Review: Texas Home Cooking

Dateline: 08/17/97

by Marilyn Helton

After a day's hectic schedule, they come in for dinner. They need to eat quickly and get to other duties. They want food that is satisfying and nutritious. Something they will enjoy. Something that won't leave them hungry until the next meal.

Sound like your family? It could. But it really describes the meal routine of the Texas Cowboy. From trail drives in the 1880s to today, the cowboy's life always has involved hard work that never seems to get completed. It requires hearty, nutritious, good tasting foods that are quick and easy.

Those requirements created cowboy cuisine. It's the kind of cooking that families across Texas today are choosing to satisfy spouses, children and guests like nothing else.

Cheryl and Bill Jamison, distinguished travel and food writers, spent two years traveling the backroads of Texas, interviewing home cooks, restaurant chefs, BBQ pitmasters, bakers, fishermen and farmers to bring us over 400 delicious recipes and regional history in Texas Home Cooking.

Cheryl, who teaches at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, and Bill are also the authors of The Rancho de Chimayo Cookbook, Smoke & Spice, The Border Cookbook, and Sublime Smoke.

Texas Home Cooking is published by The Harvard Common Press, &c1993, ISBN:1-55832-059-8, $16.95.

Marilyn Helton, member of I.A.C.P. (International Association of Culinary Professionals) is Editor/Publisher of the award-winning Cinnamon Hearts culinary newsletter. Named by the Washington Post as one of the top 10 culinary newsletters in December 1996, and ". . . a charming, warm-the-heart subscription newsletter . . . dedicated to healthy eating and the pleasures of home and hearth . . ." by Weight Watchers Magazine, January 1997, "Cinnamon Hearts is a delightful composite of Recipes, Art and Food For The Mind." For more information and samples of recipes and articles, visit the Cinnamon Hearts Web page.