Up a Country Lane Cookbook
Author: Evelyn M Birkby
What can Evelyn Birkby possibly do to follow up the success of Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers? She can do what she has done in writing Up a Country Lane Cookbook. For forty-three years she has written a column entitled "Up a Country Lane" for the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel. Now she has chosen the best recipes from her column and interspersed them with a wealth of stories of rural life in the 1940s and 1950s, supplemented by a generous offering of vintage photographs. She has created a book that encompasses a lost time. With chapters on "The Garden," "Grocery Stores and Lockers," "Planting," and "Saturday Night in Town," to name a few, Up a Country Lane Cookbook recalls the noble simplicity of a life that has all but vanished. This is not to say that farm life in the forties and fifties was idyllic. As Birkby writes, "Underneath the pastoral exterior were threats of storms, droughts, ruined crops, low prices, sickness, and accidents." Following the Second World War, many soldiers returned to mid-America and a life of farming. From her vantage point as a farm wife living in Mill Creek Valley in southwestern Iowa, Birkby observed the changes that accompanied improved roads, telephone service, and the easy availability of electricity. Her observations have been carefully recorded in her newspaper column, read by thousands of rural Iowans. Up a Country Lane Cookbook is, then, much more than a cookbook. It is an evocation of a time in all its wonder and complexity which should be read by everyone from Evelyn Birkby's nearest neighbor in Mill Creek Valley to the city slicker seeking an education. Cook a meal of Plum-Glazed Baked Chicken, Elegant Peas, Creamed Cabbage, and Seven-Grain Bread, then finish it off with Frosted Ginger Creams with Fluffy Frosting. While the chicken is baking, read Evelyn's stories and think about the world the way it was.
Publishers Weekly
Birkby, a Shenandoah Evening Sentinel columnist and onetime radio show host in Iowa, draws together her favorite recipes and offers us a context for them: the 1940s and '50s. For her the context is best characterized by what she knew home to be: ``a barn, hog shed, corn crib, equipment shed,'' other outbuildings, ``a small, white, single-story house'' much like others once scattered across the Midwest, and her neighbors. In plain prose that tells us just what it needs to, she considers various country ``heritages''--her own and her friends'--and trots out the food that figures in them: ``White Fluffy Frosting,'' fried chicken, homemade noodles, blueberry salad, oatmeal pancakes. The author takes her backward look straightforwardly, and explains what was involved in raising a clover crop, and in baling hay. Also discussed, methodically: the labor of laundry (including a wringer), the advent of storms, the work of auctions, and what happened on Sundays (``the children would tumble in the soft grass''). Though not sentimental, hers is an affectionate record of living simply. It has a commonplace integrity that can seem, in our era, like fantasy. (Nov.)
Library Journal
Birkby, an Iowa homemaker, has written a weekly newspaper column called ``Up a Country Lane'' for more than 40 years; she also had a long-running radio program, that she chronicled in Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers (Univ. of Iowa Pr., 1991). Now she has collected the best recipes from her column, grouped into chapters in which she describes her family's life on an Iowa farm in the years following World War II. There are lots of good simple recipes from the heartland here, but Birkby's mesmerizing text is the real center of the book; she comes across as savvier but no less engaging than the ``Pioneer Lady,'' Jane Watson Hopping ( The Many Blessings Cookbook , LJ 9/15/93). Writing in understated terms about the realities of rural life in the 1940s and 1950s, she gives a wryly humorous description of sharing a 14-family party line, a memorable cataloging of laundry day, vivid depictions of harvesting and haying, and a wrenching account of a child's death. Highly recommended.
New interesting book: American Government or Debate on the Constitution
Pig Tails'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir
Author: Austin Clark
Part memoir--part cookbook, part family history--by "one of the more talented novelists at work in theEnglish language today" (Norman Mailer). Reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit blends lyrical, evocative writing with engaging descriptions of how to cook the dishes of Austin Clarke's native Barbados. Winner of the 1999 Martin Luther King, Jr., Achievement Award and author of eight highly praised novels and five short-story collections, Clarke is considered one of the preeminent Caribbean writers of our time. Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit describes the way he learned traditional Bajan recipes--food that has its origins in the days of slavery, hardship, and economic grief--by listening to his mother, aunts, and cousins talk about food while they cooked it. From Oxtails with Mushrooms, Smoked Ham Hocks with Lima Beans, and Breadfruit Cou-Cou with Braising Beef, to Clarke's renowned Chicken Austintacious, each dish evokes the vibrant, sun-drenched island of his childhood and is accompanied by stories about the rituals of food and family. The result is not only succulent food, but a unique portrait of growing up in Barbados in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Publishers Weekly
In this delightful culinary memoir of Barbados, Clarke deftly captures the way his mother and other women talked about food and treated cooking: vegetarians are dismissed as "those who prefer bush and grass, as if they is sheeps and cows"; the cook is instructed to listen to music while making ham hocks and pig tails, and exhorted, "Show me your motions, girl!" As Clarke notes in his introduction, the whole concept of measurements and written recipes is foreign to the women of Barbados (who do almost all the cooking) since they learn their way around the kitchen from their mothers. Native Bajan Clarke entertains with discussions of Souse (made of pig parts including the snout and ears) and Breadfruit Cou-Cou (which Clarke's mother claims was fed to slaves because they could never hide afterward--the gas they passed gave them away). It's the cultural insight that's the real treat here, though: in a chapter on Bakes (basically, fried dough), Clarke relates the significance of flour in Barbados and the implications of the insult, "Boy, you are wearing a flour bag!" He also has a few stories of his own to tell; a chapter on the sardine omelet he once cooked for Norman Mailer and another on cooking in front of his aging mother (who corrects his technique, even as she readily admits that she has never cooked the African Chicken he is making) are charming. Clarke's voice deserves to be savored. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Table of Contents:
| Introduction | 1 |
| Bakes | 42 |
| Privilege | 54 |
| Dryfood | 67 |
| Smoked Ham Hocks with Lima Beans, Pig Tails and Rice | 78 |
| King-Fish and White Rice | 92 |
| Meal-Corn Cou-Cou | 100 |
| Breadfruit Cou-Cou with Braising Beef | 113 |
| Killing a Pig to Make Pork Chops with Onions and Sweet Peppers | 126 |
| Souse (but no black pudding) | 147 |
| Split-Pea Soup | 164 |
| Pepperpot | 173 |
| Pelau | 191 |
| Oxtails with Mushrooms and Rice | 196 |
| Chicken Austintatious | 210 |
| Omelette (made with sardines) | 227 |
| Drinking Food | 238 |
| Frozen in Time | 245 |
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