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Texas
| Features | Books
Boardin’
in the Thicket
Recipes and Reminisces of Early Big Thicket Boarding Houses
by Wanda A. Landrey
(University of North Texas Press, 1998)
ISBN: ISBN-10: 1574410547
ISBN-13: 978-1574410549
Book Review by
John Troesser |
East Texas
on a China Plate
This author might
have taken the easy way out and just printed recipe after recipe with
little dingbats of crockery or cutlery separating one recipe from
the next. If that was the case, you wouldn’t be reading about it here.
Instead, we have very valuable sociological contribution to East
Texas – the recipes are lagniappe. It’s not a cookbook and it’s
not purely sociological – it’s both.
Information on the buildings, proprietors and occasional anecdotes
of the houses and hotels come at the beginning of each chapter. Setting
the table, so to speak, for the recipes.
Also included are a few recipes from the Galveston Harvey House cookbook
– published for the first time. The book is a discovery of historic
proportions for cooks, Harvey House buffs and the terminally curious.
Bessmay, Silsbee, Kountze,
Saratoga, Bragg,
Baston, Sour Lake,
Trinity and Colmesneil
are towns included. A special effort was taken to make a good book
better. The author sought vintage photographs and interviewed surviving
people connected with the businesses.
Review by John
Troesser
February 15, 2015
* Harvey Houses
were restaurants operating in conjunction with the AT&SF railroad
and gained a remarkable reputation for quality of food and service
that has yet to be equaled. |
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