If you came to the opening of "San Francisco Eats" last Saturday and are craving additional food-related literary fodder, visit the San Francisco History Center to look at some of the department's cookbooks. Here is a handful of titles that are not included in the exhibit, featured here for their historical interest and piquant styles:
Gold Rush Grub: From Turpentine Stew to Hoochinoo by Ann Chandonnet.What did people eat during the gold rushes in California, the Klondike, and Alaska? This book tells the stories, with accompanying historical photographs and recipes. Roast Bear and Irene's Reindeer Soup make the contemporary stomach growl in appreciation.
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| Fricassee of Oysters recipe from The Refugees' Cook Book |
Ann Welcome Presents the 160 Honorable Mention Recipes in the $250 Prize Contest: in Connection with the 1932 Seventh Annual san Francisco Food Show. A Depression-era pamphlet with contest divisions for pickles, jams and preserves, steamed puddings, and "inexpensive meats." The cake section has a "Depression Fruit Cake."
Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes by Elena Zelayeta. A book of the Mexico City-born author's "own much-used recipes" published in San Francisco in 1944. The short chapter on tamales is a nice prelude to Thursday's Tamale-Making program at Ingleside branch library this Thursday, Dec. 16.
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| Tamales recipe from Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes |
The Hippie Cookbook; or, Don't Eat Your Food Stamps by Gordon and Phyllis Grabe. This tongue-in-cheek paperback from The Paisley Shawl Publishing Company in1970 includes a section called "How to Cook with Your Automobile Engine" that tells you how to make hamburgers and hot dogs by wrapping them in layers of aluminum foil and heating them on the exhaust manifold.
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| An astrological recipe from The Hippie Cookbook |
For coverage of "San Francisco Eats" in the blogosphere, check out these links:
KQED's Bay Area Bites
Delish's Food in the News
SF Weekly's SFoodie
SF Gate - San Francisco Chronicle
City's Best
How I used to love to explore the nooks & crannies of my town. This one escaped me. One that didn't was the soup & bread line that the one & only Police Chief-turned-Mayor tried to get rid of which took up residence at UN Plaza. A lot of folks went homeless during the Reagan yrs. That trickle down theory didn't trickle down that far and that hot meal & piece of bread went a long way to warming a lot of cold bellies, mine included as well as those of my babies on more than one occasion. Food Stamps notwithstanding. We didn't own a car on which to cook any meal. Thanks for the memories.
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