Please forgive me, dear friends, for singing out about something I bought for myself during the season of giving to others, peace on earth and goodwill toward all. I will not gloat, really, I won't.
I now have a copy of How America Eats to call my own.
This book has been twelve years in the writing. It was in January 1948 I started criss-crossing the United States as roving Food Editor for This Week Magazine -- my assignment, tell "How America Eats." I have traveled by train, plane, automobile, by mule back, on foot -- in all over 800,000 miles.
I have ranged from the lobster pots of Maine to the vineyards of California, from the sugar shanties of Vermont to the salmon canneries in Alaska. I have collected these recipes from a wide variety of kitchens: farm kitchens, apartment kitchenettes, governors' mansions, hamburger diners, tea rooms and from the finest restaurants with great chefs in charge. I have eaten with crews on fishing boats and enjoyed slum gullion at a Hobo Convention.
I have eaten many regional specialties I had never eaten before -- cioppino on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, Alaskan King Crab of the North Pacific in Seattle, mango ice cream in Tampa, chawed on cuts of fresh sugar cane in Louisiana, eaten roasted young goat in San Antonio, and roasted fresh truffles flown in from Italy at the Four Seasons in New York City.
This book is based on personal interviews with more than 2,000 of the country's best cooks. And I have eaten every dish in the book at the table where I found it...The pioneer mother created dishes with foods available. These we call regional. It is to these, perhaps, I have given the greatest emphasis here. However, I am not given to food favorites, hold no food prejudices. Good food is good food, wherever you find it. Many of these recipes were salvaged from batter-splashed, hand-written notebooks...They are word-of-mouth hand-downs from mother to daughter. To get such recipes takes everlasting patience, and a dash of effrontery, too.
-- from the Foreword
Legends abound of [the Philadelphia Club's] groaning board. It's a kitchen set in its ways -- clam chowder is made without tomatoes; cottage cheese is only cottage cheese when it's made with real cream; mincemeat always must have a brandy breath.
-- from "Patriotic Pepperpot, Scrumptious Scrapple and Steamboat Pudding"
Sunday dinner is to me the symbol of good eating in the Middle West. I know those Sunday feasts as of yesterday and today. I was born and raised in Blue River Valley, now the bain of the Government's great Tuttle Creek Dam. Our farm, before Alaska's and Hawaii's statehood, was within twenty miles of the geographical center of the United States. It was in a yellow limestone church at Stockdale, Kansas, a crossroads town, that I sat dreaming during summer Sunday sermons, not of heaven or hell, but of the good dinner to come. There would be fried chicken and gravy, fresh garden vegetables, geen beans, summer squash or beets. In July came new peas and new potatoes. There would be leaf lettuce and cucumbers with a vinegar-sugar dressing. Always in summer, homemade ice cream and invariably this marble cake made by Grandma Paddleford's recipe.
-- from "Kansas - Pancake Hub of the Universe"
A golden silky heat lay over the valley. The car traveled full speed along the beautiful road by the side of the ripple-reefed Wenatchee River. Ahead the rugged Cascades lifted in a jagged rim rising straight up, it seemed, from the valley floor. Follow any one of these little canyons opening so slyly into the narrow valley and you are in apple land. Through the town of Cashmere, Washington, and one mile beyond, up a steep and winding hill road to keep a tea date with Mrs. Kenneth Bixler.
Fern and Kenneth are apple growers; forty-five acres they have of the red and golden Delicious, a few of the Winesaps. Fern is Kenneth's right-hand helper -- she keeps the books, pays the help, writes the leeters and keeps the business end of things running as well as her house. She learned about apples before she married. Her father, an orchardist, died the year Fern finished college and she came home to help run the family business.
Around a curve of the road Fern is waiting. Slim, blonde, tanned, a woman golden and silky as the day itself.
"The muffins are done, the tea is ready," and Fern led the way. "Let's eat on the terrace." What a view! The rustic house is built into the side of a mountain; it's a 400-foot drop into the valley. In a matter of minutes I was sipping flowery tea and eating apple muffins concocted just for me. The oblique evening sun nibbled at the edge of the table. Once it stretched a warm finger as far as the muffin basket.
-- from "Washington - Pie Timber Country - Apples, Peaches, Plums and Pears"
Snow, my dearest, I promise that very, very few human organs were trafficked in the purchase of this book. Three, if you need an exact count. Incidentally, do I need a medula oblongata to live? (thump)
In all seriousness, I was lucky enough to find a copy from a used bookstore in Connecticut, via Alibris. Not the most exciting of stories, but the end result is still happy.
Victor, many thanks for visiting. I must admit that I’m a bit gobsmacked at the idea of inspiring wait lists at the library. Flattered, but still gobsmacked. (The pressure! The pressure!
Lindy, you would love this book. Clem is a pip. There’s a picture of her on the back cover, dressed in a smart hat, peacoat, dress, and even smarter shoes, carrying one of those round suitcases that peripatetic women used to carry in the 1950’s. It makes me crack up every time I see it.
(Completely off the subject, one of our mutual foodbloggerinas just took a visit to your most excellent city and was fed panettone fresh out of the oven by Larry at Enrico Biscotti. I am so jealous that I could seethe—except that she’s a deserving friend, so I will not.)