Family | Gourmandistan

Progressive Farmer Pecan Praline Bars

October 23, 2012 by Steve

Michelle’s 98-year-old grandmother passed away peacefully a few months ago, inside the farmhouse she and her husband built on their Western Kentucky acreage. Postwar poster children for America’s re-energized agricultural community, they were named 1950’s “Master Farm Family” by Progressive Farmer magazine and the University of Kentucky Extension Service. While “crops, pastures, livestock, farm equipment and farm management procedures” gained Papo recognition, Mamo was declared “the Master Farmer’s Wife” for her “home furnishings, comfort devices, labor-saving equipment and home management […]

Categories: Brownies, Chocolate, Cooking, Family, Food, Nuts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Morris and the matzo brei

April 4, 2012 by Steve

Steve didn’t get a lot of food traditions from his father. Morris, a somewhat joyless eater who demanded his beef be “burnt to a crisp,” snacked on pickled herring and hated cheese, had mostly wandered away from the Jewish traditions of his Lower East Side upbringing. His kashrut contained exceptions for bacon and Virginia ham, though he avoided shellfish (calling lobster, clams and scallops “bugs that eat sewage”). A widower hosting his Louisville-residing son in various New York apartments during summers and holidays, […]

Categories: Cooking, Crackers, Eggs, Family, Food, Passover, Recipes, Vegetarian

Oatcakes and the origin of species

March 15, 2012 by Steve

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us, which means some small part of Michelle’s DNA demands recognition. Exactly which part is unclear, since her Kentucky lineage includes all sorts of pale folk from various areas of both Ierne and Albion who spent the past few centuries emigrating, intermixing and occasionally dallying with Native Americans for an extra bit of “flava.” Nonetheless, like many Americans, Michelle feels obligated to act Irish in mid-March—even though she disdains whiskey, seldom fights and is mostly […]

Categories: Appetizers, Cooking, Crackers, Family, Food, Grains, Ireland, Recipes, St. Patrick's Day, Vegetarian

Comfort; food.

May 24, 2011 by Michelle

We would prefer that Gourmandistan be a place of lightness and pleasure, where “tragedy” and “sorrow” are simply overly dramatic ways to describe ingredients wasted or a recipe gone awry. Unfortunately, real tragedy and sorrow recently breached our little domain, when Michelle lost her beloved younger brother. We found ourselves in a maelstrom of anguish, confusion and sadness—away from home, and with a broken oven. Gourmandistan seemed very, very far away. Neighbors and friends, showing the best of a small, […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Family, Food, Pork, Recipes, Sandwiches

Birthday and brittle

March 14, 2011 by Michelle

In 1911, Amundsen’s expedition reached the South Pole, Hiram Bingham “discovered” Machu Picchu and the first Indianapolis 500 took off at the Brickyard. That same year in Paradise, Kentucky, Brucie and Coza Dee Smith welcomed a little brother—Michelle’s grandfather, R.T. Smith, born 100 years ago today. 21 years later, R.T. eloped with the daughter of a wealthy neighbor. The young couple started out sharecropping on a few acres in Hopkins County known as “The Switch Place” (as it was near […]

Categories: Candy, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Family, Food, Nuts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Struffoli, Steve’s sole holiday food tradition

December 21, 2010 by Michelle

It’s a sign of how denatured Steve’s Neapolitan heritage is that he believed a traditional family holiday dish was spelled “struvela.” It’s actually struffoli—something Steve didn’t figure out until recently. Steve has memories of picking at the honey-covered dough bits as they sat on an increasingly sugar-sticky paper doily for days, a concept Michelle finds bewildering as well as slightly disgusting. Nevertheless, acceding to Steve’s whim, she decided to help bring struffoli to Gourmandistan. Steve’s mother was happy to give […]

Categories: Christmas, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Family, Food, Italy, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Snappier Ginger Snaps

December 12, 2010 by Michelle

Nashville Seasons was one of Michelle’s earliest cookbooks (the very first was Betty Crocker’s New Boys and Girls Cook Book, and the second was the 1979 Marion Cunningham version of Fannie Farmer). Her mother gave Michelle a copy of the classic southern Junior League cookbook for Christmas in 1980, during Michelle’s senior year of college—Jean’s own edition having become worn from much use. The 1964 cookbook was published at the crossroads of culinary skill and convenience. While the authors still […]

Categories: Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, Family, Food, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Popcorn balls

October 26, 2010 by Michelle

Starting in the 1930s, Michelle’s 96-year-old grandmother cooked many a farm meal, and legions of farmhands claim she cooked them well—homemade and from scratch. But with the advent of “modern” convenience foods, by the Sixties (the time Michelle was a kid), Mamo felt it was quite forward-looking to seek out shortcuts. Soup mix, pie crust mix, whatever—if it came in a box or a can, it had to be better than “from scratch.” But one thing Mamo always did make […]

Categories: Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Family, Food, Nuts, Recipes, Sorghum, Vegetarian

Remembrance of eggplants past

August 9, 2010 by Steve

Gourmandistan likes oral histories, like those generated by the WPA Writers’ Project (something we wish was still around—are you listening, government recovery people?). We think it’s lovely when individuals get a chance to share their ideas of the times they lived through. (Steve, especially, looks forward to lecturing people about life in Middle American Suburbia, if he can only get them to stop watching “Leave it to Beaver,” “My Three Sons” and just about any other show on TV Land.) […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggplant, Family, Food, Italy, Recipes, Vegetarian