Happy Donut Day!

Almost as soon as I stopped being a librarian and announced (to no one in particular) that I wanted to write, my childhood friend Beth Jacks offered me a gig on her new website USADeepSouth. I'll forever be grateful to Beth, who had tons more writing credentials than I did. She suggested I write book reviews, featuring southern-themed books. What a grand idea! I jumped all over it.

Now that National Donut Day is almost upon us, I thought I'd share my
review of John T. Edge's book about DONUTS from that website.

I'm sorry to report that on a very recent layover in the Houston airport, I spotted a Shipley's and bought 2 donuts. They did not live up to my childhood memories. 

Don't you hate when that happens? 

I am certain, however, that the Donut Sundaes I remember from "The Goose" would hold up to my modern-day dessert standards= Yeast donut, ice cream, hot fudge sauce. 
I think I'll make one tomorrow to celebrate the day.

 

(You can also find this review on the website: http://usads.ms11.net/jedge.html)

DONUTS: AN AMERICAN PASSION by John T. Edge (G.P. Putnam, 2006)

If you’ve ever stood outside a Krispy Kreme waiting for the flashing red light or driven across two counties to pick up a dozen Shipleys, then this fourth addition to John T. Edge’s American food series is for you. He started with fried chicken, then added apple pie and hamburgers. What could be better than topping it off with a quick dozen donuts or two?

As he combs the country in search of donut history, Edge shows us why he’s one of our best food writers. He ferrets out the corner mom and pop operations and digs into the reasons they stay in business (or not). He doesn’t just slosh through old newspapers yellowing in libraries or crisp microfilmed magazine covers to research food history. His research includes eating his way through sugar-coated donuts (or a slugburger or chicken fried in almost anything).

But we’re glad this time he chose to shed a little light on donuts. Otherwise we’d never know about the Salvation Army’s public relations coup in the First World War. As their Lassies fried donuts in a helmet, or perhaps a galvanized trash can, the mission was to help the troops feel more at home. Their doughnuts (the spelling has only recently been shortened) were made from excess rations and whatever the ladies had on hand, and after the War American soldiers returned home hankering for more. According to Edge’s research, so many planned to open donut shops that the military published a book on the subject.

My early donut memories include the superbly fat-ladened Donut Sundae at the Old Goose at M.S.C.W. (glazed yeast donut, vanilla ice cream, hot fudge sauce), selling boxes of Shipley donuts to benefit my Girl Scout troop, and standing over boiling hot oil waiting for homemade donuts in my mother’s kitchen. Perhaps. like Edge, Homer Price— that curious character from Robert McCloskey’s book--  made you laugh out loud in fifth grade with his donut machine gone awry. Whatever your attachment to donuts, John T. Edge has you covered. 

Don’t skip the chapter, or maybe even a trip, to Westport, Massachusetts, where he tempts us with a cinnamon sugar-dusted cake donut, then segueways into a chocolate-glazed yeast. But Edge is after the big prize here- the proprietor’s famous “Long John.”  As with other local donut shops, Butler’s Colonial Donut House has a following that required a visit and a taste. “Rich…sprightly with berries, swaddled in dairy,” the Long John is shaped like a hotdog bun turned on its side and does not disappoint. John T. Edge’s description makes you want to jump in the car and head for Massachusetts. Or in a pinch, the closest Dunkin’ Donuts.

(Sorry about the picture, Mr. Edge. I'm sure you'd never use a DD photo, but you have to admit, it does add a spice of color...)

Home Food

This morning's New York Times carried a story about pizza in Brooklyn, available for $5 a slice. And people are lining up. My favorite line, which must resonate with others because my friend Leslie also picked it up:

“Worth it,” said Mr. Mancino, 64, between bites on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s like they dug up my grandma and she made the pie.”

My brother and sister and I feel that way about the fried chicken at Two Sisters' in Jackson, Mississippi. If you've never been, and you long for food cooked the way it used to be, check it out if you find yourself in Jackson. Fried chicken, homemade rolls, all kinds of what my Yankee husband once insulted as "brown vegetables" (butter beans, field peas, etc.), and peach cobbler for dessert. At least that's what I remember from our last visit. And every time we go, my siblings and I think our childhood cook must have swooped down from Heaven and is back there frying the chicken.

So I totally get it about the $5 slice of pizza at Di Fara Pizza in Brooklyn.

And while I'm on food and The New York Times. Here's an article about hamburgers by one of my favorite Southerners, writer John T. Edge, in yesterday's paper. Love his books about food. (See my review of Donuts.) All you ever wanted to know, but probably really don't need to know, about the subject. He's also covered hamburgers and fried chicken, in great depth, with humor. Surely the only way to write about something so bad for you that tastes that good, on occasion.

Oxford American anyone?

Just when I'm thinking I have way too many magazines to read, I open my Best of the South 2009 issue of the Oxford American. Filled with more things than I can take in. It's always been the kind of magazine I dip into and come back to, but it was hard not to read straight through this issue.

Like one of my favorite food writers, John T. Edge, on cheese. And there's even a pimento cheese recipe "inspired by Mary Hartwell Howorth." I go along with his recommendation on Duke's Mayonnaise, but not sure about the chives. Ditto for dried sage. But hey, I've got a pot of chives growing so maybe I'll throw in a few for good measure. Even without the recipe, the piece is full of goodies. Goat cheese from Elkmont, Alabama?

Then there's an ode to pecan pie. (I seem to be fixating on food this morning.) Aha! A crust made with butter, and a tip to keep it flaky. And I loved the essay by Marion Field, "Ode to the Perfect Coat." Wow.

You can read the entire piece by Thomas Swick online, right here. It's all about writing, from a former editor now turned freelancer. Here's a quote:

I've formulated what I call the three rules of freelancing: If you're friends with an editor, you'll get the assignment. If you know an editor, you'll get a response. If you don't know an editor, you're basically playing the lottery.

And this, about the perils of freelancing in the age of email:

No longer do you check the mail once a day; now you can check it once a paragraph.

From an interview with one of the current issue's contributors, George Singleton, in response to the question "What else should our readers know about you?"

His response?

"I may have the largest privately owned dog graveyard in America. There are at least twenty dogs buried behind my house."

Now there's an answer I don't believe I've ever heard from an interviewed writer before.

Guess I'll be renewing the Oxford American.

Eating Our Way Home

I've just returned from a journey home. Traveling the Mississippi Delta with my sister was like stepping back in time, to a time we actually never realized existed. Stay tuned for more on this topic, with pictures.

What I love about going back to Mississippi is eating the food of my childhood. Here are a few things we sampled, in no particular order, during my three-day visit:
Shrimp and grits, onion rings, cheese dip, crab dip, Diet Dr. Pepper and Nabs, brown butterbeans cooked in fatback, turnip greens cooked in fatback, cornbread muffins, cornbread sticks, fried okra, okra with tomotoes and onions, ice tea, redfish cooked in "Wooster" sauce, melba toast with butter, Mile High Coconut Pie, yellow squash cooked with onions (and fatback), Rendezvous Sausage Platter.
That's about all I can even bear to remember right now without jumping back on an airplane and going back for the Two Sisters fried chicken we missed in Jackson.

On the way back to New Jersey, I had lots of airplane time to read and was glad we'd picked up the latest Oxford American at Turnrow Books in Greenwood (more on that later also, maybe with pictures). One of my favorite things about returning to the South is sampling and remembering the food. And my absolute favorite food writer in the world is John T. Edge. If you've never read his books and essays, you're missing something almost as good as actually being there. I've reviewed his books including this one about DONUTS.

In the summer 2008 Oxford American, Mr. Edge writes about Middendorf's, a place our family never missed when we traveled from Mississippi to New Orleans: "...for three generations women have worked with cutlass-tipped knives, shaving fish into vellum filets that... emerge from the fry vats...tasting like the lovely and raspy offspring of a bag of Lays and a net of channel cats."
Now, you can't get much better than that. And I don't just mean the catfish he's just eaten.

The last time we stopped at Middendorf's it was too early in the morning to eat catfish but we were showing my Yankee offspring what it is I love about the South and did the tourist drive-by of this nearby market:

Yes, that's a sign advertising coon meat, which I have never knowingly eaten and don't intend to, and alligator meat which I suspect I have eaten, well disguised and not lately.