A Tale of Two Cookbooks

by mimulus

Well, three actually.  My 7 year old son Ben and I have been reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder at bedtime.  I cannot help but admire how self sufficient and well fed this family is by their own hard work.  Young Almanzo always seems hungry (getting up at 5 am to take care of livestock builds an appetite) and ample food grown and produced on the farms satisfies.  The menu goes on and on...sausages, pancake and maple syrup, roast pork, mashed turnips, mincemeat, pumpkin pies, watermelon pickles, doughnuts. 

The farm and its rhythm of work is an highly integrated ecosystem where nothing is wasted: the cow is butchered to become meat, tallow for candles and leather for shoes.  While I can never hope to replicate that complex dance of production, I can try to emulate some of the foods thru my eat local habits and mastery of slow food techniques.

My touchstone in this ever expanding endeavor is my grandmother Julia’s copy of the Household Searchlight Recipe Book copyright 1941.  My Czech grandmother was raised in an orphanage in Omaha, NE by frugal Catholic nuns....and she practiced what they preached.  A newspaper clipping on the inside cover outlines how to make soap, along with her handwritten recipe fo pickles and an envelope with notations “bought 12# apricots from Mr. Sortino for $7 to make jam-1980" testifies to this spirit.

The well thumbed chapter tabs reveal sections from Appetizers to Vegetables. With extensive chapters for “Fish and Wild Game” and "Canning and Preserving” and an entire Salad section with 75 recipes and not a single one contains lettuce.   

What we have come to call a salad today (various green leafies)  is a recent arrival on the gastronomic scene enabled by cheap petroleum and air freight. Back in 1941,  salad was fruit in gelatin, lima beans in sauerkraut, or grated raw parsnips with celery, nuts, and apple in mayo (I have made this one..actually a very good chopped salad for fall/winter menus). 

I love reading and rereading the recipes for Squirrel Stew (serve with watercress or chicory salad) and Rabbit with rich biscuits . Quail on toast with green grape jelly sounds like something I could order at Chez Panisse today. 

But it is the Preserves Chapter I peruse most avidly.  I also inherited my grandmother’s canning equipment and have used it mostly to jar tomato sauce.  But thanks to One Green World I have gooseberries in the garden and plan on gooseberry and chokecherry jam this year.  The elderberry blossoms are huge this spring and I am saving glass bottles for the elderberry honey cordial I plan to make with the bumper crop.  Maybe I will  try my hand at Fanwood Chow-Chow: a recipe that includes a peck of tomatoes, onions, apples, vinegar, cloves, mustard, brown sugar, cinnamon, mustard and celery seed. 

I find it exciting we are rediscovering the almost forgotten art of putting up food and saving the bounty of harvest.  And what better way to showcase these tart and sweet-savory relishes than meat? 

I have been a vegetarian for most of my adult life, but started to treat meat as a garnish and then some when I became pregnant.  Until last year my husband did most of the meat preparation for our family.   He is also a slow food celebrant of extraordinary skill, especially in the yeasted (bread and beermaking) and carnivorous arts, especially braising and grilling.  He never met an organ meat he didn’t like.  So he was more than glad to gift me “The New English Kitchen” by Rose Prince in hopes I would get with the program too and start frying up the bacon. 

I will wager Rose Prince did not grow up in an orphanage, but she would make my grandmother proud of her no nonsense, no waste approach to the culinary arts.  Rose believes passionately about spending real money for high quality, humanely raised, local meat and then squeezing every ounce of good from it, like two to four meals...not just a skillet of chicken breasts.

Since my 20 odd years of cooking was sans meat, it has been a revolutionary look at protein for me. Yes dear readers, it is a slippery slope and now I join in salivating as Ms. Prince rhapsodies about crackling and drippings, the joy of knowing a really good butcher of grass fed beef, and the politics and economics of local vs global food production. I also am now the proud owner of 1/4 of a grass fed cow living 15 minutes from my home.

All that, plus friendly hands on recipes that include ingredients like “a walnut of butter” and “grated beef suet” and sections entitled “road kill—the rules” and “be a food pirate”.  The shellfish and fish chapter seems chock full of enlightened advice if you live in the north Atlantic food shed for sustainable fish choices and she does Wallace and Gromit proud in her description of British artisanal cheeses. True, many of these recipes are unattainable in Northen California where I live.  Fondue of Stinking Bishop come to mind.  But it makes for a great read and inspires me to create my own local version. 

So here is hoping the root cellar makes a comeback, however I will pass on the grated carrots in lime jello.

Mimulus lives in Northern California, hangs her laundry to dry and rambles on at greenjewls.

Comments

[Alanna]

Your grandmother is beaming ... lovely post! Love the blend of nostalgia and contemporary ...

[Laurie O]

Wow, that sounds like a real treasure! My mother recently gave me her first cookbook from the early 40s - I've never really sat down and thumbed through it, but I definitely will now.

[plentyofmoxie]

I must know . . . Be a Food Pirate? what does that mean?

[SuzanneM]

I loved your post, and you touched on several things I've been thinking about this eat local challenge.

Farmer Boy was one of my all-time, hands-down favorite books growing up. Of course it was sanitized for her kiddie readership, but the idea of a highly self-sufficient farm still inspires me.

Meat is a slipperly slope indeed. I was a vegetarian for 10 years and last week, in a bid to try my hand at some old-fashioned foodie techniques, I rendered lard in a crockpot. Crazy, I tell you. But I'd rather use home-made lard from a humanely raised local pig than canola or cottonseed oil. Plus, it makes great pie crusts and biscuits.

Canning is not as hard as I thought it would be and has been a nice way for my mom and I to connect. We don't have very many overlapping interests besides my daughter, but we really enjoy canning together.

[mimulus]

food piracy, according to Rose Prince, is to relive the monotony of your diet with exotic ingredients borrowed from other parts of the world and made your own...or at the very least looking at what you have with new eyes and new ways.