Svacina Project

Tuesday I got this message from my good friend Lori... "TONIGHT. We have figs! Let's make some jam." Though my parents are expert canners - putting up everything from pickles to salsa to jelly to stewed tomatoes to jam, and have done it my whole life - I never joined them. (Or not enough to have learned anything.) The only fig preserves I remember eating when I was younger were made by my paternal grandmother. I don't remember eating figs any other way, ever, except in a Fig Newton. So, I was very excited to take Lori up on her offer. And not only did we make it; we made it from figs that we had to pick first. Lori picking figs from the tree she and her husband planted almost twenty years ago, now two doors down (and two stories high) from her current house in South Austin.  Lori grew up in Hallettsville, the same town my mom grew up in. Her parents' house was in town, though they had land outside of town at Rabb Switch, Lori's mother's homestead, f...

I was without my children last weekend and tonight so have been free to eat any foods I want. (I eat pretty much anything, unlike the boys in my life.) And what I wanted to eat was fresh okra. The inspiration came in Hoffer's, the mom-and-pop grocery store/washateria/gas station in Hallettsville on Alt. Highway 90. I was in town last weekend for another family reunion (Morkovsky this time). I always stop at Hoffer's to see what local produce they have and Saturday was a banner day.... okra, cucumbers, green onions, tomatoes, banana peppers, zucchini, eggplant. The okra was so green, so plump-looking that it called to me. The tomatoes so red, so meaty. And what a beautiful combination they'd make with the orange banana peppers. Reunion spreads always need more vegetables, so even though I didn't have a recipe, I decided to take okra and tomatoes. Take THAT Austin Downtown Farmer's Market... I got a pound of okra for $1.35, 4 firm, gorgeous banana peppers for abo...

My Dad and his Aunt Marcella. She brought pinto beans, deer sausage  and a dewberry pie to the reunion. My Dad brought a pot of chili. If they're not Texas cooks, no one is.  Homemade pickles, dilled green beans, devilled eggs, 6 kinds of sausage, potato salad and dewberry pie. Is this the multi-course tasting menu at a new Texas-Czech restaurant? No, it’s just some of the offerings at the 2012 Orsak Reunion outside of Ganado on Sunday, June 3 rd . The list of dishes goes on, reflecting my family’s Czech heritage, but also our Texas roots which include Mexican influences and years of family members living near the coast. Appetizer table: Chips with salsa and queso, ciabatta bread with a Mediterranean seasoned olive oil, hot wings, stuffed jalapenos x 2 (one cold dish, one fried), homemade pickles, fruit platter, seafood dip and crackers. Main dishes : Baked ham, barbecued ribs, chicken and briskit, chili, fried chicken x 2, roast i...

Recently Addie Broyles, food writer for the Austin American-Statesman, did a blog post for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance (AFBA) to inspire members to submit recipes to the first AFBA community cookbook. She used a Texas-Czech community cookbook from a neighbor as an example   - Czech Reflections: Recipes, Memories and History - and wrote in her post “Community cookbooks like this one capture so many things about a society, including aspirational and traditional dishes that people might not actually cook any more but that are important to understanding how we came to eat the way we do now.” Addie’s post is a nice tribute to the book and, what I’m sure was, very hard work that went into creating it. The post prompted me to pull out my copy of the book and look through it for recipes to test, including what I think is a perfect representation of Addie’s quote… corn meal mush. I assume this dish was made mostly by rural Texas Czechs and those of slim means (and most likely r...

Potato soup doesn’t sound very Spring-like, but that’s my latest recipe test. A couple of factors bear down heavily on how often I test recipes and what I try… 1) feeding my family (with two boys) and 2) health concerns. If I feel like I’ve had a week where I didn’t eat enough salads and vegetables, then it’s hard for me to justify to myself testing dishes heavy with meat, cream, butter. And if my 13-year-old is with me for the week, my menu becomes even more limited because he’s such a picky eater. Finished soup in the pot... chunks of potatoes swimming in cream with flecks of marjoram and thyme. But he actually loves potato soup, so a weeknight dinner became an opportunity to test a recipe, too. I have at least a dozen recipes in community and other Texas cookbooks for variations of this creamy soup, but I ended up trying the one below because I had (or could fudge) all the ingredients on hand. How Czech is it? I don’t know, but Janak is certainly a Czech last name (the recip...

Recently, a Texas-Czech friend emailed to me the photograph below. The subject of the email was just "Nooooooo." It's a picture of one of the cases at a Central Texas bakery displaying cream cheese kolaches, each with a Hershey's mini chocolate bar literally stuck in the middle to sort of soften and ooze while baking.  My friend's comment together with the photo illustrate two types of kolach eaters... traditionalists and those who are willing to try kolach dough wrapped around any food that, on its own, could be deemed yummy. I generally fall into the first camp. Not because I don't think a kolach filled with " delicious marinated chicken, cheddar cheese, tomatoes and fresh spices "   might not taste good. (That is Kolache Factory's "Kolache of the Month" in March... Ranchero Chicken.) Rather, I think that the institution of Texas-Czech kolaches has enough to battle (time consuming to make, associated with special occasion foods, kno...

In case you're wondering, pickling turnips is not a Czech thing (as far as I know.) But my Dad did it last Sunday morning and it offered a chance to talk to my parents about their winter canning pantry and what they remember from their childhood. Selections from my parents' canning pantry - pickled okra, beets and bread and butter pickles. The reason for pickling the turnips was necessity which is the reason for canning in general. My mother's brother A.J. (Alois Joseph) and his wife Alice have a marvelous garden outside of Hallettsville. On their way to Houston last Friday, they left a cooler full of vegetables on my parents' doorstep in Katy. Their little garden spot is a mass producer and, rather than feed the excess to the cattle which my Uncle A.J. had been resorting to, they shared with my parents. Uncle A.J. and Aunt Alice (Kocian) Kallus, Hallettsville  In the cooler were broccoli, turnips, beets, and carrots. Right away my parents pickled the beets ...