Eats: A Folk History of Texas Foods - Softcover

Linck, Ernestine Sewell; Roach, Joyce Gibson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087565035X ISBN 13: 9780875650357

Publisher: TCU Press, 1992

Synopsis

"Folklore, which delves into the culture of peoples, may be a more important study about real life--private life--than standard, formal history. . . . One of the lessons that we have learned--or are beginning to learn--from the study of folklore is the importance of food and eating customs in unravelling the history of a people. . . .

Eats may provide as much information about the way we live and see the world as the people we elect to office or the houses we build or the books we approve or the movies we film. . . . The foods we eat, the way we eat them, and the imagination we bestow upon their preparation will tell [much about us] to historians, folklorists, and anthropologists." --James Ward Lee, from the foreword

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Texas sweet potatoes, like other native products, are "higher, longer, deeper, wider, taller, and bigger," claims a source in this amusing compilation of reminiscences, interviews, songs, family "receets" and Texas culinary customs past and present. "Do walk barefooted between corn rows if you are pregnant. It helps the woman and also the corn," advises an anonymous sage, and "Texas caviar"--"a mess of peas"--is recommended as fare for New Year's Day. We learn Frank Dobie's recipe for venison steak; how meals were cooked from a chuck wagon (for "a bunch of unruly, and often unappreciative, cowpokes"); and the definition of a stretchberry, "used by children to make their chewing gum bubble." Organized in two parts, the book first discusses Texas cooking by region, then the state's various seasonal celebrations (such as Juneteenth, marking the emancipation on June 19, 1865, of over 200,000 Texas slaves). Linck, a retired professor of English at the University of Texas at Arlington, and Roach ( The Cowgirls ) document their sources carefully and intersperse more than 150 recipes with their commentary. Illustrations.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: TCU Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 087565035X
• ISBN 13: 9780875650357
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258