WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE COOKBOOK?

Some years ago, I was surfing the Internet looking for information about a cookbook author from the 1940s, when I happened to come across an article published some years ago by a newsletter called Simple Cooking.  The title of the article was “THE COOKBOOK CLOSEST TO MY HEART” and the editor of Simple Cooking posed this question to its subscribers: what cookbook would you rescue from a fire, if you could rescue only one? Out of all your favorite cookbooks, which one is closest to your heart?  The responses were varied and interesting, and included replies from a number of cookbook authors (Jean Anderson, Irena Chalmers, Julia Child, Laurie Colwin, Marion Cunningham, Karen Hess, and others) as well as comments from cookbook dealers Marian Gore and Jan Longone.  What surprised me most, though, was the number of cookbooks that I had never heard of!

The topic itself piqued my curiosity.  Back in the 1990s, a food writer for the Los Angeles Times called me on the phone one day and asked if we could do a telephone interview. I said sure, and she proceeded to ask me a few questions about my collection. One of those questions was “What is your favorite cookbook? If you had to choose just one or two, which would it be?”

I was caught off-guard by the question (and whatever my response was, it didn’t appear in the newspaper article which appeared in the December 15, 1994, issue of the Los Angeles Times). Actually, the article was really about a cookbook dealer who, at that time, had a used cookbook store in Burbank. I’ve never been quite sure how I got into the act.  And, I couldn’t tell you what my response was in 1994—my “favorite” cookbook changes frequently. (I have a theory that the only people who could limit their selection to only one or two books are people who don’t actually collect cookbooks).  At that moment, one of my favorites was  Jean Anderson’s “AMERICAN CENTURY COOKBOOK” which was published in 1997, so it wasn’t even a consideration in 1994. Anderson’s “American Century cookbook” is such a wonderful potpourri of recipes covering a hundred years—and I’ve discovered that I am greatly partial to any cookbook that manages to combine recipes with history and food lore. This thought occurred to me some time ago while I was writing a review of Mary Gunderson’s “FOOD JOURNAL OF LEWIS & CLARK, RECIPES FOR AN EXPEDITION”. The history fascinates me as much as the recipes do.

I might have said, in 1994, my choice was “AMERICA COOKS” by the Browns, – Cora, Rose, and Bob, – who compiled a book of favorite recipes when there were only 48 States, so you won’t find Alaska or Hawaii included in the roster. “AMERICA COOKS” is still one of my favorites, though. Actually, all of the cookbooks written by the Browns are really worth having in your collection.

I am very partial to another cookbook that skillfully combines recipes with history, called “CINCINNATI RECIPE TREASURY” by Mary Anna DuSablon (originally published by the Donning Company in 1983, reprinted by the Ohio University Press in 1992 with a number of reprint editions following).   I found a soft-cover edition of this cookbook back in the 90s when I was in northern California with my brother, Jim—and bought copies for all of my sisters and brothers. For transplanted Cincinnatians, this really is a treasury of recipes for dishes not found anywhere else in the United States (such as Cincinnati chili!)  I got a big kick out of the fact that my brother (a great cook, certainly, but not a cookbook collector) read the entire cookbook as we flew from Oakland to Portland.

On a similar note, I was delighted and charmed to discover Jeanne Voltz’s “THE CALIFORNIA COOKBOOK” some time ago – and this cookbook was published thirty-something years ago!  However, it’s a bonanza of California recipes and I have to admit, after living fifty years of living in California, I am more Californian, now, than Buckeye.

One other favorite Ohio cookbook is a little spiral bound book you’ve probably never heard of, titled “HAPPINESS IS…CHEVIOT PTA COOKBOOK”.  My sister Barbara was greatly involved with the compilation of this little cookbook, published in 1974 and she drew the graphic illustrations that appear throughout the book. It also contains many of our family favorite recipes.

I have to admit to also being very partial to all of my Quail Ridge “Best of….” cookbooks as well as a growing collection of cookbooks from Gooseberry Patch.  Both sets of books are filled with contemporary recipes that are generally quick-and-easy, important factors for today’s busy cook. (Thirty-something years ago, however, I would have said that the Farm Journal series of cookbooks were my favorites for everyday cooking. The Best of the Best as well as the Gooseberry Patch cookbooks remind me of the potato chip commercial that says “bet you can’t eat just one”. Bet you won’t be satisfied with just one of these cookbooks!

And, as I have spent more and more time over the years, researching and learning about books such as The Joy of Cooking, The Meta Given cookbooks, Myra Waldo’s collection of cookbooks and Jean Anderson’s  equally wonderful collection of cookbooks—I don’t think I could ever choose just one or two.  It’s sort of like that old saying, “When I’m not with the one I love, I love the one I’m with” – my favorite cookbook is probably the one I am reading right now. But if I absolutely had to choose just a few?  I think my first choice would have to be “Grandma’s Favorite”, a family collection of recipes that took us over 20 years to finally get published. My sister and I were finally able to get it to a publisher in 2004. Most of our family favorites are in this cookbook. I am also very partial to The Office Cookbook—another endeavor by coworkers and myself that also took over twenty years to get to a publisher. “The Office” referred to here is the one where I worked for 27 years before retiring in 2002.

But I have a confession to make: A few years ago a brush fire was burning dangerously close to homes in Quartz Hill, Palmdale and Lancaster. People were being evacuated close to my sister’s home, a few miles away.  At night, looking up the street, the line of fire coming over the mountain range was frighteningly close. For the first time I really DID think long and hard about what could be saved if evacuation became necessary. I then realized there would be no way to save my collections of cookbooks, cookie jars and other things. There would only be enough room for us and our pets and that would be assuming that I could get the cats into carriers. I did take out a valise and filled it with our most important documents. I could also save all the photographs that are on CDs but not the albums themselves. It was a moment of truth. Things can be replaced (maybe) but lives can’t.

But assuming we live in a perfect world in which our favorite things could be saved– what’s YOUR favorite cookbook? The one dearest to your heart?

Happy Cooking!

 

Sandy

 

 

THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK

“THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK” BY KEN BECK, JIM CLARK & LES KERR

Initially, back in 2002, I planned to include “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK” with my article about diners for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange.  The problem with this is, as I discovered, some diners are truck stops -–but not all truck stops are diners. So, I decided that the subject of truck stop restaurants should be kept separate from the diners.

I have some fond memories of some truck stop restaurants and truckers in general from having moved across country several times. When we moved to Florida in 1979, we kept in touch with activity on the road with our CBs and we all had “handles”.  One time the kids and I sang “On the Road Again” for some truckers somewhere along Interstate 10, as we headed for Florida.

“THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK” is a compilation by Ken Beck, Jim Clark and Les Kerr, published by Rutledge Hill Press in Nashville, Tennessee in 2002. (if the name Rutledge Hill Press sounds familiar, it should. They’re the folks who have been publishing the Roadfood Cookbooks, such as “The Louie’s Backyard Cookbook”, previously reviewed on my blog.

In the Introduction to “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK”, the authors ask, “Remember the simpler days when there was no such thing as a fast-food restaurant—before there were interstates?

Maybe you’d been driving along the two-lane highways all day long. It was time for a bite of supper, and you had to pick a place to eat. Remember what Mama would say?

‘Look for a place where all the trucks are stopped!’

(Pete Rigney, the Silver Fox, disputes this old adage and says, “There was some truth to that, but traveling the roads in the fifties, I found there was more myth than truth. In reality, truckers knew where you could get a lot of food for the money and where nobody had died recently….”)

In any case,  the trucks stop right here in THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK”

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know – more than three million heavy-duty truckers haul freight across the United States and Canada, from Miami to Anchorage and from Bangor to Baja.  Authors Ken Beck, Jim Clark and Les Kerr (hereafter referred to as “The Authors”) covered some of those miles themselves in collecting more than two hundred favorite recipes from top truck stops across the land. Truckers, say the Authors, do know the best places to eat and they were happy to share their secrets of the best places to find yummy dishes like chicken-fried steak and gravy, fruit cobblers, soups or chilies.   The Authors suggest that you can either use this book as a cookbook – or even as an insider’s guide to finding where to eat and what to eat once you get to your destination.

Truckers,  claim the authors, like foods from every category on the menu but they received so many recommendations for chili and meat loaf that an entire chapter was devoted to each of these “hearty truck-stop staples”.

The book starts with a chapter titled “Nearly a Century of Service: The History of the Truck Stop”, explaining that perhaps the forerunner of the truck stop was the stagecoach stop relay station where horses and drivers were changed or rested, and tired and hungry passengers were served.

“But the original truck stops,” say the authors, “find their beginnings in the 1920s as gas-driver vehicles began to take over routes.  It was big news when a truck route was established in the early twentieth century.

As late as 1950 one newspaper headline declared ‘Trucks End Isolation for Many Sections’”.

The authors explain, “Before trucking, a town without rail service relied on often inconsistent deliveries of goods. One pretruck vehicle was a horse freight wagon operated in Tennessee by ‘Uncle’ Dave Macon, later one of the Grand Ole Opry’s first superstars”.

“Team tracks,” the authors continue, “developed in the early 1900s in cities with train stations. The tracks allowed rail cars loaded with freight to be diverted to drayage companies.  The goods reached their final destination by wagons pulled by teams of horses or mules…”

However, during the early 1920s, along came the establishment of dedicated truck routes and with it, the beginning of the truck stop. Truck historian Jennifer Rowcroft says that long distance automobile and bus travelers were originally the customers most service stations sought.  However, it took truck drivers to create most of the business for the early gasoline retailers.  Anticipating profits from providing truckers’ needs, service stations began to cater to them. By 1925, “the highway havens added bunkhouses, lounges, showers, and mechanical facilities.  One of the truck stations from that era still thriving is the Dixie Truckers Home, founded in 1928 on Route 66 at McLean, Illinois.  (Curious, I looked up Dixie Truckers Home in Marian Clark’s “THE ROUTE 66 COOKBOOK”. Clark provides a bit more history of the Dixie Truckers Home and says that the truck stop has closed only one day since 1928, and that was due to a 1965 fire that burned the original building.   She also informs us that the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame can be found at Dixie Trucker’s Home. Exhibits featured in a prominent hallway tell the story of Route 66 in Illinois.) But I digress.

During the 1930s, there was a huge increase in the trucking business and, likewise, the truck stop industry.  By 1935, say the authors of “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK”, of all communities used trucks as their primary means of shipping.  Between 1932 and 1936, the number of truck drivers in the United States increased from about one million to about 3.1 million.  “Truck stops,” say the authors, “sprang up to accommodate all those drivers…the advent of long-distance trucking was taking root and truck stops became an important part of the support system for the trucking economy”.

And, they note, it was because of the use of trucks by the military during WW2 that, by the end of the war, there were plenty of trained truck drivers.  Trucks became larger during the 1940s and 1950s. Another major change in this industry was the ability to transport frozen food and other items previously not considered.  Another major new phenomenon, the authors explain, was the development of the modern truck stop chain in the early 1970s.

Today, over three million truck drivers are now on the roads and truck stops are more important than ever. State the authors, “With an estimated average employment of eighty-five people each, truck stops play a vital role in the economy. “OVERDRIVE  magazine, the largest-selling trucking magazine in the world, reports that truck drivers make up over half of a truck-stop restaurant’s customers, with other travelers and local residents making up the rest…”

As for recipes—honey, you’re going to be in hog-heaven when you discover what’s in “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK”.

From Berky’s Beef Cabbage Soup to Dakota Cheeseburger Soup, or from Ho-Bo Soup to Rhode Island Clam Chowder, from Keyers Ridge Chili to Wyoming Chili, or from Cold Coldfoot Salad (from Coldfoot Alaska!) to Nelle’s Red Kidney Bean Salad..this is just for openers! You may want to sample Crazy Fred’s Fajita Taco Salad (from Crazy Fred’s Truck Stop in Kingman, Arizona or Iron Skillet Huevos Rancheros (from Iron Skillet Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia) or Grandma Max’s Broccoli Casserole (from Grandma Max’s Restaurant in Salina, Kansas).

And, if you like celebrity type recipes so you can do some name-dropping when you serve up a special dish at your next dinner party, you can tell your guests, “These Patio Black-Eyed Peas” are from Loretta Lynn’s Kitchen in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, or “This is Kay’s Salmon Dip”- and explain that the Kay is Kay Adams, a country singer and song writer.

There are all of these and many, many more in “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK”—and with each page, you will find fascinating, nostalgic old-time photos and lots of trucker history. One note – some of these recipes yield a large amount, such as Dana’s Chicken Enchiladas (24 to 30 servings) or the Smoked Sausage Vegetable Noodle Soup Colorado (50 servings!) – the really great thing about having some of these recipes handy is so that you will be prepared the next time you have to make a large amount of food for a party. Don’t let that intimidate you; most recipes are geared for 4 to 6 or 6 to 8 servings. (Actually, I have yet in my life to make a small amount of chili or soup or chowder. I always end up with enough to feed the entire neighborhood—and have leftovers).

However, “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK” is a lot more than a compilation of recipes. Included are many nostalgic photos of some of the early truck stops, stories about some of the more fabulous and eccentric truck stops, and interviews with several truck stop waitresses who have been serving meals to hungry Americans for decades. There is also a truckers’ glossary, a rundown on trucking movies and television shows which includes CONVOY and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT , complete with photographs. There are interviews and stories on the country music artists who have recorded the greatest trucking tunes of all time: Red Sovine, Dick Curless, Red Simpson, C. W. McCall and Kay Adams.

I’d say that “THE ALL-AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK” is really a fun to read cookbook—and what’s more, a portion of the authors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to the NATSO Foundation, a national charitable organization support by truck stops.

NATSO  is a nonprofit charitable organization funded through private donations. NATSO was founded in 1990 for the purpose of administering an industry-wide scholarship. NATSO has awarded more than $100,000 in college scholarships to industry employees and their dependents. NATSO also has a disaster relief program which has a network of 650 travel plazas and truck stops to assist the Red Cross in the aftermath of disasters.  Travel plazas have donated over thirteen thousand gallons of fuel as well as meals, truck washes, and other services to the Red Cross personnel since the Disaster Relief program began in 1996. To learn more about the NATSO foundation, visit their website at www.natsofoundation.org.

“Check your oil, fill’er up, and get ready to dig into these all-American recipes and stories from leading truck stops all across America”.

“THE ALL AMERICAN TRUCK STOP COOKBOOK” by Ken Beck, Jim Clark and Les Kerr is from Rutledge Hill Press and originally sold for $14.99.  It can be found on Amazon.com starting at 8 cents for a pre-owned copy. It is available on Alibris.com starting at $1.99.

ISBN 1-55853-966-2

Review by Sandra Lee Smith

Updated May, 2013

(In loving memory of Mike Lydon, my granddaughter Savannah’s maternal grandpa, a trucker who passed away at a truck rest stop when Savannah was just a baby. Mike was a great friend of ours who taught me how to play pool!. Then, ten years ago, my youngest son married Mike’s oldest daughter.)

 

BUNNY’S JOY

My brother Jim and Bunny (Ursula) Walker married in 1963 and embarked on a marriage that lasted for 49 years, producing two daughters and one son—and in time, five grandsons. My BF Bob and Bunny were kindred spirits and would sit outside smoking together whenever they visited me, or when we all gathered in Florida. Is it any wonder that they were both felled by the same disease, cancer of the esophagus? And that they died within eleven months of each other?

The first time I saw my sister in law, Bunny’s, copy of JOY OF COOKING was during a visit to Michigan in 1994, along with my sister Becky, to witness the marriage of Bunny and Jim’s son Barry, to Kelli; and a few days later we participated in Jim and Bunny’s youngest daughter, Julie’s, high school graduation—and a memorable party for which my sister and I participated in making chocolate-covered large fresh strawberries.

One day during that visit, Bunny made cream of asparagus soup for us—asparagus was in season and we all liked this vegetable. Bunny consulted her “JOY OF COOKING” cookbook for the recipe and I was enthralled, seeing such an old copy of a famous cookbook. This edition was published in 1963, and in the Dedication page, Marion Rombauer Becker writes “In revisiting and reorganizing ‘The Joy of Cooking’ we have missed the help of my mother, Irma S. Rombauer. How grateful I am for her buoyant example, for the strong feeling of roots she gave me, for her conviction that, well-grounded, you can make the most of life, no matter what it brings! In an earlier away-from-home kitchen, I acted as tester and production manager for the privately printed first edition of ‘The Joy’. Working with Mother    on its development has been for my husband, John, and for me the culmination of a very happy personal relationship. John has always  contributed verve to this undertaking, but during the past ten years he has, through his constant support and crisp creative editing, become an integral part of the book. We look forward to a time when our two boys—and their wives—will continue to keep ‘The Joy’ a family affair, as well as an enterprise in which the authors owe no obligation to anyone but themselves—and you.” – Marion Rombauer  Becker

Could the Rombauer clan ever imagined – even after ten years of THE JOY OF COOKING being published, that it would continue, year after year, to exceed everyone’s greatest expectations?

I am a Johnny-come-lately to “The Joy of Cooking” – even though I began collecting cookbooks in 1965, my focus was then and still is today on community cookbooks although I have branched out a bit. Sitting down with Bunny’s worn, stained, cover-falling-off copy of THE JOY OF COOKING was a revelation to me. Part of the original dust jacket was folded up inside. Also folded up neatly inside are a package of typed recipes – chili parlor chili, Skyline Chili, Beef Bar-B-Q, Hungarian Goulash, as well as perhaps a dozen or more other family favorites that cry out “Cincinnati”. There is a copy of a recipe for Skyline Chili in a handwriting that I don’t recognize. For those not familiar with Cincinnati Chili, Camp Washington Chili Parlor, Skyline Chili, Empress Chili – they are all variations of a particular chili dinner that all Cincinnati children grow up  with—we were weaned on 4 way or 5 way chili or a couple of Coney Islands. A four way is spaghetti, topped with Cincinnati Chili, a mountain of grated cheese and oyster crackers. For a 5-way add a serving of kidney beans to the dish. Coney Islands are Cincinnati’s version of a chili dog – but the specially made small hot dog comes from Kahn’s – “the weiner the world awaited”- and is topped off with mustard, chili, some chopped onion and a huge mound of grated cheese—all piled onto a hotdog bun. I can eat three of these in one sitting but can’t budge for a few hours after.

Another clipping inside the book is a seasoning for fish, chicken or steak, in my brother Jim’s handwriting. Next I found an intriguing recipe for Blackberry Brioche that was clipped from a newspaper –and I can’t wait to share it with my penpal Bev, who keeps me supplied with Oregon blackberries. This is followed by a small little stack of newspaper clippings—the kind you only find in old recipe boxes or packed within the pages of a family cookbook. There is, I was happy to see, an article from my favorite food writer, Fern Storer, for a Lemon Pound Cake; next is a recipe for a ham loaf – an old clipping; the back of the recipe is an ad for 6 large 12-oz bottles of Pepsi Cola for 15 cents (plus deposit). I found a recipe for making a Swiss Steak Sauce that was published in the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1960. Then I found a recipe for Chipped Beef Skillet Lunch that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer in October, 1958—(oh wait! I thought – Jim & Bunny didn’t get married until 1963. Were these recipes originally in her mother’s possession?  Was the cookbook originally her mother’s?  who can I ask? Who would know?)

From a Cincinnati Enquirer clipping dated January 21, 1960. O found a recipe for Casserole Lasagna, that I am interested in trying; then I uncovered a  recipe for Broken Glass Torte (made with three kinds of Jello)  followed by small clippings for  Banana Nut Bread, a Tangy Dressing for Tangy vegetable slaw, plus a few others that are too battered to decipher.

On a page  somewhat spattered, I found Bunny’s recipe for Cream of Asparagus Soup:

Wash and remove the tips from 1 lb fresh green asparagus, simmer the tips, covered until they are tender in a small amount of milk or water.

Cut the stalks into pieces and place them in a saucepan. Add

6 cups of veal or chicken stock page 490

¼    cup chopped onions

½ cup chopped celery

Simmer these ingredients, covered,  for about ½ hour  rub them through a sieve.

Melt:

3 Tablespoons butter

Stir in until blended

3 Tablespoons flour

Stir in slowly:

½ cup cream

Add the asparagus stock. Heat the soup well in a double boiler. Add the asparagus tips. Season the soup immediately before serving with salt, paprika, and white pepper. Before serving, garnish with:

A diced hard-cooked egg    **

I imagine that a bookstore dealer would toss Bunny’s Joy of Cooking into the trash, considering it unworthy of resale. I think much the same often happens to an individual’s recipe box – the contents are thrown into the trash and the box is put up for sale.

I don’t pretend that I am the owner of Bunny’s Joy. I think of myself as a steward, waiting for a daughter or a grandchild to come along and ask “Do you know where my mother’s or grandmother’s Joy of Cooking is?” to which I can reply “I’ve been saving it for you”.–Sandra Lee Smith

QUICK & EASY VOLUME II

QUICK & HEALTHY, VOLUME II by Brenda Ponichtera is “more help for people who say they don’t have time to cook healthy meals”.

Ms. Ponichtera is a Registered Dietician, Diabetes educator and author. She majored in Foods and Nutrition at Framingham State College in Massachusetts, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Education. The author completed a dietetic internship in Seattle, Washington, at Harborview Medical Center, Swedish Hospital and Children’s Orthopedic Hospital – so you can rest assured, this is one cookbooks author who really knows what she is writing about.

Quick & Healthy, Volume II is attractively compiled with bright red spiral binding and is filled with healthy recipes, menus, and recipes using ordinary ingredients from the supermarket; it is a must for those of us working to achieve a low fat lifestyle.

Also included are charts to help you determine your ideal weight, calories and fat, how to monitor fat intake, the grams of fat in common foods, how to trim fat from your diet, and food exchanges, especially helpful for diabetics.

Explains the author, “Healthful eating doesn’t have to take a lot of time in the kitchen. With that in mind, I wrote my first book QUICK & HEALTHY R ECIPES AND IDEAS…”  Since then, she says, she has received many requests for more recipes and menus, which is why she decided to write QUICK & HEALTHY VOLUME II.

“What is quick?” asks Ms. Ponichtera, “When testing recipes, we decided that quick meant spending less time in the kitchen. Putting together the ingredients for a meal in less than 15 minutes met that criteria. However, the cooking time can take longer since this does not usually require constant attention…”

All the recipes are low in fat and when combined with other foods for the day, fall within the recommendation of no more than 20% to 30% of the total calories from fat.

What is really most impressive about Ms. Ponichtera’s cookbook are the recipes—we all know how easy it is to be turned off by “DIET” food but take a look at this – herbed cream cheese sour cream baked potato topping? Carrot muffins!  Pineapple Bread! A really wonderful tortilla soup recipes! Chicken pasta stew! Sour Cream Enchiladas!

And what’s not to like about Chicken and Black Bean Burritos, or Chicken Chop Suey…

You’ll appreciate the section on desserts (dieting today doesn’t mean giving up the yummies!) – Ms. Ponichtera provides us with recipes for raisin bread pudding, peach custard, and Banana Cream pie!

I believe the most current edition of QUICK & HEALTHY Volume II was published in 2009. I reviewed it for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange originally in May, 1997.  The original QUICK & EASY cookbook was published in 1991, and reprinted in 2008.  If reprinting is any indicator of how a book (or two) are doing, I would say that a lot of people have discovered both of Ms. Ponichtera’s cookbooks

You can find the original QUICK & EASY cookbook on Amazon for $6.08, pre owned or $16.45 new.  QUICK & EASY VOLUME II can be yours for $3.15 pre owned, or $10. for a new copy.

–Review by Sandra Lee Smith

BOUNTIFUL OHIO

BOUNTIFUL OHIO, subtitled “Good Food and Stories from where the Heartland Begins”  by James Hope and Susan Failor, and published by Gabriel’s Horn in Bowling Green Ohio, (1993) is the kind of book you will read again and again, with heartland recipes to refer to time and time again.

I hardly know where to begin—this book is so jam-packed with information and recipes.

Mr. Hope is rightfully Professor Hope; he taught at a university in rural Ohio. A native New Englander, James Hope set out, one summer, along with professional home economist Susan Failor, to “discover” Ohio.

Cincinnati, Ohio, is my birthplace; I was a native buckeye up to the age of twenty-one when my husband, baby, and I set out to drive across country to California.  But Ohioans never forget their roots and I have spent many summers, with my children, visiting relatives and friends in Cincinnati suburbs.

During those summer vacations, we made numerous trips to the famous chili parlors for platters piled high with Cincinnati chili, a concoction like none you have ever eaten. (A Four Way consists of spaghetti, topped with Cincinnati chili, chopped onions and grated cheese, topped off with oyster crackers. The best place to go to is Camp Washington Chili Parlor).

We ate wonderful German sausages with sauerkraut, farm-fresh sliced tomatoes and sipped Ohio’s famous Meier’s wine….so imagine my delight, discovering BOUNTIFUL OHIO—An entire cookbook devoted not only to recipes                              and foods cherished by Buckeyes, but filled, also, with the foodlore of Ohio.

I always knew that Cincinnati was famous as a meat-packing town, most notably Kahn’s, just as I always knew that Proctor and Gamble’s first company was located in Cincinnati. What I didn’t know is that P&G owed its origins to the meat-packing industry, too, that candle maker William Proctor and soap maker James Gamble married sisters and combined forces to form one of the most successful American business enterprises ever. This business owed its foundation to the fats and scraps collected from meat-packing plants.

Comment the publishers, “The recipes in this book range from cheesy cornbread to Sara’s Amish dressing and from Firelands Braised Beef Noir to Di’s Ohio sour Cherry Pie (winner of the best pie in America). They are the wholesome flavors of good food from home in Ohio”.

I also discovered an apple maple chutney recipe that I can’t wait to try, and along with an authentic recipe for Johnny Marzetti, the story behind its origins.  If you have very many regional cookbooks in your collection, you most likely have an assortment of Johnny Marzetti recipes, with Marzetti spelled many different ways. Here, then, is the true story behind Johnny Marzetti.

While not a community cookbook, BOUNTIFUL OHIO is definitely a regional cookbook, a book you will thoroughly enjoy and treasure for many years to come, whether or not you are from Ohio–or neighboring Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia or Pennsylvania.  While numerous books have been published, extolling the virtues of Midwestern cooking, few have delved so deeply to explain why it is so good.

In the Preface, James Hope and Susan Failor write “You don’t have to travel far to go a long way in Ohio: the state is so diverse—geographically, economically, ethnically—but the scene outside your window changes constantly. Sometimes that makes it hard for Ohioans to figure out just who they are—but it intrigues and delights the authors of this book, and is one of the reasons we decided to write it…”

The authors say they’re glad they did. Being interested in food, they ate their way from border to border and found a lot of it, in a variety ranging from five star virtuosity (The Maisonette in Cincinnati that held that rare ranking for decades, closed its doors in 2005).

The authors say that Ohio is one where farm and cookie factory literally exist side by side.  Ohio is smaller in land area than 33 other states, so it packs a surprising amount of agriculture and industry into a small space.

“Midwesterners that they are,” write Hope and Failor, “Ohioans don’t toot their own horns much. But Ohio ranks among the nation’s top ten or twelve states in corn, soybeans, wheat, fresh vegetables, dairy products, chickens, egg, hogs and vegetables for processing. It does more than grow food, too; it also processes vast amounts of ketchup, pickles, soup, ice cream, Swiss cheese, cereal and many other things. Most people don’t realize what an efficient little cornucopia this state is…”

The authors owe the success of BOUNTIFUL OHIO to all the people listed at the end of the book—farmers, grocers, chefs, food processors, homemakers, extension agents, professional government officials and dozens of other Ohioans who helped them write this book.

Chapter One is titled “IN SEARCH OF BOUNTIFUL” and Professor Hope explains that he took to the road in mid-August, a few days after teaching his last class of summer session at a university in rural Ohio and was now free for a year, on leave to do research of the kind that is supposed to add to the world’s body of knowledge. He would do that, but had something else in mind, too.

He says that like William Least Heat-Moon in BLUE HIGHWAYS and Ishmael in MOBY DICK, Hope was in search of something. While those writers were trying to fill gaps  in their souls, he was hoping to fill a different kind of vacancy—he was looking for good things to eat.

(Many books have been written in the past three or four decades about finding good food to eat throughout the USA—I know because I have collected a lot of those books–but this was the early 1990s and a lot of those books hadn’t been written yet).

Professor Hope confessed that after years of gulping quick lunches between classes, he was hungry and intended to eat leisurely and well—but there was a deeper purpose to this as well. He had a theory (as professors often do) that food, and the search for it, would help him come to know Ohio, perhaps become even more of an Ohioan.

Culture, he writes, is all the things a people value—it is how they establish their identity, their sense of who they are, their uniqueness. Culture, he says, is art, music and literature but it is also film, furniture, car ornaments, roller coasters and merry go rounds. And, says Professor Hope, it is food. Especially food: our foods are among the common statements of who we are; we create and consume them all day long. (I would have said it’s also our cookbooks. In the mid 1960s when I first began collecting cookbooks, I started with a church cookbook my father bought from a co-worker at Formica. Dad bought several copies of this Cincinnati Methodist church cookbook, for my sisters and my mother and me.  I cherished that cookbook and began to wonder if there were of it “out there.”  I have learned a great deal over the years about places from the cookbooks published by churches and clubs).

Professor Hope says that getting to know this place and its culture—to become part of it—was important to him.  He had lived in Ohio for more than a decade and a half, but still felt like a New Englander, someone from away. “I couldn’t blame the Ohioans,” he writes, “they seemed friendlier than the taciturn Yankees with whom I was raised.  The problem was this: I had never really taken the time to get to know the place, and Ohio seemed more like an address than a home.”  (This is something I can relate to—when we first came to California in 1961, I didn’t feel like a Californian. We returned to Ohio in 1963 for the birth of our second son, Steve, – but before the year was over, I knew we had to return to California. Ohio was no longer my home. I had somehow become a Californian).

But, back to James Hope and BOUNTIFUL OHIO – in which he says that New Englanders know exactly who they are and they have the sights, the sounds, the ancestors and the flavors to prove it to you, whether you ask them or not. They claim a sense of place as birth right and have all the materials for it. Professor Hope says he grew up surrounded by mountains and Indian trails, Revolutionary War battlefields, home ports for clipper ships and brooding houses with small-paned windows that concealed secrets.

Further on he writes how, in the sixth decade of his life, he knew where he had been; he did not know where he was now and meant to do something about it.

There is a great deal more to the Preface to BOUNTIFUL OHIO but I would be remiss to write too much of it and take away from you the experience of seeing my home state of Ohio from another’s eyes. (I have been seeing Ohio through my birthright eyes and then, later on, I began seeing Ohio in a different light—becoming more appreciative as I got older and would visit places with one of my brothers or one of my nephews. With my brother Bill over the span of several years – we visited Hale Farm and Cuyahoga National Park, as well as Stan Hywet mansion in Akron, Ohio. This is a 65 room Tudor style mansion built in 1912 by Goodyear Rubber company founder F.A. Seiberling and his wife.  It was touring the house and gardens that made me realize how much I love old houses. Curiously, the house is not named after a person, as commonly believed, and it took 4 years to build at a cost of $150,000.

You can spend a lot of time reading BOUNTIFUL OHIO—it’s the kind of book to read a little at a time, relishing all the history—and the recipes!

BOUNTIFUL OHIO can be purchased on Amazon.com at one cent and up for a pre owned copy.  Mine is a softcover (oversized) cookbook.   A great addition to collectors of regional material.

Alibris.com has pre-owned copies of BOUNTIFUL OHIO starting at 99c.

A great regional cookbook to add to your collection!

Review by Sandra Lee Smith

 

 

 

FRESH FROM THE FARMERS’ MARKET by Janet Fletcher

I love the synchronicity of things. It was when I first began collecting Farmer’s Market cookbooks and writing about them that I discovered one I hadn’t known about.

This is FRESH FROM THE FARMER’S MARKET by Janet Fletcher. (Let me tell you; the cover of this cookbook is totally captivating).

Ms. Fletcher’s book, published in 1997, comes to us from Chronicle Books in San Francisco (one of those names you come to recognize as hallmarks in cookbooks).

The publishers at Chronicle Books tell us “Across the country, consumers are rediscovering the old fashioned pleasures buying direct from the growers. (and as I write this, fifteen years after this book was published, I’m sure you will agree; this is as true today as it was in the 1990s). They write, “They’re also discovering the wonderful variety of fruits and vegetables available fresh from season to season…FRESH FROM THE FARMER’S MARKET, by Janet Fletcher, offers cooks a seasonal produce guide plus eighty fabulous recipes…”

Mary Ann Gilberbloom, a publicist at Chronicle Books, says that, on a personal note. since she started working on this book, she began taking her daughter to local farmers’ markets. She says it has changed her very picky ten year old’s view of fruits and vegetables.

Explain Chronicle books, in their press release, in FRESH FROM THE FARMER’S MARKET, Fletcher celebrates America’s incomparable harvest with recipes and photographs that showcase the riches of each season.  Her compelling text conveys the pleasures of shopping the farmers’ market and highlights the benefit of buying direct from the growers access to fully ripe, fresh-picked produce; the chance to buy unusual varieties, many that supermarkets never carry; and the availability of more organically grown produce….the text includes the voices of dozens of farmers describing the special attributes of the produce they bring to market, explain why it’s so often superior to the wares at the local  grocery store. Then, in eighty tantalizing recipes, Fletcher puts these fruits and vegetables center stage, motivating readers to make the most of their purchases….”

“Noted photographer Victoria Pearson,” Chronicle Books proclaims, “captures the year round beauty of the farmers’ market in fifty stunning natural light photographs/…” (Trust me, they do not lie. As someone who has studied photography and spent years trying to capture the perfect photograph, I am in awe of Ms. Pearson’s  work).  Victoria Pearson is a  Los Angeles based photographer whose work has appeared in ”A BREAD FOR ALL SEASONS,” as well as MARTHA STEWART LIVING,  CONDE NAST TRAVELER and TOWN AND COUNTRY magazines.

And if someone out there is saying “so?, I simply want to say, it isn’t often that photographs of a recipe that ensnares you and piques your interest, so that you say “I can do that!” (whether you realize it or not, a gorgeous color photograph of a recipe for, say, a collage of fruits as shown on pages 114 of Ms. Fletcher’s book—is often the impetus that motivates us into rushing out to buy the necessary ingredients  to make a yummy-sounding recipes). Even the cover of this great cookbook is a collage of fruits, veggies and the farmers’ market.

Janet Fletcher trained at the Culinary Institute of America (a name most of us are familiar with) and the Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California, and at the time of publication, (1997) was a staff food writer for the San Francisco, Chronicle, and she also contributes frequently to magazines on wine and food topics.  She has authored or co-authored eight cookbooks, including MORE VEGETABLES, PLEASE, GRAIN GASTRONOMY and PASTA HARVEST.  Ms. Fletcher lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, who is a Napa Valley winemaker.

“Season by season” proclaim Chronicle Books, “Fresh from the Farmer’s Market guides readers to fruits and vegetables at peak freshness and explains how to recognize quality.  Did you know that a fresh strawberry is a shiny berry?  Or that a squeezed artichoke squeaks when fresh? (go ahead! Squeeze the artichokes!  Or that a fresh green bean will stick to your clothes?  (and no, I didn’t know that!)

“Regular farmers’ market shoppers,” say Chronicle Books, “will find fresh  inspiration in recipes such as Festive Spinach Salad with Roasted Beets and Feta, Tapioca Pudding with Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce and Quesadillas with Squash Blossoms and Corn…”

For my money, not much can compare with the Blackberry Macaroon Tarts, the Pasta with Eggplant, Tomato, Olives and Capers, or the fresh fig galettes (these were a must when our fig trees were in season, back in the day).

Along with the great recipes and mouth-watering photographs, you will surely enjoy Ms. Fletcher’s chatty style when she shares with you the background to her recipes, The farmer’s markets and her experiences. It’s like spending an afternoon with a good friend over for coffee and….fig galettes.

FRESH FROM THE FARMERS’ MARKET is available at Amazon.com starting at  sixty cents for a pre-owned copy. I couldn’t find it listed on Alibris.com but if you go to either of these sites, you will find a bumper crop of cookbooks relating to farmer’s markets.

If this review generates enough interest, I can review more farmer’s market books.

Review by Sandra Lee Smith

LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTHOUSE COOKBOOKS – PART 2

Part 2

Anita Stewart’s cookbook, as described by the publishers, “with recipes from traditional dishes like clam chowder and dried apple pie to gourmet creations as Mussels in Wild Mushrooms and Chanterelle Soufflé, demonstrate the inventiveness of chefs who live a long way from the nearest supermarket. Food supplies from “outside” are only available occasionally, when tender boats or helicopters visit, the this produces an emphasis on local ingredients: garden produce, wild mushrooms and BC’s famous salmon”

“Tales of shipwrecked adventurers seeking refuge at lonely lighthouses, cougars attacking hikers, and a maritime Santa Claus accompany the recipes, along with descriptions of the lightkeepers’ lush gardens, their wine cellars and their philosophy of food. The keepers talk about isolation, but only as an aside to the challenge of self-reliance and the joy of living amidst such beauty…”

Anita Stewart visited the lights of BC’s Inside Passage and the isolated northern stations, braving rough seas, high winds and even a torpedo testing range to collect over 150 recipes and cooking tips used by families on the lights. She is a former chocolate bar salesperson, and also the author of the bestselling FARMER’S MARKER COOKBOOK, COUNTRY INN COOKBOOK and the ST. LAWRENCE MARKET COOKBOOK.

I found The Lighthouse Cookbook listed on Amazon.com priced at $21.95 new, or starting at one cent for a pre-owned copy. (Remember that shipping and handling is always $3.99 from private vendors for pre-owned books.)

Alibris.com has The Lighthouse cookbook priced at $3.09 for a pre-owned copy (very good price!) or new at only $5.80.  **

My next lighthouse cookbook was a Christmas present from my British penpal Eve, who, along with her husband Ron, now live in Western Australia.  The title of the book is THE LIGHTHOUSE COOKBOOK, compiled by Shirley Baker for Friends of Deal Island and Tasman Island, with proceeds from sales going to fund restoration projects on Deal and Tasman Islands.

In the Foreword, written by Sally Wise, we read “Since the early 1800s, the Kent Group of Islands, of which Deal Island forms a part, have been admired for their rugged beauty. Although a threat to early travelers entering the eastern side of Tasmania’s Bass Strait, its islands have become quite literally a beacon for the safety of those who would pass through those unpredictable waters.

The island of greatest note is Deal Island, where a lighthouse is perched 280 meters above sea level, from which its light cast out its warning for almost 100 years. The lighthouse keeper’s residence, built in 1847, is thought to be the oldest in the southern hemisphere.

Ms Wise also notes that “the lighthouse itself was opened in February 1848. It was automated in 1921, and in the late 1930s was converted to electric operation and continued until 1992, when it was decommissioned and automatic lights established on islands nearby.

She goes on to say that such a history and immeasurable natural beauty were not to fade into obscurity. In the tear 2000, Tasmania’s Parks and Wildlife Service instituted a volunteer caretaker program providing visitor information on the protection and management of the natural, historical, and cultural values of the Kent Group National Park and its surrounding marine protected areas.

“Tasman Island,” she writes, “off Tasmania’s south-east coast, is also one of Australia’s most isolated  light stations A familiar landmark for mariners as they sail across Storm Bay, the island’s grey dolerite cliffs soar 250 meters out of the sea. A narrow channel, little more than one kilometer wide, separates the island from the Tasmanian mainland.

Although a site was cleared for a lighthouse on Tasman Island  in the late 1800s,  it was not until 1906 that a lighthouse was finally completed. Initially lit by kerosene, the light was converted to wind power in 1975 and its operation was automated in 1976.  Access to such a remote light station was very difficult and seas were frequently too rough for supply ships to approach the island..”

Today, Sally Wise tells us, Tasman Island is the icon of the Tasman National Park and managed by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service.

The cookbook was created to assist volunteers who take the time to care for this legacy of history and natural beauty to continue their work and Sally Wise was honored to be asked to write the foreword.

She notes that for the lightkeepers of old, as indeed for the stalwart volunteers of today, cooking in such remote circumstances presented a number of challenges. Recipes had to be concocted or adapted to cater to the paucity of ingredients and equipment on hand. Out of these challenges came a whole culture of recipes and cookery; simple, tasty meals and more, prepared with basic ingredients.

I wholeheartedly agree, friends. You know, (and I am sort of abashed to admit this) I never really stopped to consider how foodstuffs reached remote lighthouse stations or – when they received it – what challenges they faced cooking with what they received. These lighthouse cookbooks are a testimony to all those lighthouse keepers, long ago and still, today.

In the Introduction to the Australian LIGHTHOUSE COOKBOOK, contributor Shirley Baker writes “Food and kitchens in remote and wilderness areas offer so much more than sustenance to the body and a place to prepare and cook food. The food brings comfort, revitalization and a welcome break from the rigors of the day and the kitchen provides that wonderful old feeling of relaxed belonging, a place where mind and soul come together to share life’s experiences as well as culinary delights!

Shirley says she was in just such a kitchen in Quarters 3 of the Tasman Island lightstation in conversation when she suggested that a lighthouse cookbook should be included on their list of fund-raising projects. Experience as caretakers on the Deal Island Lighthouses…gave Shirley and her husband a
first-hand understanding of the importance of food and meals in the day to day life of those who spend extended periods of time in isolation in remote areas.

But, says Shirley Baker in the Introduction, “Life in isolated areas still involves a great deal of ‘entertaining’. In today’s world nowhere seems to be truly isolated. Visitors arrive by all manner, overland, by sea and waterway and from the skies. It seems to me that just as one feels truly alone, someone turns up! One of my favorite sayings is ‘The more remote the area, the more of the World turns up!’

Remote hospitality begins with boiling the kettle. A good cup of something hot is a most welcome introduction to a traveler whether they be weary, cold, stressed, injured or simple just dropping in for a chat. Just to fill the kettle with water may mean stepping over to the tap above the kitchen sink or may involve dressing in full thermal and wet-weather gear and a lengthy walk outdoors to a water source.

Remote area cooking may be as simple as opening a foil-lined packet containing a dehydrated meal or spending hours on a rocky outcrop with a fishing line or the setting up and checking of rabbit traps. Preparing and cooking meals in remote areas often  requires a level of resourcefulness and a mind for innovation, especially when a meal planned for two may suddenly be required to feed six!”

In the final paragraph to the Introduction, Shirley Baker writes, “One of my earliest and happiest memories as a child is the time spent in the kitchen of the family home with my mother by the warmth of the old wood stove along with the wonderful aromas of homemade soups, stews, cakes and biscuits. Now, as a ‘grown-up’ I never feel a closer connection with humanity than when sharing a kitchen in an isolated or remote area. I have welcomed hundreds of total strangers into my kitchen in remote place where I have spent countless hours listening and sharing stories over cuppas, scones and biscuits. A great many of my closest and dearest friendships have grown from these experiences.”

There is a great deal more to this Lighthouse Cookbook from the friends of DEAL Island and friends of Tasman Island. There is a chapter on volunteer caretaking on Deal Island. There is a lovely black and white photograph of Tasman Island Lighthouse at dawn, taken by Shirley Baker. There is also a great black and white photograph of Deal Island Lighthouse taken by Shirley Baker (she makes me want to return to black and white photography!)  There are the recipes – lots and lots of recipes, proof-positive of the ingenuity and skill with which the residents of the Aussie lighthouses make-do with what they’ve got. The book would be a wonderful addition to anyone’s kitchen but I was thinking that it would be especially good for a young son or daughter embarking on adulthood and learning how to cook.

I was unable to find copies of my spiral bound edition with a lighthouse photograph on the cover. I couldn’t find it on Amazon.com or Alibris.com. I did find it on Google and if you type in the entire title, Google will provide you with a number of websites to check for a copy.

The next three lighthouse cookbooks are mainly recipes, not a lot of background material, so I will present them “as is”.

First is PIER PLEASURES published by Memorial Hospital Auxiliary in St. Joseph, Michigan in 1981. In the Introduction, Carol Starks, President of the Memorial Hospital Auxiliary writes “The recipes for Pier Pleasures were chosen from many submitted by the members and friends of the Memorial Hospital Auxiliary. Their aim was to present some different recipes—not found in the usual cookbook—with emphasis on dishes appropriate to their area.

“St Joseph is a city settled in the early 1800s”, she writes, “and located on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the St Joseph River. In the early days large excursion boats as well as commercial fishing vessels were prevalent in this area. Today these boats have left, but pleasure fishing has remained a great sport in our area. In the spring of the year we are blessed with the beauty of a variety of fruit blossoms, as this is one of the large fruit belt areas of the Midwest…”

PIER PLEASURES offers some unusual recipes, including “The Recipe” which is also known as Dandelion Wine (despite being from the fruit belt). There is also a recipe for Plum Brandy that I may give a try if my plum tree produces anything this year.  There is also a recipe for Orange Sangria that sounds interesting. Actually, there are hundreds (at least!) of recipes in PIER PLEASURES—surely something for everybody’s palate.

Some illustrations of local points of interest in St. Joseph provided by local artist Elizabeth Mandarino add to the unique flavor of PIER PLEASURES. One of MAIDS OF THE MIST FOUNTAIN reminded me of the Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati.

Amazon.com has several copies of Pier Pleasures priced at $17.99 and up. I couldn’t find any listings on Alibris.com.

When my sister Becky and I were driving around Lake Michigan in the late 1990s, we visited the town of Mackinac and enjoyed a great meal at a mom-and-pop type of family restaurant. However the weather was wet and dismal, not conducive to going out to the Mackinac Island for a visit. We photographed the lighthouse on the mainland. This cookbook is available on amazon.com for $3.00 for a pre-owned copy. Alibris.com has a lot of pre-owed copies starting at about $3.00 and up.

The final cookbook, Hereford Inlet Lighthouse Favorite Recipes, compiled by the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse commission of North wildwood New Jersey was last published in 1991 and is strictly a cookbook – no historical information.  Amazon.com did not have any copies for sale. I couldn’t find any listings on Alibris.com.  Next, we’ll start discussing some of the informative, historical lighthouse books.

I’d be the first to admit there is a great deal about lighthouses that I don’t know. Some years ago, I gave my Oregon penpal, Bev, a year’s subscription to a lighthouse quarterly magazine and she was off and running with a new interest. And, being in Oregon she is only a few hours’ drive from visiting some of them. During my 2007 visit to Oregon, the two of us visited three of their lighthouses. We planned to visit the rest of Oregon’s lighthouses when I returned. I did make it back to Oregon for a return visit in 2012 but the weather was dismal most of the time I was there—and so we spent our time doing other things.

In June of 2012, I visited Ponce Inlet Lighthouse in Florida with my cousin, Diane—but we opted not to make the climb to the top of the lighthouse due to problems I was having with my legs. I do buy lighthouse post cards wherever I go—often times, the post cards provide better pictures than what you can obtain with your own camera.  And to think I lived in Florida, three miles from the beach, for three years—and didn’t visit any lighthouses (I wasn’t “into” lighthouses at that point in time in my life).

I don’t think it’s possible to write a “brief” review of any of the books about lighthouses.  Two I have in front of me right now are “LIGHTS OF THE INSIDE PASSAGE”(a history of British Columbia’s Lighthouses and Their Keepers)” by the aforementioned Donald Graham. The other title is “WOMEN WHO KEPT THE LIGHTS/An Illustrated History of Female Lighthouse Keepers”. Many of my other lighthouse books are what is generally thought of as “coffee-table” books because they are oversized.

Donald Graham’s LIGHTS OF THE INSIDE PASSAGE, subtitled “A History of British Columbia’s Lighthouses and Their Keepers”, published in 1986, was a mammoth undertaking.  In the Foreword he writes, “Lighthouse: the very word conjures up an image of solitary, sweeping power setting the mariner’s infinite domain apart from the landlocked.  Canada really begins at Langara Island and ends at Cape Spear, and whatever goes across that mind-boggling expanse in between, no one shares as much in common as the keepers of those two lights…”

You may wonder—and rightly so—WHY? Graham continues: “for all the political energy expended in the century between the National Policy and the Just Society, for all that sweat and hammering at the dented anvil of ‘national unity’, they personify the elusive dream of forging a nation from one sea to the other. They could have traded places eighty years ago or last week with less dislocation than two-thirds of Canada’s rootless people who pack up and move every ten years…”

He says they also share a perception of their life and work far removed from the imaginations of some twenty million who talk on telephones, open their mail every day, have no inkling of how sweet a fresh pepper tastes after a month, who seldom thought of seals, whales, and wolves before Greenpeace, who waste more water than they drink. On the lights, nothing goes to waste. Even bent nails can be straightened and meals planned a month ahead to that day of delight when a helicopter comes hammering down through the drizzle with fresh food and a fat sack of mail. Reveling in their quarantine from smog-locked cities, where the future seems always a car payment away, lightkeepers still wonde3r, what they might be missing…”.

 

Graham continues “The seventy-odd families who keep lights on the West Coast (bearing in mind this book was written in 1986 and things may have changed in twenty-seven years) are heirs to one of the most effective and extensive networks of manned lighthouses left in the world; forty-three beacons while evolved piecemeal in the wake of shipwreck, brainchildren of an unsung architectural genius..”

(Per a check with Wikipedia on Google, According to the Canadian Lightkeepers Association, there are now 37 staffed lighthouses in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, though the Canadian Coast Guard has plans to automate these installations. Machias Seal Island, in New Brunswick, has a lighthouse manned by the Canadian Coast Guard. It is kept manned for sovereignty purposes due to the disputed status of the island with the US).

Canada took over three colonial lighthouses—Fisgard, Race Rocks and Sandheads—when British Columbia joined confederation in 1871  Then, writes Graham, “In belated grudging response to an appalling sequence of wrecks along the dreaded West Coast of
Vancouver Island (culminating in January 1906 with the wreck of the S.S. Valencia, which took three days to go down, off Pachena Point with 117 passengers and crew) it made the graveyard of the Pacific,  proof against further catastrophe with nine manned lights and foghorns forming a corridor of light and sound from Sheringham Point in Juan de Fuca Strait to Triangle Island off Cape Scott.”

Elsewhere, in The Inside Passage, one reads “Dreadful as it was, the West Coast of Vancouver Island still remained British Columbia’s safest shipping freeway well into the late 1890s.

Graham goes on to describe the lighthouses featured in his book, from the Inside Passage (from Active Pass to Pine Island) and the Northern Lights, (from Egg Island to Triple Island) and finishes with “Endangered Species” a summation of all the lighthouses and their teetering place in Canadian history, how little was done for the lightkeepers  through its history in Canada.  This is an excellent history of the lighthouses and their keepers in Canada’s British Columbia.

It can be purchased for one cent and up on Amazon’s pre-owned list of books, or for $22.39  new.  I found it listed on Alibris.com for 99 cents.  If you are a fan of lighthouses, this is surely a book to add to your collection.

Similarly but with a more focused point of view is Mary Louise Clifford and J. Candace Clifford’s book WOMEN WHO KEPT THE LIGHTS. What makes this illustrated history of female lighthouse keepers so appealing is that the women featured within the pages were lighthouse keepers at a time in history when women were generally considered not up to the task. Granted, none of these lighthouse keepers were doing their keeping in Canada; all of the women written about in WOMEN WHO KEPT THE LIGHTS were American and the lighthouses were located in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maine, and New York on the east coast, and in Michigan and Indiana in the Midwest, Louisiana in the south, and then California on the west coast.

What a massive undertaking this project had to be for the two Clifford women. They write “Piecing together WOMEN WHO KEPT THE LIGHTS was very much like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces are still missing, but a great many generous people helped to provide the pieces that are assembled here…”

Their search began at the National Archives in Washington, where an Archivist was very helpful in acquainting the authors with extensive lighthouse material.  At another branch of the National Archives, they located many of the original lighthouse logs kept by women and copied requested pages for them. The two women wrote letters to every imaginable source and received information that pointed them in other directions.  I was interested to discover that docent Clifford Gallard at my beloved Point Pinos Light in California set about collecting information on women lighthouse keepers and in fact, wrote some articles on the subject—but never did a planned book. Gallard’s wife submitted all of Gallard’s records and information to the Lighthouse society in San Francisco—which in turn became available to the two Clifford authors.

The files of the U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office in Washington, D.C. provided information about several of the women lighthouse keepers of yesteryear—and so the two women finally had collected enough to tackle the job of putting it all together.

They learned, for instance, that the first woman known to keep a lighthouse in America – Hannah Thomas  – lived with her husband at the end of a very long narrow spit of land that forms the protective northern arm around Plymouth harbor. “Local records tell us”, they write, “that the lighthouse with its twin lanterns was built in 1768 on land belonging to John Thomas. Massachusetts Bay Colony paid him rent of five shillings for his land and 200 pounds a year to act as keeper. In 1778, John Thomas joined a Massachusetts regiment and went off to fight the British, leaving Hannah to tend the lights on Gurnet Point”.

They write that “very little is known of Hannah Thomas’s experiences in that isolated spot through the long years of the War for Independence . She must have been lonely and occasionally frightened. Certainly the responsibility of keeping the lamps burning night after night as hostile British frigates cruised up and down the coast was unrelenting. We can only assume that she met the challenge…”

The Cliffords note that when the colonies formed the United States, Gurnet Point was one of the 12 existing lighthouses that came under federal ownership and became the responsibility of the Treasury Department. Twelve more were built on the Atlantic Coast by the turn of the century.

They write that lighthouse keepers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, male and female, faced much danger and performed heavy physical labor. And yet, women—as well as men—rose to the task.  WOMEN WHO KEPT THE LIGHTS is a great additional to your lighthouse reference collection.

WOMEN WHO KEPT THE LIGHTS, originally selling for $19;95 is listed on Alibris.com for 99 cents for a pre-owned copy; I found it on Amazon.com starting at  68 cents. There are new copies available on amazon.com but the prices are higher.

LIGHTHOUSES OF NEW ENGLAND/FROM THE MARITINES TO MNTAUK, by Donald W. Davidson, is an oversize coffee-table-size book features beautiful colored photographs of the lighthouse on the east coast, as well as extensive lighthouse history.

LIGHTHOUSES OF NEW ENGLAND by Donald Davidson is listed in Amazon.com starting at one cent and up—fair warning though; if you type in LIGHTHOUSES OF NEW ENGLAND, you will get numerous ‘hits’ on the internet site.  Alibris.com also has Donaldson’s book; their price starts at 99c.

This is a topic that has something for everyone.  When my sister Becky and I drove around Lake Michigan in 1999, we tentatively planned to return to Michigan and drive  to the upper peninsula; we wanted to search for lighthouses there.  We never made the trip; the following year she was diagnosed with cancer. She battled with cancer for four years before dying in 2004.   I like to think she is looking over my shoulder as I type.

–Sandra Lee Smith

LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTHOUSE COOKBOOKS

What is it about lighthouses that captivates so many of us?  I didn’t even know how crazy I was about lighthouses until one year I was going up the California coast with my sister and her husband, to visit their oldest son and his wife in Vallejo, stationed near San Francisco. Whenever Becky or I spotted a lighthouse we went bonkers over it (much to her husband’s chagrin and dismay) although I think there was only one, the lighthouse in Monterey Bay, south of San Francisco, that we were able to visit and explore. This was sometime in the 1980s. From then on, Becky and I became devout lighthouse fans.

Did you know there are about a thousand lighthouses in the United States? Not to mention the hundreds of lighthouses throughout the entire world (13,700 according to the lighthouse directory). Some are open to visitors; some have been privately purchased and lived in—presumably by others just as gaga over lighthouses as we are. Some are in ruins and greatly in need of restoration, such as the Point Abino Lighthouse on Lake Erie, Ontario, established in 1917. My girlfriend Sharon took me there when I visited her in 2009 at her home in Niagara Falls, Ontario.  You can reserve tickets to visit the Point Abino lighthouse and then a short tram takes visitors through a private road to reach the lighthouse. They are working on raising money to restore the lighthouse which looks quite majestic from the outside but is damp and mostly in ruins inside. Visitors cannot go over the private road unless on the tram.

Well, getting back to that trip up the west coast with my sister and her husband–that car trip was the “aha!” moment for my sister and me. We began to visit lighthouses whenever and wherever possible and both of us began collecting lighthouse “stuff”—some of my lighthouse things are well-made sculptures made by companies such as Danbury Mint. I have a cherished collection of lighthouse ornaments that fill a 4-foot high tree at Christmas, and a large collection of light house postcards and photographs that need to be sorted and mounted but aren’t yet.  I was taking photography classes at that time, so photographing the lighthouses I was able to visit became a new hobby. I am most fond of the B&W photographs of the lighthouse on Monterey Bay peninsula that Bob and I visited one year; some of these are framed and on a wall in my bedroom. Another favorite was the lighthouse down in San Diego, Old Point Loma lighthouse, that I photographed my brother Jim walking towards the structure, away from me, when he and I visited the lighthouse one year.  I entered the photograph in a Light House society contest – and did not win anything, but a few years later found my lighthouse photograph in an issue of the Light House society. I wrote to complain and was told to prove it was mine. I sent them a copy of the proof sheet on which it appeared and they acknowledged that it was my photograph and they would not use it again without giving me credit for it. I didn’t object to its being printed – I just wanted credit for it. I have that one framed and on my wall as well – in addition, my younger sister did a pencil drawing of that photograph, which is also now framed and on the wall.

Well, this is how I got into lighthouses.  The love, the sudden passion for something like a lighthouse was baffling to both my older sister and me. We were both born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio where the largest body of water is the Ohio River working its way south. In turn, our lighthouse photographs piqued our Aunt Dolly’s interest and she, an artist, began painting them after we gave her a lot of our lighthouse photographs. Consequently, I have a number of her lighthouse paintings on my walls.

The Lighthouse Directory provides information and links for more than 15,900 of the world’s lighthouses.  This website keeps lighthouse fans informed of important facts, such as the Canadian coast Guard is planning to transfer thirty four Prince Edward Island lighthouses to community groups—and Virginia’s Wolf Trap Lighthouse is for sale for “only” $249, 500, while in Aquinnah, Massachusetts, voters have voted to acquire the endangered Gay Head Lighthouse—and a new LED light has been installed in my beloved Point Loma Light in San Diego, California.

I’ll tell you a curious story; one year my sister Becky and I were in Michigan visiting our mother who was in a nursing home, and we decided to try to see as many lighthouses as possible, while driving around Lake Michigan. I had a map showing the general location of the sites. According to one lighthouse historian, there were as many as 247 lighthouses in Michigan, but now less than 100 are in good condition. My information was sketchy—we didn’t know exactly where many of the lighthouses were located, and we didn’t know which ones were open to the public or were privately owned. But off we went, driving around Lake Michigan. I think we managed to see seven or eight lighthouses. Some were really off the beaten path—but here’s the curiosity – no matter how far off the main road, no matter what the weather (it was raining buckets when we found Point Betsie) – when we finally found the elusive lighthouse – there were always cars parked here and there and tourists busy taking pictures of the lighthouse.  We laughed a lot about this (and probably should have asked people where they were headed next and did they know how to find it?).

And then, when we reached Holland, Michigan, and called our brother Jim, to tell him we would be back at his place the next day, he decided to drive over and meet us. Well, we didn’t know exactly where Big Red, the Holland lighthouse, was located. So we asked three or four employees in the restaurant we visited for breakfast, if they knew how to get to Big Red. No one knew. We laughed uproariously over this. One employee was new to the area. Another wasn’t interested.  And so on. Jim took the wheel and we drove around until we found Big Red. I thought of that roadtrip as the Where’s Waldo of Lighthouses.

A thought occurred to me when I began typing this—I think the first time I gave some serious thought to lighthouses as being structures in which someone might actually live was when I first read CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN many decades ago.  Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth, two of the twelve Gilbreth children, wrote Cheaper by the Dozen and the sequel BELLES ON THEIR TOES; the family packed up and went to the coast each summer–where they owned and occupied an old lighthouse.

Well, long before I started collecting lighthouses, I became interested in cookie jars and cookbooks. I think of it as a twofer if you collect cookie jars and find cookie jars shaped like lighthouses, or you collect cookbooks and find cookbooks dedicated to one or more lighthouses. How cool is that?

This is what I have been working my way up to announcing – cookbooks about lighthouses.

Books about lighthouses are plentiful, now.  (Not so much years ago), but it seems like interest in lighthouses has grown by leaps and bounds. If I have any disappointment in lighthouse books, it’s that so many of them are coffee-table size which makes it a bit difficult for someone like me to write about each one with the limited space on my computer desk.

What has surprised me most are the cookbooks with a lighthouse theme.  So, I would like to share a few of these with you. Then, perhaps in a separate post, I can delve into books about the lighthouses I have books about.

One of the first that came to my attention is THE LIGHTHOUSE COOKBOOK by Anita Stewart. This book was published in 1988 by Harbour Publishing Co LTD, in British Columbia.  The dedication page offers “For all the families who keep British Columbia’s lights shining.  And for my own, who kept the home fires burning”.

The introduction to THE LIGHTHOUSE COOKBOOK is illuminating in more ways than one.  Ms. Stewart writes “…This  book offers a glimpse of a Canadian way of life and its foodways which, despite the protesting chores, may eventually be lost. Although the ‘demanning’ process has been stalled, it has not been stopped altogether. Many of the lights are going, some in this book are gone.

The lightstations of British Columbia are unique to North America. With the exceptions of a few lights protecting the rugged coast of Newfoundland, all the others across the nation are situated so that the keepers drive to them, work their shift and return home to their families. The Americans have automated all their lights so that the role of the keepers has been reduced to mainly grass-cutting chores…”

Stewart explains, “In September, 1986, I was on a assignment for Canadian Living at Steveston’s  Fisherman’s Market. Among the crowds of the busy fishing dock, I met Mike Glass, a photographer from Saltspring Island who was there to take location shots….”

Anita and the photographer hit it off right away. They talked about Canada and Mike Glass told her  he was about to set off on a nation-wide photographic odyssey and she was drugged by the beauty of the Pacific coast. It was during that brief meeting that he told her the saga of the lightkeepers, and how, at that moment, they were fighting for their existence.  Anita says without Mike this book would never have been written.

In May, 1987, Anita was to board CCGS (George R. Pearkes) or so she thought. Her baggage did! Anita was shuttled to the helicopter pad where a veteran chopped pilot and his engineer were waiting. They were to visit Race Rocks before landing on the ship.  “Landing on the ships??” she exclaims. She says it’s hard to act cool when you’ve never flown over the ocean at less than 20,000 feet much less never had the dubious privilege of flying in a helicopter. “But we survived,” she writes, “dipsey-doodling above Race and finally without a shiver, onto the deck of the Pearkes while she pounded through swells and hobby-horsed on their crests….”  She says it was her first hair-raising encounter with the Coast Guard and it wouldn’t be her last. Describing herself as “a meek, mild mannered housewife” she became adept at swinging over the ride of a rolling icebreaker, down rope ladders and onto rollercoasting work boats.

Anita says it was during that trip, which circumnavigated Vancouver Island, and later that year on the CCGS Martha L. Black in the northern district of Prince Rupert, that she visited the last of the twenty-eight lightstations (sic) that are represented in this book. She landed on most of the southern stations via Messerschmidt helicopter.  In the north she made the trips ashore in a work boat that was pushing a 17,000 liter fuel barge or in a gutsy little zodiac. “Wearing a bright orange survival suit,” she writes, “and rubber boots that always seemed to gurgle with sea water, I was welcomed with open arms, steaming mugs of coffee and plates of cookies, squares and cakes. Never in all my travels as a foodie, have I encountered such a consistently excellent group of cooks as on the lightstations of British Columbia…”

She explains that once a month food arrives. “Sometimes it’s dropped by helicopter, but most often it is loaded into deep work boats and sloshed ashore by the crew. Winches and pulleys help to sling the monthly supplies, sometimes sodden, onto the cement pads where, as quickly as possible, they are stored safely away. The grocery bills range from $400 to $700 per month and most stations have a storeroom that has a few months’ supplies ahead, in case of emergency. Flour and many other staples are purchased from the wholesaler in bulk, to be dumped into big plastic storage buckets.

With limited freezer space—indeed, freezers have only been available for the past twenty years or so—the families of the lights have to be pioneers in the truest sense. They are left to their own devices. And those who are resourceful survive in a wonderful way—freshly baked breads, home-grown vegetables, the ultimate in just-harvested shellfish, wild game, and an incomparable chance to touch the earth…”

Stewart goes onto say that lightkeeping is much, much more and provides examples from lightkeepers she became acquainted with.  “Lightkeeping,” she writes, “is the commitment to build a good life—the magnificent stone greenhouse at Ivory Island, a microphone listening for the undersea singing of whales at Boat Bluff. It’s the peregrine falcons of Langara and the hummingbirds of Scarlett Point. All of which is completely new to me and demonstrates how much there is to learn about light houses and how little I know. Stewart adds that it’s also a life of danger and darkness, lost at sea bulletins and tsunami warnings. She warns that weeks creep by without a break from the relentless pounding of rain and the winter surf. Gale follows hard on gale. The skies ooze, she writes. Fishing boats go down, search and rescue operations begin. Coast Guard and keepers work together to pull survivors to shore, salvage the wrecks and constantly monitor the area for other incidents.

Anita concludes the Introduction by writing, “I hope my book brings to you, the reader, a sense of what lightkeeping today is all about Here is one last image: at Estevan, the sweeping buttresses of the magnificent lighthouse, the most beautiful on the coast, stood between me and the blood-red sunset streaking the late spring sky. Gardens of sturdy, gem-like flowers spread at my feet. The rocky short seemed to be lovingly stretched by the sea breezes for miles in both directions. My hair blew in the winds of the beautiful cool evening. The clean scent of the ocean filled my lungs. But the reverie was broken by a conversation about the washed-in wreckage that had been seen down on the rocky beach, what boat the battered hull belonged to and when it    might have gone down…”

Lightkeeping”, she finishes, “is a life of contrast, one of utter extremes.”

The book begins with a chapter of HEART-WARMING SOUPS AND BEVERAGES illustrated with a drawing of Point Atkinson. This chapter begins with a recipe for Lighthouse Borsch, provided by Elaine and Donald Graham of Point Atkinson. There is a brief profile of the Grahams in which Anita Stewart writes, “Although the Grahams hardly fit into the ‘isolate lightkeepers’ profile—their children attend school in West Vancouver and Point Atkinson is close to much of the best shopping in Canada—they were keepers for a number of years at both Lucy and Bonilla Islands.

They are perhaps best known for their role in fighting the automation of BC’s lightstations and for Donald’s two excellent histories of lightkeeping in British Columbia, KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT and LIGHTS OF THE INSIDE PASSAGE*. Those two volumes were my nightly reading aboard both the George R. Pearkes and the Martha L. Black.

When they left Regina and headed for British Columbia, on their way to a posting in Central America that never did materialize, they took with them the recipes of Ukrainian prairie cooks.  This soup recipe was ‘invaluable during the winter months on lighthouses because root vegetables store so well.” (The recipe for Lighthouse Borsch follows.

*I have a copy of LIGHTS OF THE INSIDE PASSAGE and more information about this book will be provided later on in this post- sls

Incidentally, the recipe for Lighthouse Borsch would be a winner for Weight Watchers such as myself or for anyone watching their weight.

Also from the Grahams is a recipe for Basic Chicken Stock which I love. The Grahams advise that the stock can be made with an old stewing hen or from chicken parts that you have saved in the freezer. Elaine Graham confides that she always makes a huge batch and freezes jars of it to be used in cooking everything from soup to rice. (I often assume everyone knows that tip about collecting undesirable chicken parts until you have enough saved up to make stock—if not, then  let me tell you, it’s easy to do—put the backs, necks, wings or giblets from chicken in a large plastic freezer bag. On a day when you aren’t too busy, throw the chicken parts into a pot – no need to thaw – and add onions, celery, including leaves, some diced carrots, whole black peppercorns, bay leaves and a handful of your favorite herbs such as parsley, basil, thyme, and fill the pot with water and let the whole thing cook over a low flame to simmer for 4 or 5 hours. Voila—you will have chicken stock.

Another recipe that I like is “Back of the Stove” Vegetable Soup contributed b Gwen and Doug Fraser, at Pine Island. Gwen writes, “I have never used frozen veggies. I get fresh vegetables from my garden…broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. I don’t measure. Oh, I use about half a head of cauliflower, several carrots, and as far as broccoli goes, it must be cup up into between 1 and 2 cups. It’s just one of those soups that get better in flavor the next day.”  Gwen makes the soup with a pound and a half of ground beef, onion, stewed tomatoes, beef bouillon cubes, uncooked rice, salt, basil, pepper and “loads of fresh vegetables”.

END OF PART ONE

 

JANE & MICHAEL STERN, COOKBOOK AUTHORS

The concept may have originated with Duncan Hines, but Jane and Michael Stern have forged a career out of traveling throughout the country and then compiling cookbooks about the foods they have tasted while traveling hither and yon.  And I suspect, being a writer myself, that some of the non-cookbooks written by the Sterns were offshoots of their travels and research into the cookbooks they have been writing for more than a few years now. I know that when I am researching one thing, others pop up and you fish around for some paper and pen or pencil to jot down other ideas that surface. Some of the books appear to be a nod towards favorite people or topics.

In 2003, I reviewed a beautiful Cookbook titled THE LOUIE’S BACKYARD COOKBOOK” by Jane and Michael Stern, with recipes by Doug Shook. This compilation at the time of publication in January, 2003, was the latest in a series from Rutledge Hill Press of Nashville, Tennessee, celebrating America’s best regional restaurants.  Louie’s Backyard is a restaurant, located in Key West, Florida. While I lived in North Miami Beach, Florida, for three years, I’m sorry to say I never made it to Key West. Louie’s Backyard Cookbook makes me yearn to go.

That said, a number of other cookbooks, well-compiled with beautiful dust jackets have been created by the Sterns. These include:

*THE BLUE WILLOW INN COOKBOOK/Voted Best Small-Restaurant in the South by Southern Living Readers, published in 2002;

*THE DURGIN-PARK COOKBOOK/Classic Yankee Cooking in the shadow of Faneuil Hall, also published in 2002;

*FAMOUS DUTCH KITCHEN RESTAURANT COOKBOOK/Family Style Diner Delights from the Heart of Pennsylvania, published in 2004;

*COOKING IN THE LOWCOUNTRY FROM THE OLD POST OFFICE RESTAURANT/Spanish Moss, Warm Carolina Nights and Fabulous Southern     Food, also published in 2004;

*SOUTHERN COUNTRY COOKING FROM THE LOVELESS CAFÉ/Fried Chicken, Hams, and Jams from Nashville’s Favorite Café, published in 2005;

(Asterisk denotes the cookbooks in this series that I have.   But to get a better picture of what Jane and Michael Stern were writing before they latched onto the concept of the series named “A Roadfood Cookbook, Celebrating America’s Best Regional Restaurants” we have to go back in time.  In my collection, I have the books preceded with an asterisk. To date, this is the list of literary accomplishments achieved by the Sterns, possibly incomplete. Mostly, I searched on Google for titles I didn’t have, checked for titles in the ones I do have, and then ended up in Amazon.com ordering half a dozen more.  The books I ordered should be coming in the mail anyday now.

Here is a list of books written by Jane and Michael Stern:

TRUCKER: A PORTRAIT OF THE LAST AMERICAN COWBOY, 1975 Jane Stern only. One critic wrote: “like many early 70′s books on culture of the USA, it was written with heavy realism with nothing hidden-no gloss. The tone is reverent but lays out all the harsh realities of truckin’, great photos, great poetry, almost punk. 70′s graphics set the tone to this gritty ode to the “last American cowboy”. a REAL slice of American pie”.

ROADFOOD, 1977, 8^th edition in 2011,Roadfood: The Coast-to-Coast Guide to 700 of the Best Barbecue Joints, Lobster

AMAZING AMERICA, 1978 – out of print (and hard to find), described as: Unusual, interesting, and extraordinary sights, events, and attractions throughout the United States, ranging from the Campbell Museum in Camden, New Jersey, to the Calaveras Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp, California.

AUTO ADS, 1978

DOUGLAS SIRK, 1978, Michael Stern only (Sirk was a film director who was born in Germany to Danish parents, raised in Denmark but moved to Germany when he was a teenager. He started his film career in 1922 but left Germany in 1937 because of his political leanings and his Jewish wife. He made numerous films, including Magnificent Obsession in 1954 and All That Heaven Allows, in 1955)

HORROR HOLIDAY/Secrets of Vacation Survival, 1981

*SQUARE MEALS/AMERICA’S FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD COOKBOOK,  published in 1985 reprinted 2001

JANE AND MICHAEL STERN’S COAST TO COAST COOKBOOK: REAL AMERICAN FOOD, 1986

ELVIS WORLD, 1987 – Has been described as a vast universe defined by all that Elvis stands for: the music, of course, and the movies, the life and the legend, but also the cascade of material things he collected and consumed (from pink cadillacs and the cheeseburgers to diamond rings and Graceland), the glitter and the mammoth success (one billion records sold, more than anyone else in history starting with its four page-gate fold title page, this book is bursting with rare photographs, with wonderful Elvis memorabilia (1950s fans magazines: “Elvis – Hero or Heel?”  Elvis wallets, Elvis handkerchiefs, Elvis bedroom slippers with the Elvis with the Elvis phenomenon as it exists today. Elvis Presley has become an American symbol as recognizable as the American flag. He is a landmark in almost everyone’s life, and his image continues to mesmerize. Elvis has transcended his previous status as merely the most popular entertainer in history, and “Elvis world” explains and revels in this phenomenon. With affection and wit – and a touch of irreverence – the Sterns guide us through Elvis world, showing us an Elvis we’ve never seen before. –This text refers to an alternate hardcover edition.

*A TASTE OF AMERICA, published in 1988

STERNS GUILD TO DISNEY COLLECTIBLES VOLUME 1 by Michael Stern,  published in 1988

SIXTIES PEOPLE, 1990

JANE & MICHAEL STERN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POP CULTURE, VOL 2 1990

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BAD TASTE, 1990

*AMERICAN GOURMET, published in 1991

WAY OUT WEST, 1993

*HAPPY TRAILS: OUR LIFE STORY BY ROGER ROGERS, DALE EVANS, JANE AND MICHAEL STERN, 1994

STERNS GUILD TO DISNEY COLLECTIBLES VOLUME 3 by Michael Stern,  published in 1995

*EAT YOUR WAY ACROSS THE U.S.A. published in 1997 (My favorite Cincinnati eatery, Camp Washington Chili, is featured in this book)

THE BEATLES, A REFERENCE & VALUE GUIDE, Barbara Crawford & Michael Stern, 1998

DOG EAT DOG: A VERY HUMAN BOOK ABOUT DOGS AND DOG SHOWS, 1998

TWO PUPPIES, 1998

CHILI NATION, 1999

*UP A COUNTRY LANE, BY EVELYN BIRKBY, JANE AND MICHAEL STERN 2000 (This title came to my attention when I was writing about old time radio programs, WHEN RADIO WAS KING – Don’t touch that Dial” (June, 2009)

*BLUE PLATE SPECIALS AND BLUE RIBBON CHEFS: THE HEART AND SOUL OF AMERICA’S GREAT ROADSIDE RESTAURANTS, 2001 (does not have the logo of “a Roadfood Cookbook Celebrating America’s Best Regional Restaurants”- it appears that the logo was adopted and appears for the first time on the Blue Willow Inn Cookbook-sls)

*THE BLUE WILLOW INN COOKBOOK/Voted Best Small-Restaurant in the South by Southern Living Readers, published in 2002;

*THE DURGIN-PARK COOKBOOK/Classic Yankee Cooking in the shadow of Faneuil Hall, also published in 2002;

THE HARRY CARAY’S RESTAURANT COOKBOOK: THE OFFICIAL HOME PLATE OF THE CHICAGO CUBS, 2003

AMBULANCE GIRL:  HOW I SAVED MYSELF BY BECOMING AN EMT, 2003, Jane Stern only

*FAMOUS DUTCH KITCHEN RESTAURANT COOKBOOK/Family Style Diner Delights from the Heart of Pennsylvania, published in 2004;

*COOKING IN THE LOWCOUNTRY FROM THE OLD POST OFFICE RESTAURANT/Spanish Moss, Warm Carolina Nights and Fabulous Southern     Food, also published in 2004;

ELEGANT COMFORT FOOD FROM DORSET INN: TRADITIONAL COOKING FROM VERMONT’S OLDEST CONTINUOUSLY OPERATING INN, 2005 (with Sissy Hicks)

*SOUTHERN COUNTRY COOKING FROM THE LOVELESS CAFÉ/Fried Chicken, Hams, and Jams from Nashville’s Favorite Café,  also published in 2005;

FRIENDLY RELATIONS, a novel, published in 2005

*TWO FOR THE ROAD/Our Love Affair with American Food, published in 2006

ROADFOOD SANDWICHES: RECIPES AND LORE FROM OUR FAVORITE SHOPS COAST TO COAST, 2007

500 THINGS TO EAT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE: AND THE VERY BEST PLACES TO EAT THEM, 2009

THE LEXICON OF REAL AMERICAN FOOD, 2011

CONFESSIONS OF A TAROT READER: PRACTICAL ADVICE FROM THE REALM AND BEYOND, 2011, Jane Stern only

Obviously, not every book compiled by the Sterns is a cookbook! For those who like to compile a complete bibliography of favorite authors, this should give you something to work with. I counted 39 titles. One of the articles I read in Google lists more than 40 books.

Jane and Michael Stern, who are both baby boomers born in 1946, got their foot in the door by writing books about travel and food (after college graduation, neither one could find employment in the fields they had majored in).

They may be best known for their “Roadfood” books, website and magazine columns, such as the now defunct GOURMET MAGAZINE, for which they were staff writers for 18 years. The Sterns have won many awards, including three James Beard awards and the James Beard Perrier-Jouet Award for lifetime achievement. They were inducted into the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America, in 1992. (When I first began delving into their titles, my first impression was that my younger brother Bill, also born in 1946, would appreciate the Sterns’ early books more than I, being a baby boomer himself. But the deeper I delved, the more fascinated I became.

The Sterns met as graduate students in art at Yale University, married in 1970 – and much to my surprise, divorced in 2008. While they now live in different cities, they continue to write and travel as a team, despite the divorce.  The Lexicon of Real American Food was published in 2011, the same year that Jane published CONFESSIONS OF A TAROT READER, based on her long-standing (but little known) career as a tarot card reader. And, although my blog articles focus primarily on cooking, cookbooks, recipes and favorite cookbook authors—I find myself intrigued by the titles of the Sterns collective or individual non-cookbook accomplishments.  It’s almost like thinking you have known somebody for a long time and suddenly discover there are layers of other interests, like the layers to an onion.

Normally, I would give you ordering information on various cookbooks—but there are too many titles to do this. I suggest, if you are interested in one of these titles, that you visit Amazon.com or Alibris.com (many of their cookbooks can be purchased very reasonably); I obtained a lot of my information on the Sterns’ books from these websites and Google. or, read my post Louie’s Backyard Cookbook, posted in June, 2012 on this blog for a sample of their  “Roadfood”  series.

Review by Sandra Lee Smith

 

 

 

 

 

 

MEMPHIS ON MY MIND

A Memphis community cookbook arrived in yesterday’s mail and had me wondering just how many Memphis cookbooks did I have? Well, not as many as I originally thought – I have two copies of the Memphis in May International Festival Cookbook which lays claim to being the Official Cookbook of the Memphis in May International Festival, Volume One, published in 1989. Are there more Memphis in May International Festival cookbooks? I wondered.  As in a Volume 2 or Volume 3?  I have been unable to find any trace of additional volumes on Google. Perhaps tagging it Volume One was a bit over ambitious on somebody’s part.

And then I discovered that my oldest Memphis Cookbook published by the Junior League of Memphis in 1976 (and a gift from my penpal, Penny, in Oklahoma)—was not the oldest edition, not by a long shot – THIS Junior League cookbook was first published in September of 1952! Between that first edition published in 1952 and republished in 1976, there were sixteen editions resulting in the publication of 194,000 copies!

17^th through 20^th editions were published between 1977 and 1988 and I am assuming that the newly designed cover was first created for the 1977  cookbook and what I have is a copy of the 20^th edition published in 1988. This edition also has a seal proclaiming it to be the Official City of Memphis Cookbook.  Out of curiosity, I checked a few recipes in both of my copies to determine whether or not the recipes are the same. They are.

In 1970, the Junior League of Memphis published a new cookbook, PARTY POTPOURRI, which is a compilation of parties and menus.  A guide such as this is especially handy when you are hosting some kind of party and don’t know where to begin.  This cookbook offers breakfasts, brunches and coffees recipes, luncheons and teas, receptions, children’s parties, informal entertaining and even elegant entertaining. I don’t know if Party Potpourri was published more than the two editions listed in my copy published in 1971. Google was not much help other than providing me with the information that this cookbook contains over 500 recipes.

Then I also discovered that my copy of “A MAN’S TASTE” published in 1980—is also a creation of the Junior League of Memphis.  In the introduction, the Junior Leaguers comment that 1980 marked the 28^th anniversary of their first publication (the Memphis Cookbook first published in 1952, which had since sold over 200,000 copies and was still going strong). They write that Party Potpourri has successfully sold over 130,000 copies.

A MAN’S TASTE is their third cookbook. They say they couldn’t bring themselves to call this one SON OF MEMPHIS COOKBOOK, feeling it would sound derivative—and they didn’t want to deny this unusual collection of men’s recipes the chance to seek its own special identity in the world of cookbooks.

Still, they write, “Son of Memphis Cook Book” would not be an inappropriate title. In the pages of A MAN’S TASTE are the names of many rightful sons and  heirs, as well as nephews, cousins, brothers and their friends—of the ladies who contributed to their first collection of Southern recipes back in 1952. The culinary talents displayed in A MAN’S TASTE did not spring from dormitory hot plates, army field kitchens, scout camps and hunting lodges alone.  “A mother’s hand may be detected here and there, light though it may be”, they write.

A MAN’S TASTE was meant to be much more than a collection of men’s recipes and not a mere sequel to what has gone before.  This was intended to be a book about men cooking, what they do and how they feel in the kitchen, and the Junior League of Memphis succeeded in this endeavor, although you will get the feeling that a cookbook by and for men was simply before its time, for don’t we see a bushel basket full of male chefs in abundance on the cooking shows on the Food Network lo these three decades later? It’s the female chefs who tend to be scarce on these television shows, but in the Unofficial Foreword, the Junior Leaguers write “We have trouble remembering exactly what it was that started people thinking about putting out a men’s cookbook.  It had something to do with the notion that there is something funny about men’s cooking, and something to do with the notion that the Junior League House-husbands (a secret society of indeterminate membership with its own handshake and heavy recurring annual dues) could make an off-beat contribution to the distinguished cookbook publishing tradition of the Memphis Junior League. The underlying premise was, as near as we can recall, that the League’s coffers might be modestly enriched through the sale of a recipe book that was, if nothing else, out of the ordinary. ..”

And out of the ordinary it was. Some recipes had to be left out—Pigeon Drop Soup and Roast Rack of Armadillo, for example, were omitted for lack of essential raw materials to test them Coral Snake Stew was abandoned for want of a single soul who would volunteer to try it first (and the contributor himself could not be found) But be not dismayed or reluctant to find a copy of A MAN’S TASTE. Weird recipes aside, there are plenty of yummy recipes for man (and woman) alike. Easily the kind of cookbook to read in bed with a packet of post-its on hand to mark your favorite recipes-to-try.
**

STIRRING RECIPES FROM MEMPHIS HEART & SOUL cookbook was also the work of the Junior League of Memphis.   This larger than life cookbook published in 1992 has a seal proclaiming it the National Winner of the Tabasco Cookbook awards for 1993.

The Memphis Cookbook published in 1970 is available on Amazon.com starting at $2.25 for a pre-owned copy.

Amazon.com has the Heart & Soul cookbook starting at $1.51 for a pre-owned copy. They also have the revised copy of the Memphis cookbook (with the blue cover) starting at $2.36 for a pre-owned copy.

The original Memphis Cookbook can be yours from Alibris.com starting at $2.36 for a pre-owned copy.  Many of these cookbooks are also available new and often for very reasonable prices.  I often find I have to shop around to see what is the best price for the best available condition. Other times (and I have complained about this before) – ordinary cookbooks such as these are priced by private vendors at hugely inflated prices.  Every so often someone writes to me and asks how much I think such-and-such a cookbook is worth; my answer always is – it’s worth as much as someone is willing to pay.

My final mention is that the 1952 edition of The Memphis Cookbook contained poetry and essays similar to what I collected and posted as the Kitchen Poets. Much love and attention to detail went into the making of that first Memphis Cookbook. Much love and attention to detail went into the making of A Man’s Taste and Stirring Recipes as well.

Reviewed by Sandra Lee Smith