Austinites strut their food stuff at book festival

'Stirring It Up With Molly Ivins'

It's been almost five years since Molly Ivins died, but that doesn't make it any easier for Ivins' longtime friend Ellen Sweets to drive by the places they used to frequent: Magnolia Cafe, Fonda San Miguel, Polvo's, the old Las Manitas downtown.

Sweets and Ivins met in 1990 at a dinner party, and Sweets, who was living in Dallas and writing about food for The Dallas Morning News at the time, quickly became part of Ivins' inner circle, the people who knew Ivins not for her well-known syndicated newspaper column but for who she was behind the printed word, especially in the kitchen.

Sweets captures the Ivins she knew — and so often cooked with — in a new book, "Stirring It Up With Molly Ivins," (University of Texas Press, $29.95) that she'll be talking about at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Texas Book Festival. (Disclosure: Sweets occasionally contributes as a freelancer to the Statesman food section, and I'll be moderating her talk on Sunday.)

The book weaves together stories and recipes that tell not just a story of Ivins and her peers, but of Austin itself.

"I wanted to bring out a side of Molly that so many people didn't know," Sweets said, including her love of gumbo and cooking for others.

Sweets interviewed others who were close to the legendary writer, including Jim Hightower, who recalled bringing ice cream to Ivins in the middle of the night during her last hospital stay. She also includes recipes for favorite dishes they used to share.

In a way, Sweets brings Ivins back to life with these vivid stories. You can almost hear their jovial banter in the kitchen and at the grocery store, arguing over who forgot the grocery list.

"If there's one thing that I hope people would take away it's the importance of being in touch with friends — the value of friendships and sitting down and having a meal together," Sweets said. "It doesn't have to be fancy."

In fact, one of the best dinner parties she recalls having with Ivins featured a menu of hot dogs, sausages, cole slaw, potato salad and beer. Nothing special, except for the company.

'A Mess of Greens'

Who knew tomatoes could be so empowering?

In the early 1900s, as many as half a million young girls throughout the country, but especially in the South, participated in tomato clubs, where they had to plant one-tenth of an acre of tomatoes, which would provide more tomatoes than they or their families could use in a year.

"This forced them to have to learn how to can them, market them and sell them - and then they could do whatever they wanted with the money," said Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, a University of Texas professor whose new book, "A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food," (University of Georgia Press, $24.95) explores the history of women and food in the South.

Pressure cookers and glass jars weren't abundant, so these girls were learning lessons in soldering, chemistry and the technology of the day, skills that they weren't necessarily being taught elsewhere.

"I think that was one of the real attractions to girls," Engelhardt said. "It felt modern and progressive. They were getting to participate in a world" outside the small towns they usually called home.

Engelhardt dug through hundreds of letters, community cookbooks and market bulletins (a precursor to newsletters) to learn how women were using food to make money, communicate with one another and assert themselves in their communities. In many ways, rural farm women in the South were the original locavores, figuring out how to put a meal on the table when food throughout the region was scarce.

"We are at this moment where we have all these mythologies around Southern food, which is great - but for many years, the Southern food story was one of not having enough," she said. "We usually skip that step. But when you dig (into these letters and publications), they hold stories of amazing hope."

At 11:15 a.m. Saturday at the Capitol, Engelhardt will talk about tomato clubs and other discoveries she made during her research with local farmers Carol Ann Sayle of Boggy Creek and Stephanie McClenny of Confituras and moderator Marla Camp, publisher of Edible Austin.