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#60 Cooking with Beer
I don't even like beer but I must admit I like this cookbook. It's only 47 pages but it's an inch thick made from heavy, wipe off cardboard and it's such a cute shape. About liking beer, I am outnumbered in my family, Hubby and daughter really enjoy a cold one. So much so, I have a row of empty frozen beer mugs taking up room in my freezer at all times. Heaven forbid there wouldn't be a frosty mug ready when they needed one. Also this is enough to make any mother proud, my daughter is just a few beers away from having her name on a Beer Drinkers wall of fame. How special is that!
If I was ever going to learn to like beer, it should have been when we lived in St. Louis, MO before moving to Canada. Now there's a beer town! Michael got some great shots of the old red brick buildings of the Budweiser brewery which is located there. They also keep the big beautiful Clydesdales there in the antique stables. It really is a great tour, kind of like the Cadbury Chocolate factory, see post # 28. You get lots of free samples and I'll usually eat or drink anything that's free.
But beer blah, I must get this from my Mom. As a little girl in Kansas, Mom was asked to sign "The Pledge" promising that liquor would never touch her lips. Unlike many others, Mom signed it and kept the promise. That is until that terrible day in St. Louis. In Kansas, you had to really hunt to find a drink in most areas. Do your remember when airplanes flying over the Kansas had to stop serving liquor, well I do and they did. Now Missouri on the other hand was always a wild and wanton place. There's a reason Jesse James called it home.
In the 1960s my family took a trip to St. Louis to see the Arch as it was being built. At that time the legs were about half way up and there wasn't much to see so the folks took us kids to their amazing Zoo. It was one of those HOT humid days like you find all summer long in the Midwest. Mom sat down on a bench in the kid's section while Dad wondered off to get some refreshment at a little stand. He came back sipping from a big paper cup and poor overheated Mom reached out her hand, took the cup and drank. My sisters and I stared in wonder as she made the strangest face and looked at my Dad with a mixture of surprise and respect. After all those many, many years, he had gotten her to taste a beer. He was sheepishly grinning and I'm proud of Mom, she didn't spit it out and we got a great family story to add to our memories. Cookbook #60 is Cooking with Beer and yes that is a President's Choice beer in the picture, see #54.
#17 Heartland Baking from the Midwest's Best Cooks
I'm a former Kansas girl, born and raised there! Like Dorothy, you can take the girl out of Kansas but not Kansas out of the girl. So in honor of Kansas becoming the 34th State on this day in 1861, I'm featuring my cookbook, Heartland Baking. It has a recipe for Kansas Honey-Wheat Sunflower Bread, the official bread of Kansas. It was giving this title by the state's legislature so it has to be good! We're the Sunflower State and the Nation's bread basket so this was a very easy choice. A couple more useful facts, Topeka is the capitol and the western Meadowlark is our state bird. Go Jayhawks!! So cookbook #17 is Heartland Baking from the Midwest's Best Cooks.
#5 White Trash Cooking
This is a GREAT cookbook, Harper Lee even wrote a beautiful introduction calling it a testament to a stubborn people of proud and poignant heritage. These are folks that came up with potato chip sandwiches, broiled squirrel, soda cracker and mock pecan pies. There are several other "mock" dishes in here because they had to make do with what they had in the cupboard. Grapenuts take the place of pecans and hamburger substitutes for "cooter", I had to look that up myself. It might be mock but it was tasty. So this book is near and dear to me, I haven't always lived in the frozen North, I'm a Kansas, Missouri and Illinois girl at heart. Also after reading this cookbook I realize I have many White Trash tendencies that show themselves from time to time. Let's start with my unusual given name, Minda Ruth, there it is right on page 20 "Minda Lynn's Cold Potato Salad". That's one of my very favorite foods, I eat it for breakfast if it's in the house, and here's another Minda that loves it too. I feel such a bond with her and it's scary, our recipes are almost identical except she uses large sour pickles when everyone knows only tiny sweet gherkins should be included.
Then there's other recipes, Impossible Pie page 110, why that's a fancy company dessert where I come from. I even have my mother's hand written instructions for it, what a treasure, laminated so it can be passed down to future generations (see photo). Note it calls for oleo not that expensive butter stuff. Also they have Ambrosia, we called it Goop, served over store bought angel food cake, heavenly! When I was growing up, we had one elegant chicken casserole dish that was served only for honored guests, the extra special sauce that accompanied it was made from a can of Cream of Chicken soup. My mouth is watering just remembering it and I keep two cans of the soup at ready at all times, green bean casserole need I say more.
This is what really amazed me, in the book they have a picture of the interior of a typical refrigerator in a White Trash home, it's like looking in a mirror or my ice box, yes I still call it an ice box. Can you tell which is which, see photos and click? Hint, mine has more BBQ sauce (more about this in future posts). Look closely and you'll also see Pillsbury unroll pie crust and ready to bake cookies, a Hickory Farms cheese ball, Smuckers Jam and bacon bits in a bag. All the things a modern White Trash home should stock. Okay I do have mock champagne and wasabi but those have been acquired tastes and are mainly for show. So I'm White Trash and proud of it, I wonder if that's Minda on the cover! Cookbook #5 is White Trash Cooking by Matthew Mickler.
