"Remember Me? A collection of recipes from my years at the Courier Journal" by Alice S. Colombo

I have often said on this blog that I love cookbooks, especially local fundraising type cookbooks from Appalachia and I often buy them from Goodwill, Salvation Army, and and other independent "junk stores". Yesterday, February 14, 2025, I ran into a slightly different type of cookbook and bought it at Goodwill in Paintsville, Kentucky. The title "Remember Me? A collection of recipes from my years at The Courier Journal" is a bit odd for a cookbook. But this one was compiled by a former food writer at the Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. Even though it was from well outside Appalachia, I bought it. It was compiled by Alice Colombo and contains many recipes she had been allowed to publish over the years by restaurant owners she had met in her work, some of her own recipes, and others from God only knows where. It was published by a company called Publishers Printing Company in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, and that company now appears to be defunct since I can't locate a website or anything about them other than one article saying they had moved several years ago to another location they owned in Lebanon Junction, Kentucky. The book is spiral bound, 8 1/2" x 11" and printed on high quality, heavy, slick paper. It does contain a note from the author saying that any of the recipes which carry the "Copyright" symbol had previously been published in the Courier Journal and are copyrighted. This is not either Appalachian or purely Kentucky in nature since it contains several recipes from restaurants the author had either visited in her professional writing days or during personal visits for other reasons and had obtained the owners permissions to publish them. The most interesting of these recipes are from the first three chefs at the famous Brown Hotel in Louisville and are there particular and progressive recipes for the famous Kentucky Hot Brown. They include the recipe of Laurent Gennari who was the first chef at the hotel and worked from 1923 to 1927 and presumably invented the Hot Brown. The next is labeled "The original Hot Brown by Fred Schmidt who worked at the hotel from 1927 to 1930. Although it is labeled "The original Hot Brown...", it is clear that if Mr. Gennari was using his own recipe in the preceding four years, Fred Schmidt didn't invent the Hot Brown and his recipe is not the original. The third Hot Brown recipe is credited to "Mr. Harter" who seems to have worked at the hotel from 1930 to some unknown date which Ms. Colombo reported by saying "Mrs. Clark didn't give the year Mr. Harter left the Brown." But considering the fame which the Hot Brown has achieved in Kentucky and elsewhere, it is nice to find these historic recipes of its development over the early twentieth century. For those of you who don't know about the Kentucky Hot Brown, it is a construction of sliced turkey, cheese, and bacon on white bread toast and is served all over Central Kentucky and several other areas since its invention by whomever, most likely Laurent Gennari, at the Brown Hotel in Louisville close to a hundred years ago. The three recipes in this cookbook don't agree on the spices and minor ingredients. But they show some combination of the following: butter, milk, eggs, salt, pepper, white pepper, and whipping cream. The book also contains recipes from famous or somewhat popular restaurants in Kentucky, Nevada, South Carolina, Indiana, North Carolina, Minnesota, New York, Louisiana, Florida, California, Ohio, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Illinois,Georgia, Missouri, Michigan, and Virginia. The book is broken into somewhat more sections than most cookbook authors bother to do. They include Appetizers and Beverages; Soups, Chili, and Stews; Salads and Salad Dressings; Breads, Rolls, Muffins, and Sweet Rolls; Vegetables; Grits and Rice; Dairy and Cheese; Sandwiches, Stuffings, and Dressings; Marinades and Sauces; Entrees; Seafood; Casseroles, Eggs, and Quiches; Pasta and Pizza; Nationality foods; Cakes; Frostings, Fillings, Sauces and Syrups; Fruits;PIes and Tarts; Cheesecakes; Cookies and Brownies; Desserts and Puddings; and Candy. Other than the Hot Brown, I have not found a particular recipe which stands out to me as one I would love to try. But the book is over 352 pages and I have to admit that I have not yet fully examined it from cover to cover. The information page of the book states that at the time my copy was published two printings had been produced, the initial of 1,000 copies and a second of 500 copies. Somewhere in a used book store, junk store, or yard sale, you might be able to find a copy. The book does list a website which works as of February 16, 2025, which has a page with a contact form for interested parties to fill out along with an e-mail address for the author. If the book interests you, take a shot at it and you might find a copy. There is also a list of businesses which were selling the book at the time of publication. But with the 2011 publication date, it is probably not a good bet that they are still holding unsold copies.

"The Civil Disobedience Handbook" James Tracy, Editor--A Book Every American Needs To Read---TODAY

The blurb on the back cover of this important little book states "Civil Disobedience is an American tradition, an essential element of a working democracy." Truer words were never spoken. In this terribly tragic time in which TRAITOR Trump is once again is living in the White House and working daily with his Criminal Syndicate which is now posing as a "cabinet", there has has never been a more important time for that majority of American citizens who understand just how endangered our country and our democracy are by this tragic outcome of the most recent election to Stand Up, Speak Up, and Speak Out about the destruction of our country by this worst of all TRAITORS. This book is a brief 94 page primer on the practice of civil disobedience with very valuble information on both the practice of civil disobedience and advice on how to conduct that practice without unduly endangering the practitioners. The one drawback to the book is that it is a bit dated having been published in 2002. James Tracy, the editor, is described on the cover as "...a long time organizer active in anti-poverty work. He is coordinator of Rightto a Roof,a part of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness." After having worked in the field of homelessness for over 8 years, I can assure that anyone who has Tracy's experience knows a great deal about the need for civil disobedience. Tracy also lives in Berkeley, California, a location which has always been a proving ground for protest activity in America. The book begins with a short history of civil disobedience in America, then moves on to a full length copy of The Patriot Act. But a word of caution about the reading and acceptance of that version of the Patriot Act is in order since the Patriot Act has been renewed, revised, and replaced by the USA FREEDOM (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring) Before taking any actions based on Tracy's rendition of The Patriot Act, one should find a copy of Freedom Act as it which has been passed by congress. The book also contains a lenghty list of resources which can come in very handy to anyone who is seeking to use their constitutional freedoms to express discontent with the actions of the current TREASONOUS occupengt of the White House. Much of the general information in the book is just as valid today as when it was published. It would be wise to obtain and read, as will I, the more recent second edition of the book which was published in June of 2024 by Tracy and Jennifer Joseph. But, whatever you do, read one or the other, remember the Freedom Act is now the law, and feel free to express your discontent with the current occupant of the White House both privately and publicly.

"This Proud Heart" by Pearl Buck

On several occasions on this blog, I have written about the works of Pearl S. Buck, one of the small handul of American writers to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature and one of my favorite writers of all time. I have writte3n about "The Good Earth", her most famous novel, which I believe is also one of a very small group of the best novels in all of literature. She followed "The Good Earth" with two other novels in the "Good Earth" trilogy, They are "Sons" and "A House Divided". While either of those novels could have been a career best for many writers, they are not among Buck's best works. I read everything I come across by Buck and still have numerous of her books to be read. Fortunately, a year or so ago, I bought a large collection of books, actually 5 commercial peach boxes full, from the estate of a local school principal. This one we are discussing today I found in a small group of books I bought at a small "junk store" in Rowan county Kentucky which also included a unique first edition of Jack Kerouac's first novel, "The Town And The City", which was published under his legal name John Kerouac, the only one of his books to have been published that way. "This Proud Heart" is one of Buck's lesser known novels which is set in the United States with purely American characters for the most part. The protagnonist is a brilliant woman, Susan Gaylord, and begins when she is a high school student who has shown a great deal of talent in more than one area. She is the daughter of a professor father and a dedicated housewife mother, has one sister, Mary, several years younger and not really close to her older sister. Her father is a somewhat frustrated poet in addition to being a professor in a small college. He has chosen to devote his life to his familiy and his primary profession but does manage to write poetry and publish some of it in small magazines. Susan comes to understand her father's frustration with his life decision and vows to do more to control her own life and its outcomes. She is a talented artist and piano player as the book begins but chooses to marry her high school sweetheart, Mark, who is a totally devoted husband to her and works in the real estate business after they marry. But Susan finds herself interested in sculpture and uses a barn on the old farm they buy to create a piece in wood which is composed of a family of four, a husband, wife, and two children, a son and daughter. That piece is submitted to a contest for a piece to be placed in the lobby of a hospital financed by a very rich man in New York. The piece and her work in general is supported by a famous male sculptor, David Barnes, who has a house in the small New England town in which Susan and her family live. Barnes is a brusque, short spoken man who has strong opinions about Susan's talent and her inablility, as he sees it, to succeed as a sculptor in the United States. He strongly encourages her to come with him to Paris to study under another great sculptor and a man who teaches anatomy to sculptors. She refuses until the untimely death of her husband Mark due to typhoid fever. After his death, she packs up her children and their maid to travel to Paris to actually do what Barnes has suggested. During her time there, she meets another man, Blake Kincaid, who is also a sculptor of much less talent than Susan. They fall in love and she marries Blake which proves to be a less than perfect decision. They return to New York where he lives in considerable wealth and she grows more and more hampered by his efforts to control her, minimize her talent, and disparage her work as a sculptor. She comes to realize these things about Blake and rents a studio in the poor neighborhood near his ostentatious home where she meets and sculpts marble statues of some of the people in the neighborhood. David Barnes returns to the novel from Paris and assists Susan in getting her works into a gallery for an exhibition which confirms her talent and leaves her with a full understanding that she cannot succeed as a sculptor if she remains with Blake. She moves her family back to her hometown after the death of her father and decides to end her relationship with Blake. The novel leaves the whole situation somewhat in midair at the ending but we see that Susan has been able to understand that she must be independent in order to do her best work. The novel is also widely discussed as one of Buck's better works in support of feminism. Susan Gaylord is a strong, successful, competent, talented, and highly motivated woman. For the time in 1938 when the novel was published, she is an amazingly modern woman. I suspect that this novel is somewhat biographical with the sculpting being a substitute for Pearl Buck's writing and Blake being a character based on Buck's missionary first husband whom she divorced to marry her editor and publisher after her early work caused such a stir in the literary world. While I would not say this is one of Buck's best novels such as "The Good Earth", "Imperial Woman", or "The Living Reed", it is a fine novel and well worth reading.