Cross Creek Cookery by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

"My father used to say this grace at table: 'Receive our thanks, our Heavenly Father, for these mercies. Bless them to our bodies' good, for Thy name's sake. Amen.'
     Food imaginatively and lovingly prepared, and eaten in good company, warms the being with something more than the mere intake of calories. I cannot conceive of cooking for friends or family, under reasonable conditions, as being a chore. Food eaten in unpleasant circumstances is unblessed to our bodies' good---and so is a drug-store sandwich---or a raw duck. Some of my dishes, such as alligator-tail steak or Minorcan gopher stew may horrify the delicate, who may consider them, too, unblessed. I have included nothing that is not extremely palatable, and the reader or student of culinary arts may either believe me or fall back in cowardly safety on a standard cook book."
                -Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek Cookery

In following up that quote, this is surely NOT a standard cookbook. Open a cookbook on your shelf and tell me, do you see: Florida Soft-Shell Turtle (Cooter) Soup; Aunt Effie's Custard Johnny Cake; Poke Wee, Cross Creek; Cow-peas; Swamp Cabbage Salad; Orange Lake Frog-legs; Shrimp Pilau; Pot Roast of Bear; Sweet Potato Pone, Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie, Mayhaw Jelly? Hmm...I didn't think so.

Cross Creek Cookery makes interesting reading but I would not recommend it as a cookbook since the ingredient amounts and directions are ambiguous, at best. I read it in preparation for the class I am teaching on Rawlings, the author. Apparently she wrote it in response to requests by fans of Cross Creek, her chronicle, or memoir, of her experiences living in "this enchanted place" in North Central Florida. The longest chapter in Cross Creek is "Our Daily Bread," describing many popular foods of the region and admitting to culinary skill being her greatest vanity: "For my part, my literary ability may safely be questioned as harshly as one wills, but indifference to my table puts me in a rage."

Many of the recipes are very rich, involving plenty of her Jersey cow Dora's butter and cream. A friend said she should include a Jersey cow with each cookbook!

The longest section is desserts. Caution: Your mouth will likely water!

I will rate Cross Creek Cookery a 3.5. It seems a bit odd to rate or blog this book since I didn't actually read it "kivver to kivver." I did read all the narratives which were pretty entertaining and skimmed the menus and recipes. Most are too labor-intensive for me! And as I mentioned, often not very concise. I recommend it to fans of Rawlings, especially as a companion to Cross Creek, but as a cooking tool, not so much.