Amazon.com Review
Diggin' In and Piggin' Out is just the book for folks who have a real affection for food. Author Roger Welsch is to cooking what Grandma Moses is to painting: a primitive genius. His exuberance is contagious--Welsch is the kind of guy who would probably roll around in an entrée, if it was good enough. And God bless him for it; these days when everything you eat is trying to kill you, it's great to hear somebody defend the fried, the greasy, the smoked, the butter-soaked and sugar-dusted. And if you're brave enough to take up Welsch's philosophy of food, try a few of the recipes he includes in this collection.
From Kirkus Reviews
That guy in the bib overalls who shows up on TV on Sunday mornings offers a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the larger meaning of the comestibles he likes. He will, it is clear, eat anything (and is proud of it). Welsch (Touching the Fire, 1992, etc.), anthropologist, folklorist, and dedicated trencherman of CBS Sunday Morning, describes the pleasures of very down-home, almost Neolithic, cookery. Mama's gelatinous rice, cowboy frybread, frumenty (wet wheat), and ``lachs'' (his spelling for the pink fish that, in the east, accompanies a schmear on a bagel) are all liable to grace his table. Lutefisk, beaver tail, and frequently porcine byproducts are grist for his mill. Welsch tries his darndest to entice the reader to partake of the delicacies he so ardently describes. Unless you are turned on by the thought of ingesting cold bacon grease while squatting in a duck blind, it's no sale. The text is larded with ``recipes'' that are both wildly (and intentionally) idiosyncratic and antinutritional. In the instructions for baked beans: ``add cut-up bacon, hamhocks, spam, wienies, old pork chops, bacon ends, fatback, sowbelly, etc.'' The portly Sage of Dannebrog, Neb. (pop. 322), is right: This is strictly guy stuff. They don't teach this sort of respect for gustatory adventure in ``Woman School,'' Welsch reports. The fun with food is easygoing and the wit is bucolic. (Welsch reinforces the style by not following the noun ``couple'' with the preposition ``of''; it's ``a couple this'' and ``a couple that.'') The text is as likely to satisfy as a six-pack of the local beer and ``boom John Carter's Huevos Rancheros,'' and is just as comfortable. A light ethnogastronomy of male feeding habits, of beans, bier mit tchuss, and such. Inevitably, just a bit gaseous. ($30,000 ad/promo; TV satellite tour) --
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