he is what he ate

Coupon Culture

I like to take a reading on the Sunday newspaper coupons a couple of times a year because they are a handy guide to the current state of American Culture. Sort of like divining bird’s entrails, or digging through Dylan’s trash. Today’s reading tells me:

1)Americans still wistfully believe that you can lose weight by drinking canned substances rather than exercising. These canned substances consist mainly of water, sugar, milk, vitamins, and something to make you speed, like caffeine or a pseudoephedrine. This is of course nonsense, as no human being in the history of earth has ever lost weight this way and stayed at that artificially lowered weight for more than half an hour, but it apparently makes people feel that they are doing something about their weight problem and it is much easier than thinking. If one were to think about the problem, it would be obvious that a person could use portion control and exercise to lose weight, thus at least being able to eat small amounts of real food. However, a further examination of the coupon glossies reveals this:

2)Americans have ceased to eat real food, thus cans of flavored sugared milk with vitamins aren’t so awful as they might seem. We now eat things like “Croissant Pockets” filled with pizza (?), “Crescent Dogs” (refrigerated dough that tastes like newspaper wrapped around your imitation “frankfurter” of choice), artificial butter-flavored popcorn (God only knows what that is), frozen one-dish meals with the meat and gravy and everything included so you pry it out into a pan and “cook” it yourself in twenty minutes (the exact amount of time it would take to make scratch rice, brocolli, and sauteed chicken breast with a sauce), coffee in styrofoam cups that tastes just like the cup it comes in, orange-flavored sugar water that “tastes just like orange juice” (so why not just drink orange juice?), pretzels (which are supposed to be slimming, but covered in fudge and chocolate, so you can pretend to be not getting fatter as you gorge), and frozen hamburgers (this is interesting- never in the history of the universe has there been anything easier or faster to make than a real hamburger). All of these items presumably can be nuked of course. And should be.

Erstwhile President Gerald R. Ford attempts to eat a tamale, shuck and all, to the horror of the natives at the World's Fair, San Antonio. He was not subsequently elected (either) as he was not considered bright enough to be President after this. It is unknown if he swallowed the shuck as he was wrestled to the ground by mystified Texans and shielded from the Press, the lying dogs.

3)Tex-Mex items have entered mainstream culture with a vengeance. We have Denny’s advertising flour tortilla breakfast tacos, coupons for Pace salsa and Mission flour tortillas with recipes for ground beef tacos, and a coupon for canned corn with another recipe for “Cheesy Corn Quesadillas” with salsa and hot peppers. This is somehow endearing, but it probably doesn’t taste much like Tex-Mex, more pretends to be than is. It’s kind of a shame to see a great cuisine be all screwed up by marketers again, and again, and again…

tortilla soup (real Tex-Mex)

weird frozen mystery ingredient enchichangadita thingies (not real Tex-Mex)

4) Americans are also eating a variety of foods that was unthinkable in the 50’s of my childhood. Mango and Guava juices, yogurt, bagels, croissants, Nutella (hazelnut and chocolate spread seen only in Europe before yesterday), balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes in our bottled salad dressing, frozen fish with “garlic & herb” coatings, “natural” whole grain breads (what the hell does “natural” mean, anyway? I would say exactly nothing), organic cereals, and of course pizza. Ethnic foods have permeated the old boundaries; New Yorkers are making quesadillas and Texans are eating bagels. Words like “organic” and “natural” are showing up in mass marketing now, surely at least a good sign.

what passed for food in 1955- most Americans ate the plastic, too

5)Modern babies have a lot better selection of diapers than I did. They can choose from swim pants (instead of the horror of a water-soaked, drag-ass cloth one), diapers with built-in “rash guard”, diapers that are like little pants they can pull off and run around naked afterwards. My diapers were big, heavy, cloth things that were decidedly inelegant. This is one area (so to speak) where life has definitely improved. Remember the diaper bucket in the bathroom?

6) PT Barnum lives. Apparently there are people out there who will buy literally anything they lay eyes on. Ridiculous hocum “magic” rings, little “Biker” and “Eskimo” dolls, absurd psuedo-Indian pocketknives, copper things (some imbedded with magic crystals) that will cure anything that ails you, cheap looking Christmas and Easter knick-knackery, diet pills that “melt away fat without exercise”, horrible side-of-the-road plates comemorating dubious events or concepts or Country Western stars, funky girdles and clothes in shocking pastels. If you can think it up, somebody out there is waiting to buy it in three easy installments.

Magic healing crystal shaman Dr. Larry C. Moe at work

Is this a great country or what?

Songwriter Lawton Williams, 85, dies

His country smash 'Fraulein' also was a pop hit in 1957

By BEVERLY KEEL Staff Writer
Published: Saturday, 07/28/07

Songwriter Lawton Williams, known for the 1957 song of the year "Fraulein," as well as "Geisha Girl" and "Color of the Blues," died of a respiratory illness Thursday in Fort Worth, Texas. He turned 85 on Tuesday.

Country singer George Jones said, "He was always very, very nice and a real talent. He finished up 'Color of the Blues' with me, and wrote one of my all-time favorite songs, 'Fraulein.' '' About every third album, Jones wants to recut that song, which he once covered.

"He was pushing all the right country music buttons for that era," said songwriter/producer Bobby Braddock. "He was writing songs that were unique and original and that were hard country at a time when so much country was being influenced by rock and roll and rockabilly. He was a great songwriter and he certainly was an influence on the country part of me."

Born in Troy, Tenn., the fiddler's son was stationed in Houston during World War II. There he learned songwriting from Floyd Tillman.

Mr. Williams enjoyed his first cuts by artists such as Cliff Bruner and Laura Lee McBride and performed on radio stations. He began recording for Sultan and Fortune labels in the late 1940s, and later signed with Four Star, Coral and Imperial.

Songs fit post-war era

Hank Locklin hit No. 4 with "Geisha Girl" and Bobby Helms took "Fraulein" to No. 1 in 1957. This year marks the 50th anniversary of "Fraulein," which was Country Song of the Year at the 1957 Billboard and Cashbox Awards. It spent 52 weeks on the country charts and became a No. 16 pop hit. "They called the song the Texas national anthem because it was such a great two-step song," Braddock said. "The people who had been overseas after World War II and stationed in Germany and dated German girls identified with that song. He did the same thing for those who had been stationed in Japan with 'Geisha Girl.' " Jim Reeves cut "Senor Santa Claus," Gene Watson and Joe Nichols recorded "Farewell Party" and Bobby Bare released "Shame on Me." Mr. Williams, who recorded for Mercury and MCA, once said, "As long as country music fans want to hear traditional country music, that's what I'll be writing and recording." Copyright © 2007, tennessean.com. All rights reserved.

KXOL Radio

I worked for Lawton Williams in the late 60's in Ft Worth radio. It was my second radio job and my first "real" radio gig at a serious station, KXOL. One of the DJs there was a young George Carlin and one of the news guys was Bob Schieffer before he went up to CBS. I was just a teenager with a deep voice and no idea what I was doing, who thought country music was dumb, but I wanted to be in radio so bad that I was willing to play literally anything just to get a gig. My mother, bless her heart, had to

Joe 1969




drive me to my first week on the job because I didn't have my driver's license yet. I had three different radio names as a DJ on the FM station, a Newsman, and as an AM DJ on the weekends. This is where I learned the country music canon and the difference between Willie Nelson, who was obviously very, very hip, and, say, Bill Anderson, who seemed like a cornball, whether he really was or not. Later I learned that even the cornballs in Nashville were usually pretty sharp operators who were a lot hipper than they let on. You don't break into the Bigs by being a dumbass, and even if you do, you sure don't stay there long. One time I was interviewing Willie for an Armadillo Texas Tour after he moved back to Texas and he was doing his outlaw thing and none of the hippies knew who he was yet and I asked him if anybody in Nashville smoked dope (this was how we distinguished the hipsters from the squares) and his reply was "everybody in Nashville smokes dope". He was of course only half serious, but he was also making a point. Nashville was never as square as the face it tried to put on itself for the benefit of the audience, and if those square Moms and Pops from Indiana who were making pilgrimages to the Opry to see all those clean, nice young people sing those clean, nice songs, knew what kind of hanky panky was going on backstage and on the buses and at some of those parties, they'd have had their minds blown. Hell, the cleanest, squarest person on the Opry stage was probably a cross-dressing farm-animal fetishist in his spare time.

Lawton was also the announcer at Big D Jamboree at the Dallas Sportatorium on Saturday nights over KRLD-TV and had that kind of smooth old-style radio voice like Grant Turner at the Opry. The Jamboree came on television every Saturday along with the Panther Hall preview show "Cowtown Jamboree,"(the acts who were playing on Saturday night at the dance hall would do a couple of songs on TV to promo it),The Ernest Tubb Show, The Wilburn Brothers (I would later spend a memorable, alcohol-fueled day with Doyle when we escaped the clutches of FanFare and went to a bar instead) and the goofy local Cowboy Weaver Show, who had a Saturday Night Country Music Review in his front yard or something. He was awful, like watching a car wreck. The prototype for Roadhog. Bill Anderson had a TV show too, and he was so worried about his weak voice that he called himself "Whispering Bill" and he used a really expensive Neumann U67 studio microphone and had them put a ton of reverb on it, which nobody else did at the time. TV sound was, in those days, an afterthought and almost uniformly lousy, so I noticed that stuff. On a lot of those shows you couldn't really even hear the band because they were using only one mic, on the singer, and letting the band bleed into it, just like the old radio show days. The Roadhog records parody that kind of thing when you hear him ask somebody in the band a question and they answer from 'way off-mic across the room. The steel player would take a solo and you'd barely hear him, and the drummer might as well have not even showed up.

Working for Lawton was a trip since I had grown up seeing him on TV. He was a Nashville insider and big-timer, of course, and he'd throw names around like "Chet" and "Willie" all the time, and he was putting in a new country format at KXOL-FM (this was when FM radio wasn't listened to; nobody had FM receivers and it was where all the experiments took place) that Chet was urging him to try out, playing a lot of country music with strings like Chet's "Countrypolitan" Nashville sound. It was around then that Ray Price and Eddy Arnold took off their overalls and silly hats and put on tuxedos and added strings and harps and stuff to their records and tried to appeal more to women working at home and less to redneck male barflies listening to jukeboxes in little joints. Our format was really revolutionary because it presaged the whole movement of country music away from its male, middle-aged, low-income, rural and transplanted-country-folks-in-the-city-beginnings to a more female, middle-class, urban, younger audience. Chet Atkins started it and it never stopped moving in that direction, because that's where the money is, and Chet was tired of a big country hit being 10,000 45's sold primarily to jukeboxes when pop acts were selling a million LPs. Even Willie tried to do it Chet's way, putting on turtleneck sweaters and wearing sharkskin suits and beatle boots and singing real jazzy and slick with zero vibrato ("The Party's Over" had a whole string section on it, and it was a great arrangement, too) and combing his hair real nice.

When Lawton would talk to you, it would sound like an old-time country person. He'd say "mil-yone" for "million" and he'd try to say "I" in a more "refined" fashion than a hayseed "ah" and it would come out "Aaaeee" sort of long, and goofy. I think being around him was very eye-opening because it caused me to realize that the big time wasn't actually out of reach for a kid from Ft. Worth, that it was something very real and very there for the taking if you were smart and tough and lucky and talented. He wore a stetson sort of cocked in a jaunty angle, bigger than the Open Road style that LBJ wore. He would soon leave for another job, I think perhaps at KCUL where Bill Mack and some of those guys worked, and I never saw him again.

Pépère and Louie stuffing boudin

Making Boudin

I decided I just had to have some fresh real boudin yesterday, so I made the pilgrimage to Fiesta Grocery (the only place in Austin I have been able to find pork liver so far) and HEB (for pork trimmings and pork shoulder roast). I used my boudin recipe (see my July 9 '07 post) as best I could- I ran one cup short of rice but it doesn't matter, just means a meatier sausage- and it was great fun, if rather an all-day sucker.

I got to use my new (very old) Enterprise sausage stuffer for the first time and once I had all the parts in the right places, that baby put out six pounds of boudin in about ten minutes, unlike the little stuffer attachment I had been using with my big pro mixer. My grandson Louie helped, learning some actual (as opposed to some phony-ass hypocrite politician's) family values along the way...

I also made up a batch of Toulouse sausage and some venison sausage. Our wonderful new next-door neighbors, Denis and Page, brought us some really superb Axis deer meat that they had hunted recently. He also informed me that he had killed a feral hog and was having it dressed and butchered, which gave me chills of anticipation just thinking about the things I could do with some of that wild pork meat. If there is in fact a merciful God, I think he just proved it to me again.

I cut and seasoned the sausage meats and put them in the fridge to cure overnight, so that the salts and seasonings could actually enter into the intersticial tissues of the meat and fat before I grind them today.

I have Kimmie's grandfather's sausage grinder, a very old one that he used to make sausage out of everything from armadillo to deer to possum. He'd make wine from wild Texas Mustang grapes and from the Italian grapes he had planted too. We'd have gotten along just fine. I like to try to imagine the farm housewife who owned that Enterprise, and all the fruit and sausage and lard (it is also a basket press) and wine she used it to put up. It gives me a deep-down pleasure to use old things, especially if they belonged to an ancestor. I have my grandmother Alene's cast-iron skillet and Revere saucepans and my Grandfather Cecil's 30-30 saddle carbine and a rose bush taken from my other grandfather, Tobe's, garden. Tobe was a cowboy who grew up herding Texas Longhorns on his father's ranch, then became a gasoline plant super, but who grew roses with his thick cowboy hands. I like that. Grandmama Alene was French and the best fried-chicken cook in Stephens County and she too was known to make her own breakfast pan-sausage, redolent of sage, because she knew hers was better than that old store-bought stuff any day...

Breckinridge, Main Street, 1920, Stephens County, Texas

So today I will grind the meat in old Mijo's hand-cranked machine and then press the sausage mixture through the old Enterprise black beauty into the pork gut and freeze it, ready to be made into Cassoulet and Choucroute Garni. The venison/pork mixture will be spicier, with plenty of cayenne, garlic, and coriander seed, sage, thyme, and of course lots of salt. I will then smoke it at around 200 degrees for many hours in my big backyard smoker with the firebox off to the side so the flames never see the meat at all, just the hot smoky air as it passes over it on the way up the chimney at the other end. That sausage will be mahogany-colored, smoky, and assertive, like Texans have learned to make from our German and Czech immigrants.

Toulouse sausage is a fresh, coarsely ground pork link with nothing in it but salt, pepper, and a hint of nutmeg, which makes it interesting. We have had sausages much like it all across southern Europe, from Venice to Aix to the Basque coast on the Atlantic ocean as it washes the beaches of Spain. Many of them have nothing in them but salt and pepper, period. Some of them have Quatre Epices, especially the "white" ones like Bratwurst or Boudin Blanc. It took some getting used to years ago, when I thought all sausage was garlicky, smoked, and very much like a Kielbasa-type. However, now I would be horrified to find one of those smoked babies in my Cassoulet or my Fagioli con la salsiccia. Gumbo, now that's another story...

Here's a great sausage dish I learned in the little Jura village of Morteau, famous for its Sausage of Jesus, which is traditional in the French Reveille Christmas celebration:

Smoked Pork Sausages Morteau

At the Boulangerie Jeannot in the French village of Morteau, Jean sells his version of the renowned Le Jesus de Morteau sausage. This is a lightly smoked coarsely ground pork sausage with no garlic. One of the wonderful things about talking to a real butcher is that Jean will also advise you on the ideal way to cook the products he sells.



A golden, smoked Le Jesus de Morteau and a foot stuffed with the same sausage meat.

Homestyle Saucisse au Vin Blanc:

1 lb lightly smoked pork sausage, preferably without garlic seasoning. A fresh pork sausage will also work.
1 T. butter
1 lb. Small new potatoes
1 med yellow onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 bottle light white wine- Alsatian or other inexpensive dry Reisling
1 T. Tomato paste
Handful of fresh Thyme or 1/4 t. dried
1 bay leaf
fresh minced parsley

Jean

In an earthenware casserole, heat the butter over medium heat and brown the sausage. Add the onion and cook five more minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, leaving the covering slightly ajar to permit steam to escape. Cook at a slow simmer for 40 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked. Serves 4.