Svacina Project

Looking through a box of recipes that my grandmother saved from local newspapers, I found a directive for dinner from Emily (Smolik) Buckert, who wrote the longtime Good Taste column in the Victoria Advocate beginning in the 1960s... "Now is a good time to return to the old fashioned goodness of pork chops and some of the dishes that grandmother served," she wrote before offering a recipe for Pork Steaks with Kraut. I absolutely agree, I thought. Now is the time. I made a date to spend last Saturday morning with my friend Lori at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market and then Central Market looking for ingredients. Lori and I do what I imagine my grandmother did with her neighbors... share surplus produce or dishes we made too much of. Or we test new recipes on each other to get a second opinion. We're thinking about hosting a dinner party together soon, so have been talking a lot about food lately, especially food in the Texas  Czech community and what our grandmothe...

The interview with my grandmother was postponed. One of my aunts had the opportunity to go visit my grandmother and because my mother goes so often, she's happy to give another sibling the chance to visit. (Better than doubling up and then leaving my grandmother un-visited for a weekend.) So, to tide myself over, I've been looking for recipes of my grandmother's.... clues to what kind of cook she was, what family meals were like, how she made 3 meals a day happen 365 for a husband and 8 children. As a side note, I keep meaning to read the following books, but haven't done it yet. Anyone read them? A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances ~ Laura Schenone Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote ~ Janet Theophano Back to my grandmother... I found several of her recipes in a little book published by the Catholic Daughters of America (no publication date,) The recipes d...

Got a call from my mom on Monday, wanting to tell me about her "food and family" conversation with her own mother. My mom had spent the last two days in the town she grew up in visiting with my grandmother (photo above), who's been living in a nursing home the last year, after decades taking care of herself. My mom visits my grandmother often - every weekend practically, if not more. I don't know what all they come up with to talk about it and it seems that even she's running out of conversation topics. So, on this last visit, she started asking my grandmother about food and my grandmother's mother (photo at right), who died in a car accident the year my grandmother got married (1937.) My mother told me excitedly about some of the answers she got to her questions - answers that reassured us about certain things regarding Czech food in Texas. Or things that my mother knew, but had forgotten she knew. Eventually, after some satisfying interactions f...