Customer Reviews

White Trash Cooking (Jargon)

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I must confess that I resisted buying this cookbook for many years. I am an avid collector of American Regional and International cookbooks, but found the title of this book offensive. I assumed it was written to mock rural whites, a people I know to be hardworking, self-reliant, and decent. I was wrong about this one. This book actually celebrates these people and their cuisine, and is one of the very best traditional American cookbooks in print. Great recipes for fried chicken, catfish, hushpuppies, collard greens, Hoppin John, cornbread, and biscuits, as well as rabbit, squirrel, and yes, even possum. The book has a folksy humor throughout, and the recipes are authentic. Books like this become even more precious as this and other American regional cuisines disappear under a blanket of bland corporate burger chains, sub shops, and pizza joints. Incidentally, several recent medical studies have shown that rural Appalachians who consume this traditional fare are far healthier than those who embrace the modern suburban diet of chain restaurant food! If you have any interest in traditional American cooking, this book is a must-own.

I first bought this book years ago, when it first came out-and it
shows: the biscuit page has tea stains all over it-so does the
potato-chip sandwich! The latter is worth a try, albeit a tad
salty, but it IS delish. You absolutely cannot fail to make good
biscuits with their recipe, it is simple, basic, and wonderful.
What they do with food is real simple, and the low-priced version
of "peasant food." It is worth it for the pictures in the center
alone, it doesn't put down white trash, it celebrates 'em! Darn
fine cooks, too. Really delicious summer produce recipes, and
the tomato sandwich idea is one anyone can relish.

This book occupies a proud, and well-used, pride of place in my
cookbook collection. Unlike snotty cookbooks where they look
down on the reader, presupposing a well-laden pantry groaning
with esoterica-this is REAL FOOD, REAL SIMPLE. A tribute to all
the white trash who built this country, and really tasty, too.

Y'all try it some, hear?

This book is hysterical, tasteless and wonderful. To start off with, the recipes are authentic and they are tasty. Don't even think about looking for anything low cal here. The pictures are priceless, the short stories will keep you in stitches and the recipes will have everyone saying you are a wonderful cook. GET IT GET IT GET IT. If you are a fan of cookbooks you should not be without this one.

I bought this book years ago when it first came out, and absolute
ly LOVE it: great recipes, great pictures, down-home real food.
Best recipe for biscuits I have ever seen-my book's permanently
stained from use! Even tried the potato chip sandwich, a little
salty, but delish.

You don't have to pay an arm and a leg for pretentious, overpric-
ed "country peasant cuisine," you have it right here: polenta's
grits, baby! A lot of these recipes are solid, delicious food,
stuff we grew up on in the Midwest, stuff our granmas used to
make. And if you have ever attended a church social, you'll re-
cognize many of the dishes in this awesome cookbook.

It's worth it for the center photograph section, for a nostalgic
touch, for in the rush to urbanize here in Florida, many roadside
fruit and vegetable stands have been zoned out of existence. Up
in the Panhandle you might still find roadside boiled peanut sta-
nds(now THAT'S some great eatin'!), and some produce stands-but
if you can't go there-try this book-you won't regret it.

You might approach this book thinking of it as a joke, or in a
condescending approach to white trash(read American Peasants),
but once you start to read the anecdotes and recipes, you gain an
understanding and respect for these tenacious souls.

P.S. Try the cheese grits-with Velveeta and Tabasco sauce-that
will wake you up some!

Mickler's self-deprecating portrayal of Southern prole culture is absolutely hilarious! But, even 'though this book is laugh-out-loud funny, it is no mere joke-book. Make no mistake -- these are real recipes that work. I took this cookbook with me when my family was relocated, for my husband's job, to live in Silicon Valley for three months in a corporate apartment and forced to make do with a bare-bones kitchen containing three foil-thin skillets and a rectangular Pyrex baking pan. Amazingly, these recipes were simple enough that I was able to make easy and delicious meals everyday with a minimum of implements and without need for fancy ingredients. This is, simply put, real folks' home-cooking. By the way, you have got to try Irma Lee Stratton's Chocolate Dump Cake! It is the chocolate cake recipe I had been searching for, the moistest and fudgiest chocolate cake I have ever had. You won't even want to add frosting, it's that good!

Yes, I got this as a lark many years ago. As time passed more and more black older people were wanting copies of pages for them selves. Seems they were eating the same stuff down the road, and across the tracks? My mother first thought it was gross, then read the stuff and stopped on this page, and that, and went to the kitchen and cooked up what she had missed for years. Her mothers food. I never thought of patoto chip sandwiches though? But mirical whip and jello live in my mind. And Jesus, Macaroni & Cheese. My son loves hot dog water soup. Go figure.

I LOVE this book....Right now I have a meatloaf and a peach cobbler in the oven the same day my book arrived.
After years of eating my own unimaginative cooking ,this book is a godsend, for it tells how to prepare the very dishes my mom and grandmother used to cook.(Not to mention the Baptist Ladies!)
The title is just a gimmick...Inside this cookbook is a treasury of soul-satisfying Sothern/Midwestern country cooking that you may remember from your childhood.

This cookbook is the ideal gift for newlyweds, college students,single friends, heck ,anybody who like to eat!

Hmmmmm...Tomorrow I think I'll make the Buttermilk Fried Chicken.
Yum!

My dad always said my mother was a peasant at heart when it came to eating. I am proud to say that I follow her footsteps right to the head of the line at any church social, bar mitzvah, picnics at state parks or cemetaries...wherever homecooking can be had...I will be there. Filled with the recipes we knew as children or have seen other folks eat at rest stops across the country; author, Ernst Matthew Mickler so eloquently sums up this type of cooking by saying, it'll make you lay down on the floor and scream. This book is a national treasure and should be in the kitchen of every American household. Sit back with a cold ice tea and enjoy each and every page. It doesn't get betta dan dis!

I have spent many many hours reading and re-reading this book. This is a cookbook by it's cover but when you get inside and look at the recipes read the words and the see the wonderful photos you'll see that it's a cultural documentation of some very beautiful and proud people.

Growing up as a child in the 50s in Texas, I ate most of the foods mentioned in this wonderful cookbook and they are still the foods I crave, the comfort foods I depend on, and the foods that linger in my memory, binding forever in my mind & heart the beloved grandmothers, aunts, and assorted relatives who fixed my favorites and served them with large doses of love! This book brings it all back...enjoy..enjoy...enjoy.