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Hi all-- Over the last couple of months I may have mentioned a project my husband, John, the cook has been working on for several years: The Big Food Manual. I've only posted a few recipes here, but all have come from the Big Food Manual (BFM). There are almost 5000 recipes so far!

He's written an Introduction to the BFM, which I'm pasting below. The Intro more or less is addressed to folks with whom we share the BFM, i.e., family and friends who know us.

I'm posting this for a couple of reasons. First, you all seem like an excellent source for more recipes of the sort he is collecting. Second, I'm curious to get your reactions to the Intro. At some point I'm sure we will be motivated to sell it, or portions (chapters) of it. (Right now, John copies it to a CD and we mail the CDs to family and friends.) So I'm anxious to hear what folks who don't know us have to say about it. Beware! The Intro does reflect our own attitudes which you might not share-- but then again, we all love to eat!

Thanks for your reactions! (And it is a bit long for a post-- sorry!)

Marica

The Big Food Manual
Introduction (as of late September 2008)

“If, in the dusk of the twilight,
Dim be the region afar,
Will not the deepening darkness
Brighten a glimmering star?
Then, when the night is upon us,
Why should the heart sink away?
When the dark midnight is over
Watch for the breaking of day.”

--“Whispering Hope,” by Septimus Winner (1868)

For more than two decades now I’ve collected and cooked out of old cookbooks. Many have spiral or other types of non-glued binders indicative of local publications. Most are compilations of recipes by local cooks in southern, southwestern, and western parts of the United States of America. This is real people’s food—fresh, simply prepared, and delicious. It is the same food that Americans were eating a half-century and more ago, updated with some spices and techniques that more recent immigrants brought with them.

American family cooking is a food heritage—and one of the few features remaining in current American life and culture—that needs and deserves to be preserved. The Big Food Manual is deliberatively and self-consciously ‘retro’. Yet I’ve served this food to groups, both large and small, of very sophisticated eaters. I’ve received few complaints, and a lot of “My grandmother used to make this!”-type comments. Related case in point: I was once in the produce section of a Cincinnati Kroger supermarket picking through a mess of collards to make the “Old Southern Sisters” recipe in the Veggies section. A young black couple came up to me; the guy asked me how I was going to cook those greens. I proceeded to tell them the recipe, to which he remarked that his grandmother had cooked collards for family gatherings when he was a child, and that he wished that he knew how to cook them like she did. (Having just recently moved to Cincinnati from eastern North Carolina before this event took place, I was somewhat taken aback. Black people asking a white guy how to cook collards? That was something that, shall we say . . . didn’t happen, where I had just moved from.)

These recipes emphasize fresh, non-processed ingredients. ‘Homemade’ is emphasized everywhere, especially in the Basics section. This is the kind of food that kept Americans alive and thriving well into their 80s, long before governmental and scientific nannies began intervening into our lives and choices “for our own good.” Butter is called for throughout, not (synthetic) margarine. The canned goods and prepared products called for are for items that various American food companies have been producing for fifty years or more. Creole seasoning and Tabasco are called for to season many recipes. Chili sauce—homemade if you want (and it beats the heck out of the bottled stuff in the condiments section of your grocery store)—replaces ketchup. Ro*tel tomatoes and green peppers replace canned tomatoes in a lot of recipes to give dishes a spicy kick-start. And yes, Accent—monosodium glutamate—is called for in some. Don’t fear it.

One note on this same point: over the nearly two years that I’ve been compiling this Manual, Marica and I have moved increasingly “off the grid.” We’ve begun making all our own baked goods, from breads to pie crusts. We’ve begun pickling, canning, and making our own condiments from scratch. Some of the recipes were entered into this manual before we started doing this, so they don’t reflect the “preferably homemade” parenthetical comments that fill the ones entered later. Eventually we’ll get around to revising all of these recipes, but the key point is: just use as much homemade stuff as you’re comfortable cooking and preparing. The Big Food attitude is that recipes are just suggestions, anyway.

Cooking out of old cookbooks filled with recipes by everyday cooks often requires interpretation. Some excellent local cooks aren’t the most communicative of souls. In many cases, I’ve made recipes more explicit; but in others, I’ve kept them deliberately vague to give you a chance to add your own touches. You’ll also see that there is a lot of room in many recipes for individual choices. This is not a collection of recipes for beginning cooks! But with basic cooking skills, utensils found in every well-stocked kitchen, patience, a lot of spices in your spice collection, and an experimental attitude, you’ll find something here for any occasion—from everyday meals to the most hoidy-toidy of gatherings.

I’ve cooked Big Food for meals ranging from two to one hundred eaters. These recipes are easily divided, or doubled, tripled, whatever. Just wait until some of your bicoastal restaurant-hopping friends sink their teeth into Big Food. If they’ve got even a fraction of normalcy left in their bodies, they’ll eat this food like you’ve never seen them eat—“like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat,” to borrow from Jeff Foxworthy (who certainly has no compunction against borrowing material from others).

This collection contains recipes for, among other things,

• appetizers, dips, salsas, salads, and salad dressings for any occasion—no need to buy preservative-laden bottles of salad dressings ever again;
• homemade Basics—mayonnaise, mustards, chili sauces, ketchups, relishes, stocks, and sauces
• a huge canning and freezing section for preserving everything from fruits, veggies, meats, pickles, jams, and jellies;
• using cooking bags for extra tenderness in meats and veggies;
• some of the best old-timey desserts you’ll find anywhere;
• dressings and stuffings that can also serve as full meals;
• some of the best grilled and smoked meats and sauces, all tested personally;
• award-winning chilies and gumbos;
• alcoholic beverages, including the basic recipe for the homemade wines we’re now producing at The Bunker Winery;
• broiler and oven meals, prepared all at once and cooked together;
• Tex-Czech and Tex-Central European foods, handed down from Gran, Tait, and other “old timers” from the Dallas SPJST;
• Tex-Mex dishes, including a number of home-made tamales
• Creole and Cajun dishes, peppered throughout the Manual (those French-looking names are Creole/Cajun, not Parisian!)
• Some of the tastiest southern-style veggie dishes on the planet
• An entire section on using your slow cooker, and not just for soups and stews.

Enjoy them all!

In the later incarnations of the Manual, the Canning and Freezing section has been greatly expanded. Marica’s and my political persuasions have grown increasingly “survivalist” of late, and so the expansion of this section reflects our own emphasis on self-preservation during the “deepening darkness” we see for America’s near future (see the lines from the old hymnal that serve as the prologue above—secularized for us, of course), as much as our attempts to preserve the few aspects of the culture we deem worthy of preserving. But you don’t have to share our political views and outlook to take advantage of time-tested ways of preserving fresh-grown produce!

Two final remarks: First, as of late September 2008, there are more than 4500 recipes and variations in The Big Food Manual. That’s quite an accomplishment in and of itself, but I estimate that given my old-time cookbook collection and the dishes I’ve been cooking out of them for years, I’m not yet even close to half-finished. The recipes are divided into numerous categories. Some of my decisions about which category to locate a given recipe were admittedly unprincipled. (Arbitrary, some might say.) If, in your opinion, a recipe is grouped in a category for which a clearly better category exists, email me (removed for safety) and tell me. I’ll consider your suggestion and maybe act upon it. Also, at my present rate, I’m adding about 200 recipes a month to the Big Food Manual. At regular intervals I’ll be happy to burn you new CDs with all the additional recipes included. These recipes are also works in progress. If you have a suggestion for improving a recipe, please send that along to me as well.

Second, Marica and I started including pictures with recipes in mid-February 2007. However, we hit a glitch in this part of the project with a broken digital camera upon our return to Cincinnati in early September 2007. We’ll continue adding photos from now on, but . . . WE NEED YOUR HELP! When you make a recipe for which no picture is included, take some digital photos of it and email me the best one. Your photo will then become a part of this ongoing Big Food culinary adventure.

Since the last installment of this Introduction (back in late July 2008, after I crossed the 4000 recipe mark), I’ve finished adding stuff from an early 1970’s edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I’ve also recently completed an old edition of A Book of Famous Old New Orleans Recipes Used in the South for More than 200 Years. Fabulous stuff. Since football season is just under way, I’ve started in on Tiger Riffic Cook Book, a collection of recipes from 1982 from Clemson Tigers fans (published the year after Clemson won the NCAA Football National Championship). Next up? Well, the Recipes: American Cooking: Southern Style from 1971 has been waiting in the wings for awhile. And I recently acquired, from a flea market in Perry County, eastern Kentucky, the five-volume Favorite Recipes of America from 1968.. That’ll keep me busy for at least six months. Then there’s the fifty or so remaining old cook books on shelves and in boxes . . .

Now, to wrap up this Introduction and get cooking (and eating), scroll down for some random pictures of the Big Food way of life. Livin’ large! (as the rest of the culture collapses around us).

That is a great intro. I collect and use old(er) cookbooks all of the time. I also just read them for pleasure. I have lost a couple over the years that I would love to replace.

I collect old books of all sorts, too. But I love the cookbooks and all the gems in them. Like, "The Meal Planner's Creed" and the chapter, "Stretching the Food Dollar". Good stuff.

I specialize in baking.I'm an expert on biscuits and scones.I memorized the biscuit and scone recipes.I also know how to bake bread.

My favorite 'lost' cookbook is called "Good Food for Hard Times". It was written later but was chock full of depression era recipes. It was truly for very hard times from the very basic things you need to keep a family of six alive after disaster strikes and you have nothing. Like if your house burns down or something similar. It wasn't 101 ways to cook hamburger. It was stripped down to the least amount of survival food you could live on for a while.
I have a couple of Mennonite ones that I adore to read. Also thrifty cooking and a lot of stories to go along.
"The Junk Food Alternative" was a borrowed favorite that I have been looking to replace in my library. It was food for fun but each muffin/cookie/etc was a complete protein meal with less fat and sugar than most. The protein were added with soy flour, cottage cheese and such. My kids back in the 70's thought they were so lucky to get cookies for breakfast. But those cookies were more nutrition packed into each bite than any commercial cereal. And it was fun to do, too.

Tina do you remember the author of that book?? I think I would like to have some of those recipes. To have something quick and easy to eat in the morning not to mention nutritous would be Heaven sent.

I was thinking perhpas e-bay might have such a thing???

or the library???

I just searched the title at Amazon and if it's the right book, it's Linda Burum. There are 17 new & used from $0.37!

Cool, I have never thought of Amazon. As long as I have had this keyboard, I forget what a handy tool it can be. I will go check that out. It will bring back my 70's not-quite-hippy days.

Depression Recipes: 1930S Good Food for Hard Times (Paperback)
by Mary Folger (Author)
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Out of Print--Limited Availability.

This was at Amazon. Abebooks.com (used bookseller) doesn't even have the title, nor do other booksellers I just looked at. I'm going to keep an eye out for this, though, at junk stores. Thanks!

Thanks, I had already checked for that book, too. After you reminded me to use the tools I have at my fingertips. This is fun. I need to think of other titles of old favorites.

i think i'd like that cookbook too.

i love the intro, and would love to see some of the recipes. i have quite a few old cookbooks, but by far, my favorite is one that is just about as old as i am. my mother bought it from a church in lucedale mississippi. my kids are fighting over who gets custody of "the" cookbook when i die. even though i have several that are almost as good. but, i'll tell you, i look in my cookbook for recipes and ideas before i look in joy of cooking or betty crocker, both of which i have thrift store copies of.

and, a side note, it is a recipe out of that book that impressed my then boyfriend, because he didn't realize that some recipes are universal, just with different names. his pennsylvania dutch mother's "scalloped potatoes" were actually the same as the southern church's "alabama potatoes". i've been making them for over 24 years for him now. he likes alabama potatoes much better than scalloped potatoes (which is why he is still in the south)

That is a very neat intro! I enjoyed reading it! Not trying to step on toes but I did notice that your husband's e-mail address was in there and I don't know that you would want that posted here. I know we don't usually do that. Just thought I would mention it! Now I'm off to check out your recipes!!

kenny, i so missed that! thank you!

jessica. i'm sorry it was you who pointed out the email address! i'm a dunce sometimes, but i did remove it! thank you

I'm known to be NOT a cooker....or baker.... Although I do cook out of necessity, it's not something I enjoy. I am a reader though, and I did enjoy the introduction.

BTW, this topic name keeps catching my eye, I keep reading it as the Big Foot Manual.

only you loz

I know right? Bigfoot on the brain.

No problem Jiffy!

Sorry about the email address, although much as he loves talking about food, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded if someone emailed him.

Thanks for the comments on the Intro. Sounds like we're not the only ones who love old cook books. I've made a note of some of those titles you all mentioned and will keep an eye out for them at junk stores.

I bet he wouldn't mind if we e-mailed him but a lot of people come through the forum and he might end up with e-mails he definitely wouldn't want and some spam too. It really is just for our own safety. Maybe if somebody has questions they can PM you for the e-mail addy and then e-mail him if you are comfortable giving it out?!?!?!

True enough, Plantqueen. I guess I just don't think of these sorts of things from that perspective because he already gets such a huge volume of email (and spam). [I just googled his name as an exact phrase and got 7790 hits, of which about 20% are about someone else with the same exact name. So he's not hard to find.]

I think the forum's policy, though, about emails is a good one. And if anyone did want to talk to him about Big Food, they can certainly PM me.

Off to pick the very last of the okra before the flurries. Yuck.