Skip to main content

Community Cookbooks and Call for Recipes


In my copy of a KJZT cookbook called "Sharing Our Best: Centennial Book of Recipes", a gift from my grandmother, she inscribed it with "To Dawn, my little Czech princess!" I love that she stressed the connection between my ethnic heritage and many of the recipes in the book. As many of you readers know, the KJZT is a fraternal organization begun in the late 19th century by Czechs who'd immigrated to Texas. So many of the recipes in "Sharing Our Best" reflect Czech and Texas-Czech foods. And like most community cookbooks, some of the recipes are just tried and true family favorites, or derivations of popular recipes from magazines or the ubiquitous New Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from the 60s with the red and white checked cover.



I am part of the team that's working on the first community cookbook by the Texas Czech Genealogical Society (TCGS), so have been thinking about these types of cookbooks as I see submissions to the TCGS. Like most, our cookbook will also include family favorites, but we're hoping for submissions of more traditional recipes. To keep the book focused on people (it's a genealogical society after all,) the title will be "A Tribute to Czech Cooks." TCGS members are encouraged to send in photos of the cook to accompany a recipe as well as information about both. (If you are a member of the TCGS, the submission deadline is November 15, 2012. Please submit recipes, photos and tributes to Charlene Hurta at cmhurta@earthlink.net or mail them to her at 1231 CR 201A, Angleton, TX 77515. Emailed photos should be high resolution (300 dpi.) Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope if you are submitting an original photo and would like it returned to you.)

Addie Broyles did a lovely blog piece for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance on community cookbooks as the organization works on their own. She used the cookbook  “Czech Reflections" (1994) by the McLennan-Hill Chapter Czech Heritage Society in North Central Texas as her example. Her post is worth reading as an inspiration to submit recipes to community cookbooks, but also to pull out the cookbooks you have on your shelf and cook from them. She wrote to potential recipe submitters "As you are thinking about which recipes and stories to submit, consider the recipes that have meaning in your life because the generations that follow ours will hopefully be able to read our book and get a sense of who we are, what is important to us and how we live, including how we incorporate technology into our cooking." I would say the same to members of the TCGS who are considering submitting recipes.

I have relied heavily on community cookbooks the last 2 years for this blog as my ability to interview people directly (and collect recipes from them) has been limited.  However, it ,too, is just one way of doing research about food in the Czech community. It's interesting to me to match up Czech last names (of submitters) with their Czech recipes. It's a good way to find out different methods of preparing an ingredient... like the okra patty recipe I found amongst a sea of fried okra and gumbo recipes. I can assume how popular a recipe might be by how many times it shows up in different books. And the variations in recipes are always fun to see. 

I've compiled a list of the community cookbooks I've run across that reflect the Czech community... either coming straight from Czech organizations or coming from churches or societies with a high proportion of Czechs. The list is below (alphabetical by title) for posterity and in hopes that some of you readers will let me know about books I've not run across yet. 
  • 1995 Festival of American Folklife Cookbook, Smithsonian Institution
  • A Book of Recipes", Blessing Altar Society of St. Peter's Catholic Church, 1968-1992
  • "A Collection of Family Recipes", Victoria County Czech Heritage Society, 1992
  • "A Key to Good Cooking", The Hillje Altar Society, no date
  • "A Taste of Texas: Cooking with Beer from the Little Brewery in Shiner, TX", 1986 
  • "A Taste of Victoria", Nazareth Academy, 1974
  • "Czech Heritage Collection", Most Holy Trinity Catholic Mission, no date
  • "Czech Heritage Cookbook", Travis-Williamson Counties CHS, 1996
  • "Czech Reflections: Recipes, Memories and History", McLennan-Hill Chapter of the CHS, 1994
  • "Cesky Stopy: A Tribute to the Greatest Czech Cooks", Volume 7, December 2001, Number 4
  • "Domaci Kucharstvi: The Art of Home Cooking", Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church, Dubina, TX, 1990
  • "Favorite Recipes", Catholic Daughters of America, Court Sacred Heart No. 797, Hallettsville, TX, no date
  • "Frenstat's Favorites", Holy Rosary Altar Society, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Frenstat, TX, 1992
  • "The Fruit of the Spirit", Holy Cross Altar Society, Bay City, 2002
  • "Generation to Generation", Historical Society of the Czech Club of Dallas, 1980
  • "Heaven Scent: Generations of Recipes", Queen of Peace Catholic Church, Sweet Home, TX and St. John the Baptists Catholic Church, Koerth, TX, 2003
  • "Memorial Book and Recipes", Czech Catholic Home for the Aged, Hillje, 1957
  • "Molly's Cookbook with Love", Molly Pesek, 1981
  • "Nase Dejiny: The Magazine of Czech Genealogy and Culture", various volumes had recipes in them
  • "Orsak Heritage Cookbook", Orsak family for a reunion, 2001
  • "Our Favorite Recipes", Ft. Bend County Czech Heritage Society, 1991
  • "Recipes Old and New", Catholic Union of Texas, The K.J.T., 1996
  • "Sacred Heart Family Cookbook", Sacred Heart School, 1968-1990
  • "Sharing Our Best: Centennial Book of Recipes", KJZT, 1994
  • "St. Joseph's on the Brazos Catholic Church Cookbook", 1986
  • "St. Paul's Anniversary Cookbook, Houston, 1978
  • "Teachers' Tasteful Traditions", Members of Delta Kappa Gamma Society International Alpha Phi Chapter, 1998
I've also found lots of recipes for (usually) kolaches or vanocka in "Texas" cookbooks and magazines - way too many to list here! 

Comments

  1. AddieJuly 31, 2012 at 12:04 PM

    Best of luck on the cookbook, Dawn! We're making slow, steady progress on ours. Can't wait to compare notes!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MamunSeptember 5, 2012 at 2:43 PM

    I like your blog keep it up great work

    find them here

    ReplyDelete
  3. DawnSeptember 5, 2012 at 2:48 PM

    Thanks SO MUCH for your comment. A subject like mine needs cheerleaders! Thank you for reading - Dawn

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buchta with Nuts and Raisins

In his photo book Journeys into Czech Moravian Texas , author Sean N. Gallup wrote a few paragraphs about food in contemporary Texas- Czech culture. During his fieldwork, he observed "Other Texas-Czech pastries [besides kolaches ] include klobasniky .... and buchta , a larger fruit filled loaf.... " (Texas A&M University Press, 1998). Though my grandmother made an apricot buchta (or she just called it a roll), more common buchty might be poppyseed or cream cheese. Less common seems to be the buchta I've made filled with nuts and raisins. The Czech word " buchta " doesn't seem to be surviving as well as the word " kolach " either, for though Gallup mentions it third in a list of common Texas Czech pastries, I've found it almost impossible to find a recipe in a community cookbook that actually uses the word buchta . Instead, I find recipes for "rolls".  Still, Westfest actually has a buchta category in it's annual baking c
4 comments
Read more

What I Learned Making 600 Kolaches

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
1 comment
Read more

Razor Blade (Green Grape) Pie

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&a
12 comments
Read more