Ever skin, butcher and cook a squirrel?

This picture is me with my son-in-law, Christian. I'm quite sure he has never shot a squirrel, nor skinned and butchered one, and if I went to all that trouble and served it to him, he'd politely say, "No, thanks." But the contributing authors (some of them anyway) of Grace & Gumption: The Cookbook spoke last night to the Women's Arts League of Colleyville. The meeting just happened to be in the training room at Christian's office, and he was the designated host who stayed to lock up. Such fun to claim him when people saw us talking. He gave me a big hug when I came him, and one woman said, "I guess you two know each other."

The G&G Cookbook is a social history of Fort Worth told through food, and believe it or not there were two women there who had cooked squirrel. Some of the ladies had cooked recipes from the cookbook for the event. Not squirrel, but chili biscuits (a favorite of mine), eggplant caviar, molasses cake, mousse and puddings, and I can't remember what all. I wish I had a picture of the beautiful table. Chili biscuits are a favorite because every hostess in West Fort Worth served them in the '50s and '60s--women would pop them out of the oven like they'd just made them but everyone knew better. They came, frozen, from Roy Pope's Grocery and were made by Lucille Bishop Smith, an African American educator and caterer who was a city institution. And they were delicious. The recipe is in the cookbook but seems a lot of work--the woman who made them admitted it was.

We each talked about our chapters, and as one of the editors, I talked a bit about how the book as a whole came about. It was a sequel to Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women, designed to tell about women's contributions to the development and growth of our city. The story has always, like so many, been told in men's terms. Women's stories are hidden away in attics and correspondence and handed down by word of mouth, but they have rarely,  until recently, been written. We followed that groundbreaking book with a cookbook, which led some to say, "We just got women out of the kitchen! Why are we putting them back in there?" My reply was because cooking is what women do with one hand, while they're building communities and museums and political careers and theatrical careers and also sort of other things with the other hand.

The audience last night certainly seemed to agree with that. They were a most receptive group, listening attentively, laughing a lot, asking good questions. It's such a pleasure to talk to groups like that that I forget the shy girl inside me.

One recipe from my chapter which always boggled my mind is Hollandaise sauce made with mayonnaise, French's mustard, soy sauce, and melted butter. Most of the ladies laughed and agreed with me: it's not the way we make Hollandaise. But afterward two ladies said they'd made it that way and it's just a shortcut: the mayo gives you the creaminess, the mustard the color and a bit of bite, the soy the salt and the butter is the richness. Learn something new every day, but I still think I'd want a bit of lemon.

A delightful evening.

Grace & Gumption: The Cookbook

Three years ago, TCU Press published Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women. We saw it as the first step in compiling a history of what women had accomplished for our city, a subject hitherto overlooked, though we had lots of masculine heroes and role models. There were wonderful women, and fourteen contributors attempted to bring their stories together in one volume. It was a hit and sold well. Now a project that I not so modestly admit that I initiated has come to publication: Grace & Gumption: The Cookbook.When we first talked about it, there was some discussion that if we wer trying to prove that women had roles outside the home, we were blindsiding ourselves with a cookbook. But we generally agreed that until recently cooking almost always fell to the woman, no matter what else she was doing outside the home. Some of the recipes reflect this tendency for women to cook in a hurry, using easy and fast recipes.
According to one review, it's a great mix of academic-style social history with a recipe book. There are recipes you won't want to try--the first in the book is how to cook a squirrel--but more contemporary recipes from Joe T. Garcia's restaurant or Jon Bonnell, whose grandmother was one of Fort Worth's best known philanthropists. The older recipes are more fun, but you'll want too cook some of the newer ones. I particularly like the "Texas Tingle Dip" that calls for 1 can RO*TEL tomatoes, 1 can mushroom soup, and 8 oz. cheddar cheese. I admit I scorched it the first time I tried to make it, but from now on I'll  use the double boiler. Then there's the recipe in my chapter for Hollandaise sauce that boggles my mind: 1/2 c. Hellman's mayonnaise, 1 tsp. French's yellow mustard, 1 tsp. soy sauce, 1/2 stick melted butter. Like no Hollandaise I've ever tasted!
I hosted a pot-luck happy hour tonight for the contributors to the two books--okay we lost two and added two new ones for the cookbook--but we have become a bonded group. We were each to bring something from our chapter. We teased Joyce Williams about bringing squirrel (she brought cornbread and a corn and pea mix),  and we praised Brenda Sanders-Wise for the pound cake she brought. My chapter--"Ranch Women, Cowgirls, and Wildcatters"--didn't offer much in the way of appetizers, but I figured Electra Waggoner Wharton probably served finger sandwiches, so that's what I did. I made a filling of mayo, cream cheese,  cayenne, grated sharp cheddar, and chopped, drained sun-dried tomatoes--not what Electra would have served (it was sort of pimiento cheese with sun-dried tomatoes instead of pimientos). I meant to also make finger sandwiches of cucumber, cream cheese, mayonnaise, and chives--but the cheese/tomato mixture made so many I abandoned that idea, and now I have finger sandwiches in the fridge, plus a whole cucumber and a lot of cream cheese. Sounds like good leftover eating to me.
Anway, it's a great book. Want a Christms gift for one or more friends? Try this. Want a speaker for a women's group? We're available--one or more of us. We love this book, and we want the world to know about it. Just holler at me at j.alter@tcu.edu and let me know if you want some of us to show up for an event. I can't promised boiled squirrel, but hey!