cover was gone and the spine didn't scan well.
    I got this book when I was single for awhile. I like the approach. It's a husband writing the book for other husbands. The style is very chatty as he talks you through fifty-two different full menus from Spaghetti in Meat Sauce to Chicken Kiev with all the side dishes. I like that he doesn't assume that you know very much. He doesn't talk down to a person, just acknowledges that his readers are intelligent men who just may not know this particular territory too well. Not a "country cooking" cookbook for sure, the menus are pretty "up town" but that makes the finished meal even more impressive. You might have trouble convincing the wife that you didn't order out!
    A few years back a friend of Czech extraction brought me a cookbook from her family reunion. The "Marusak Family Reunion Collected Recipes." Private printing. Paperback. IBC Binding. 93 pages.
    Very interesting reading. If you like Czech food it's great! In fact, since we are, after all, a melting pot, there is a large variety of other foods covered including Tex -Mex, or as some of the family call it Czech-Mex.

   "EATS A Folk History of Texas Foods", by Ernestine Sewell Linck and Joyce Gibson Roach. 1989. Texas Christian University Press. Hardback. 257 pages.
    "EATS" isn't so much a cook book as it is a folklore book about the subject of food throughout the history of Texas. There are recipes, to be sure. The overall intent, however is to explore the history of Texas in the light of what we  had to eat while that history was happening! The aforementioned Czechs show up here, as do the Native American and Mexican influences. Indeed, it would be hard to find a culture that didn't in some way influence the Texas table! It's good to see how we eat set within an historical and cultural context.
    As long as we're waxing historical the last cookbook this time around is a reprint of a very old one.
   "The Cumberland Cook Book 1895," Four Hundred Tested  Recipes of Tennessee Cookery Compiled by the Ladies of the Educational Circle of the Cumberland Prespyterian Churches of Nadhville, Tenn. Reprinted 1980 by Frontier Press.
    My great-great-great-grandfather, Lewis Gordon Tucker came to Central Texas around 1860 as a minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Ministers traveled far and set up churches wherever they settled. This cook book was given to my grandmother by a family friend a few years back and it has come down to me.
    The recipes would be a bit difficult to follow, as they would require massive substitutions and interpretations of measurements here and there. However, in context of history and place it is a good cookbook to peruse now and then. There are also charming period advertisements reprinted throughout to set the tone.
    That completes this round of cookbooks. I have more, but I will save them for another time. Probably not so wise to read them if you're on a diet, but I hope I've sparked some interest.

To Make an Omelet . . .

    My partner, Cat Dancing, does most of the cooking here at Earth Song. A wise choice, as she does it very well and makes very healthy meals for us. However, she is away for a couple of weeks in Florida. It therefore has become necessary for me to fall back upon my bachelor cooking skills. (Such as they are.)
    
My repertoire of meals is somewhat limited. I confess; when I lived alone I relied upon frozen dinners and eating out much of the time. I really never liked cooking for one. On occasion I could prepare a full meal, but it was just easier not to.

I like to bake bread. I can make chili, pinto beans and cornbread, and a few other things on demand. I also learned to do biscuits, gravy, pancakes and the like. 

One of the things I like to do for breakfast is omelets.
    
I used to have one of those hinged omelet pans. Mine even had a recipe printed on one side for easy reference. I liked it a lot, but the Teflon coating on it was getting ragged and I re-purposed it to a currently unspecified non-cooking use. I think Teflon is fine as long as it is intact, however, when it starts coming off the metal it can cause health problems, I've heard. I also like to use cast iron, so I just had to adjust to not being able to easily fold the omelet using the special pan. Trivial, I know.
   
An omelet is a simple dish to prepare, really. Most of it is variable to personal taste. It lends itself well to inclusion of many different types of ingredients depending on taste and availability. It is a tasty way to "clean out the fridge" of those small amounts of leftovers that are still good, but not enough for a meal. Hardly any measuring is required. Everything is pretty well done to taste.
    
Here is my own version of an omelet. Before you begin, you should make a quick survey of what you are going to include. First of all you will need several eggs. Six large eggs will make a good omelet for two people. Cheese is also good. Take stock of all the other things you may have in the fridge. Personally, I like refried beans, onions, potatoes and chili. 


The omelet in the picture above was cooked today. Eggs, potatoes, onion, spinach, Parmesan cheese.

Time consuming tasks like grating cheese and chopping vegetables should be attended to first if you are planning to use them. In this case, I wasn't.


I sprayed a medium sized cast iron pan with organic Pam non-stick spray. A small amount of oil or butter will also suffice. I warmed the pan on low while I chopped up two small potatoes and a half slice of fresh onion. The potatoes had been washed and the skins left on. After chopping, rinse and drain the  potatoes to keep them from sticking together. 

Put the onions and potatoes in the warm pan and turn the heat up a bit. Keep an eye on it, don't let it burn. Stir often. At this point I would also be warming any beans, chili, or another filling ingredient that I want to be hot. 

While the potatoes and onions are cooking and making lovely smells, break the eggs into a bowl and mix them up well with a fork.  Be sure and break up the yolks. I also add a dash or two each of salt, pepper, and seasoned salt to the mix. Pour in a small amount of milk as well and mix it up. I do it by eye, but it usually runs about a quarter cup or so of milk. When the potatoes are cooked and not quite browned distribute them fairly evenly in the pan and add the egg mix on top.

For this morning's omelet, I was using fresh baby spinach and already grated Parmesan for my filler. No pre-warming was required. Chopping was minimal, so I did this while the eggs were cooking. As I said before, virtually anything you like can be added here as filler. I chopped the spinach till I had about a half cup finely chopped.


As the eggs were cooking I kept an eye on them. Cooking slowly is better than too fast. Of course, in a pan eggs will cook from the bottom up. It helps to use a spatula to lift the part that is already solidifying and let the more liquid part run under it. If you keep mixing it in the pan, you simply have scrambled eggs. If you let the mass solidify or "set" as a unit, you have omelet. I watch the top of the mix. When the liquid on top begins to "set" it is time to add the filling. 

I added my spinach filling to one half of the top of the eggs, then half of the grated cheese. I then gently lifted the other half with the spatula and folded it over on top of the filling. This leaves you with a pan filled on one side and nearly clean on the other. Be as neat as you can. The more the mix has set, the better this works. (This is where that special omelet pan is nice! You can not only make a neat fold, you can then cook a bit more on each side.)

I added more cheese on top of the mixture and turned off the heat. I use an electric range, so this lets it keep cooking with gradually decreasing heat, melting the cheese but without burning. On a gas range you may wish to turn the flame down and keep cooking until the cheese melts on top. The cast iron pan also helps here as it will retain heat for awhile. 


Use the spatula to slice the omelet in two across the center. Scoop half onto your plate and enjoy! It's really tasty to top your omelet with chili at this point. Picante sauce also works well!


Yumm! I had the omelet above for breakfast this morning. (No chili, alas!) While talking about it I just made myself hungry again!

My Daughter Melanie on YouTube!

For her French class, I believe! You go girl!
No, I don't understand a word of it!