"marinated mushrooms" news and stories

Before writing this piece, I checked the Slashfood archives to make sure that I wasn't repeating something that had recently been covered. I needn't have worried; while we've had a few posts on German food over the years, our coverage has tended to focus on chocolate cake, beer, and potato salad, in that order.

While unfortunate, this is totally understandable. Although once a respected cuisine, German food has fallen on hard times. Rich in flavor, it is also rich in fat and salt, and lacks the exuberant seasoning of Italian food or the light freshness of nouvelle cuisine. It is a warming cuisine for a cold climate and, with its emphasis on preserved vegetables and cheap cuts of meat, it seems out-of-place in our fast-paced, refrigerator-dependent world.

The thing is, German food is attractive, cheap, and flavorful. Easy to prepare and a pleasure to eat, it is home cooking in the most meaningful sense of the word. What's more, by reducing serving sizes, playing with accompaniments and adjusting ingredients, it is possible to enjoy the reassuring warmth of German seasoning without breaking our increasingly health-conscious American diets.

In the days before blogs and email, groups of women (and it was almost always women back in those days) relied on the technology of their time to share recipes and cooking tips. They were often brought together by their membership at churches, synagogues or charitable organizations. One woman would be in charge of gathering the recipes, while another (typically one who had worked as a secretary prior to her marriage) would handle the typing. Together (with contributions from their group members) they would produce monthly or semi-monthly newsletters like the one you see above.

I found this one tucked into an old Sunset cookbook in the back of my cousin's cookbook cabinet when I was over there on Sunday night (also when I found the Velveeta pamphlet). After the jump there's another recipe from the newsletter that didn't fit in the picture.