Texas Cookbook

Texas Cookbook - Texas is a big state and many of its features are on a grand scale. Texas offers a variety of climates and terrains—sunny seacoasts, mile-high mountains, teeming bayous, dense forests, cactus-studded deserts, and grassy plains. Texas is big cities, vast ranches, huge farms, petroleum production and burgeoning high-tech industries. Texas is the Alamo, the Cowboys, the Oilers, the Rangers, the Astros. It is the home of NASA—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Texas is great food. From the indigenous population to the coming of the Europeans and wave after wave of immigrants. Some food styles were imported from other parts of the United States along with the migrations from the South, the Midwest and the East. Other cuisines traveled with new Texans from the south; Texas is a vigorous variety of food styles. Today's Texas-style foods, as featured in the Texas Cook Book, include Tex-Mex, barbecue, Creole and Cajun, Asiatic and European of various ethnic sources. And, it makes use of such home-grown produce as chile peppers, black-eyed beans, grapefruit, pecans and peanuts, fish and shrimp from the gulf, beef from Texas-size herds and barbecued foods that use native mesquite for fuel and smoke. To live in Texas is to celebrate life. Food festivals abound: chili cookoffs, shrimp harvests, barbecue contests, bed-and breakfasts, Oktoberfests, Wurstfests, chuck-wagon cooking, local harvest events, fine restaurants and resorts. Recipes included in the Texas Cook Book were submitted by executive chefs at famous Texas resorts, bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants. Others are from the collections of Texas homemakers, Texas food growers and manufacturers. From Texas, the Texas Cook Book offers you appetizers, breakfasts, salads, soups, chili, breads, Tex-Mex, main dishes, barbecues, side dishes, desserts and beverages—enjoy them as the Texans do, wherever you live!