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...

In April of 2018 I got laid off from my job. It was, as layoffs will be, unexpected. I had no savings and no plan and only knew that I desperately wanted to work for myself, trying to make a living from the things that I was most passionate about... Texas Czech food, history, and culture. I started throwing the proverbial spaghetti at the wall. I created a website for my services to plan family reunions and help people publish family cookbooks. I started a side business baking kolaches. And I entered a recipe in the annual contest called the Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Recipe Showdown. I figured that if I won, the thousands of dollars in prize money would keep me going for a little while and one of Texas Czechs' beloved regional foods would gain more national attention in the process. I am the very first person to correct someone calling what is actually a klobasnik, a kolach. So I'll admit that in financial desperation I ignored my own principles for the sake of marketing...