Svacina Project

On July 20th, my good friend Lori and I hosted a dinner party at her home and we called it Jidlo, Pivo, Vino (Food, Beer, Wine). The goal was to expose friends to food popular in the Texas Czech community that didn't include the three things most people think about (kolaches, sausage, or sauerkraut.) We wanted to be seasonal and we made everything from scratch (unless otherwise noted.) Our menu is below along with lots of photos taken by us and attending friends (who I thank for their generosity in sharing... Don Jansky, Zoy Kocian, Sarah Shephard.) A special thank you to Roberta Vasek for homemade peach cobbler and Robin Graham-Moore for home baked rohlicky. Thank you to everyone who brought wine, beer, and slivovitz . And to Lori's husband Glen for indulging us and putting up with it all.  Some things I learned: My mom's fried chicken recipe is rock solid but I will never fry chicken for 20 people again. (Took 2 hours.) Dinner parties are AWESOME. I wish w...

Sometimes when you start to think about a subject, you notice more and more references in the world to it. Suddenly it's randomly brought up in conversations, you might see signs for it, or run across it in a store or in the media. So it's been these last few weeks for me with canning. After two family reunions, visits with cousins, and a trip to the farmers market on my way through Luling, I amassed quite a pantry full of items, more than I've ever had at one time. And such diversity, which really speaks to the bounty of Texas in the different areas that my relatives live, their personal tastes, and what's traditional to their family. I ended up with 16 jars of different things. Above are pickled beets (Don and Gladys Orsak from our Orsak reunion), hot dill pickles from Mikesh Produce in Luling, pear butter (cousin Ann Adams in Floresville), and apricot habanero jelly, made by cousin Rose Cofer and won in the silent auction at the Morkovsky reunion in Hallet...