When what to eat is in question — try something new

Moving is a cathartic experience. In a disposable society it may go without saying — purge often. Life in the Branton family was anything but disposable.

As discussed among artists at a free workshop Saturday at A&E Gallery, creative types can’t throw anything away. They recycle. There is always another use for someone else’s trash. The group was cutting up discarded elementary books, magazines, gluing on buttons, painting boxes and booklets that make wonderful journals and are also works of art.

Had I met artist Marcie Melancon earlier, the treasure chest of delightful handmade journals may have consisted of a lot of cookbooks, many of which have been discarded — but not all.

Keepsake Reading Material

Stored in three locations at the old house, my new house now has a collection of cookbooks on a pantry shelf at eye-level where the enticing titles can woo the creative chef, although this brings a confession — my skills in the kitchen are without merit. Award winning was Earlene Branton’s claim to fame for Oyster-Artichoke Soup. Ann Patout recently affirmed the boast again reflecting on our Christmas Eve tradition shared with her family this year — mother’s recipe, my obedience.

Elsie Branton Meaux, my sister, is also an excellent cook with a gift for combining different ingredients to make dishes like the best restaurants anywhere. She got the knack by experimenting. I, on the other hand, in my rush to build a career during the formative years, mastered fast cooking in the microwave. Steamed vegetables and processed meats.

Sure there were the occasional crowd pleasers like mother’s spaghetti with meat sauce, my grandmother’s inspired Mimi casserole or an old boyfriend’s oven baked stroganoff. But original creations were not my forte. I still rely on a recipe.

Inherited Treasures

Now we come to the crux of the matter. Cookbooks are printed to provide instructions to countless delicious dishes most of us will never try. But we can dream.

Vyrah Mann, one of the aunts that helped to raise Earlene Branton after her mother’s death, was a gourmet cook. She had more than 600 cookbooks in her collection at the time of her death at 94. Most had been read cover to cover and many proved to contain winning recipes — in her eyes and our stomachs.

Every visit to Aunt Vyrah’s home since childhood brought a delightful surprise — a new dish she was trying for the first time. Many of them included unique ingredients or spices. Some invariably contained a liquor or flambé treatment. The fire removed the alcohol effect, she claimed, but the flavor remained.

Handwritten in the margin of many of her cookbooks were changes she would make or notations as to the like or dislike of the recipe. When she moved from Memphis to Fordyce to live with her sister, many of the books were tossed or sold at the estate sale. Still 600 or so remained. Some of them are now at home in New Iberia.

The titles alone are walks down memory lane. “Easy Basics for International Cooking” is a heart’s desire along with “It’s Greek to me!” I may love to eat international but cooking it is better left to the experts. Keeping “New Kosher Cuisine” meant good intentions during Passover, but it’s barely been opened. Too many unfamiliar dishes and ingredients to tackle alone.

Although cooking in the microwave is a preferred method, the book “Tout de Suite a la Microwave” is not a resource. It was written by a high school classmate’s mother. A well used classic is “Talk About Good.”

Church cookbooks and other favorite restaurants, community collections and more are now at arm’s length — perhaps there is still hope to becoming a good cook.

Finding the well-worn, coverless, stained cookbook that was mother’s favorite “go-to” cookbook, Mildred G. Swift’s “Looking at Cooking and Garden Jobs,” inspired this column.

Something New

Unlike the collection I hope to cook from in coming weeks, “Paleo” for crock-pot, smoothies and juices, the “Ice Cream Cookbook,” “Salad Herbs,” “Holiday Jar Mixes,” the 2015 Cajun Creole Cookbook and our “2008 Family Traditions Cookbook,” I really do hope to find some new delights in these books. At least I’ve offered some here for you today.

The rest is up to you.

Dig out your old cookbooks and explore something new for the season of Lent. Get creative, the call for cookbook entries will be coming soon.