Svacina Project

On a recent trip to my local farmers’ market, the words “Czech sausage” jumped out at me from Richardson Farms’ chalkboard sign in front of their booth. Richardson Farms is near Rockdale, but they sell their meats, poultry, and grains at several farmers markets around the state and at a few brick and mortar markets in Austin. Richardson Farms’ makes fresh pork sausage, which means it’s not cured. Though fresh sausage can be stuffed into a casing or loose, I think of fresh Czech sausage as specifically loose, and then cooked by pan frying it. What makes the sausage “Czech” according the always-super-nice guys working the Richardson Farm’s booth?... garlic. Lots of it. I bought a pound, so excited to find the flavors of Czech Texas creeping across party lines, but staying authentic to it’s origins. My younger son at Austin's Sunset Valley Farmers Market run by the Sustainable Food Center. This find coincided with reading some pages in Robert Skrabanek’s book We’re Czechs in ...

Photo by Lori Najvar. The last week in July, I launched a home baking business called Old School Kolaches,  offering pans of made from scratch kolaches, delivered to customers' doors. I got laid off in April and in reaction to scrolling endlessly through disheartening job boards at 50 years old, I decided I'd try doing something I'm good at and passionate about that might also pay some of my bills (work and love don't always go together unfortunately.) It remains to be seen whether this can be instead of or in additional to a standard 9 to 5 job for me. Austin, though it's the state capitol, is a wasteland when it comes to traditional kolaches. The one place I went to here that had decent kolaches closed down only weeks ago. There are instead two kolache bakery  chains , countless donut shops that offer hotdogs wrapped in croissants or tasteless dough and call them kolaches, or one hipster beer and kolaches place that "elevates the classic Central Texas C...

  This is a very quick post about fried chicken and a recipe offering. Summer is for fried chicken, in my opinion… Fourth of July, eating at a local park’s picnic table, and church picnics. I sadly can’t make it to this year’s Prazska Pout in Praha, Texas on August 15th (Praha picnic plate in photo above) and haven’t been able to attend any of the other many picnics that serve fried chicken, so I’ve been lamenting the loss of opportunity to eat one of my favorite summer dishes. I live in a very small apartment – the smell of whatever I cook becomes my abode’s air freshener for half a day, so I rarely fry foods. So, I suppose I’ve been craving fried chicken, and writing about it helps. So does reading Jay Francis’s blog (The Fried Chicken Blog) which I recommend to anyone interested in the subject. He has fantastic photos and videos about the Praha picnic specifically here , but check out the rest of the blog, too. Clearly Texas Czechs love fried chicken from its appearance on...

I am overwhelmingly grateful to have been sitting “at memory’s table” my entire life. By that I mean, though my parents had moved me and my siblings to several states and back to Texas by the time I was in 4th grade, the people in my life were stable and family connections were so strong that absorbing our shared history was unavoidable.  And food was inseparable from that. Orsak family reunion My parents are fascinated by both history and food. My maternal grandmother lived in her house (and her kitchen) for over 70 years. All branches of my grandparents’ families have had reunions—for decades and decades—with fantastic food. Though my parents were adventurous eaters, we definitely grew up with weeknight staple meals that all my siblings can name and remember. Tradition is extremely important for us, resulting in a Christmas eve meal that includes dishes served continuously for over a century. Historically people have lived a long time in my family, so my parents and I...

My summer-in-Texas food memories are chock full of homemade ice cream, devilled eggs, barbecued chicken and pinto beans, popsicles, potato salad, Dr. Pepper, peach pie, grilled vegetables, homemade sausage, and cucumber and tomato salad, among other tasty things. These dishes were consumed at chili cook-offs, family reunions, 4th of July get-togethers, siblings’ summer birthdays, and church picnics. I was inspired to make the cucumber and tomato salad this week after buying cucumbers at the community grocery store called Hoffer’s in Hallettsville, and a friend gifting me with a large orangey-red Sungold Medley tomato from Austin’s Farm to Table company. Many stalls at my local Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market also had cucumbers and tomatoes on offer this morning. I love the vibrant colors of the dish, the spicy raw onion and crisp cucumbers, and the bright flavors that are so dependent on the summer Texas sun.  Hairston Creek Farms' tomato display at my local farmer's ...

Last month, at the end of my son's third grade year, parents were asked to bring soup one day for teachers to swap and take home. I looked through the list of soups people had already committed to bringing, wanting to do something different, and decided on Czech Lentil Soup (recipe below). At the same time, for months now actually, I've been working on illustrating and self publishing my great grandfather's memoirs--that is, illustrated with photographs and personal papers of his that I've scanned. (Link below to purchase it, if you're inclined.) He was a schoolteacher in Fayette and Lavaca Counties in Texas from the mid 1890s into the 1950s. His personal papers and memoirs are a rich trove of information about Texas rural schools in the early 20th century and the Czech community at the time. From student attendance rolls to his work contracts with trustees to poems written out for students to copy for practicing handwriting, he saved an amazing number of...

Behind my grandmother's house in Hallettsville, TX grows an epic grape vine. As far as my mother knows, it's at least 70 years old since she's 71 and it's been there as long as she can remember. It's impossible to tell where the vine actually comes out of the ground or where the end of the vines reach, since they're draped and snaked around and through and over a chinaberry or hackberry tree and onto a huge oak in front of the barn. It's a source of wonder for my 9-year old who sees the mass of leaves and branches as a combination shady fort / animal graveyard (found an entire large animal's skeleton underneath) / potential snake lair. I talked with the extremely nice Lavaca County A&M AgriLife Extension agent in hopes of identifying the variety of grapes. A quick internet search of photos of leaf shapes revealed that they're muscadine, not mustang grapes, but when they're ripe, they're white/green, not the bronze or purple named in A...