Our Texas Heritage: Ethnic Traditions And Recipes is a truly wonderful compendium and survey of the history of Texas food culture that is the result of the combined influences and culinary legacies of thirteen unique ethnic groups ranging from early Texas settlers down to the present day. From Grandma Techa's Menudo, Dark Irish Soda Bread, and German Potato Salad, to Ukrainian Pickled Mushrooms, Kneydlakh (Matzo Balls), Kransekage (Traditional Danish Wedding Cake), and Italian Baked Eggplant, Our Texas Heritage is an outstanding testament to the rich and diverse culinary spectrum that has fed and feasted Texas for more than two hundred years.

Chicken fried steak isn't the only yummy thing served in Texas.

Ever since the Spaniards encountered the Native Americans, the opportunities in Texas have attracted people from all over the world. Many families continue to celebrate favorite traditions carried from their original homeland or culture.

Our Texas Heritage includes traditional recipes, modified for today's kitchen, that are fun and simple to follow. Just as enticing are the stories and traditions the author liberally sprinkles among the recipes.

Use the book as a travel resource when exploring the Texas highways. Discover the Polish and their customs in Panna Maria, the Wends in Serbin, or the Danes in Danevang.

As a newcomer to Texas, I found this book a delightful way to discover the diversity of my new home.

I learned so much about my _own_ heritage by reading Ms. McConachie's book. She simplifies the recipes of our grandmothers into a form that we can all use -- and the recipes are delicious! I especially enjoyed making the Danish apple cake and the Syrian-Lebanese Meat Pies. I've tasted a bit more of Texas through this book. Whether you're a history buff, cook, or one just interested in the life and food of years past, this book is for you!

I have used this recipe book practically every day for the past 4 months. There is not one recipe that was a disappointment. Most were fantastic. They salsas are out of this world! Best of all I have lost 12 pounds!! Every day my husband says "This is the best dinner I have ever had." I just ordered two more books for my daughter and daughter-in-law.

This has become our favorite cookbook. I like spicey food, but not overly hot spicey food, and these receipes are perfect. Our favs: Lime-Curry Chicken Breast (pg 228), Spicy Mango Salsa (pg 173 - with any grilled fish or chicken), Avocado & Jicama Salsa (pg 197 - again with any grilled fish or chicken).

The recipes are varied and quite ecclectic, but remain easy to prepare. The instructions are detailed and most of the ingredients are readily available. This is definately the cookbook I use the most!

Terry Thompson-Anderson has produced a marvelous collection of Texas recipes, beautiful photos of food and scenery from around the Lone Star state, and a wonderful contribution to the exciting new Texas cuisine that is sweeping the southwest and beyond. As a native Texan I found the book not only a delight to the eyes, but a wondrous and far-ranging assortment of recipes with ingredients and influences from all over the state. Of special note are such heady entrees as the "Slow-Smoked Quail on Savory Bread Pudding withThree-Chili Sauce" (using Scamorza Cheese from the Mozzarella Company in Dallas) and the "Grilled Medallions of Venison Backstrap with Ancho Chili and Honey Sauce" - fabulous! Throughout there are wine recommendations from the growing number of Texas wineries; definitions of cooking terms and ingredients; and a "Texas Cook's Pantry" telling where to find hard-to-get ingredients. Texas on the Plate is a delight to use and a pleasure to read.

The recipes are wonderful and the book itself full of gorgeous photos, drawings and, in general, just wonderfully produced. I'm buying several for Christmas gifts for out-of-state relatives and friends. I'm new to the state and this is a fabulous introduction to the food and customs.

Definitely goes "beyond bbq and chili" to wonderful fusion of the traditional and the most up-to-date. You will not be sorry you bought this.

This is a beautiful cookbook! Even if you have lived in Texas your whole life, you will see places you haven't glimpsed. Having been born in Texas and raised on the variety of foods available here, I love how these recipes take it to a higher level. The recipes are perfect...though not always easy, they are always worthy of the effort. I made the cover dish first thing and got raves from all who ate it. I love the way she pairs the Texas wines with each meal. And she tells so much about Texas...research well done!

I received a copy from my cousin who assisted in the book's production. I was quite impressed with the contents of the recipes. The stories and anecdotes were warm, charming, and helpful to a novice cook. I tried several recipes that I never thought I would attempt, yet they were very easy to follow. I introduced "Texas Ties" to my mother, who promptly had to have a copy. Good job, Houston!

Texas Ties is a great read and a must have for cookbook collectors. The family stories are all very warm and include some cooking tips I haven't seen anywhere else. The Comfort Foods section is unique. The recipes include all fresh ingredients - upscale recipes for the ordinary cook. Every recipe has turned out great.

My mother-in-law gave me this book, and I have loved everything I've made from it. I made the white gazpacho for a wedding shower, the white chocolate/blackberry cookies and the "drunken brie" for a baby shower, and the jalapeno potatoes au gratin for a potluck. Most of the recipes have only a few, not-too-exotic ingredients. The cooking instructions are easy to follow. I highly recommend this book, even for the beginning cook.

A Thyme To Remember: Generations Of Recipes Handed Down For Today is a beautifully presented compilation of outstanding recipes showcasing dishes and cuisines that were literally passed down from generation to generation as family favorites. The recipes are colorfully organized into sections titled: A Handful of Savors (appetizers and beverages); A Handful of Herbs (salads); A Handful Flour (hearty breads and soups); A Handful of Sunshine (sweet breads and brunch); A Handful of Flavors (main entrees); A Handful of Seasonings (vegetables); A Handful of Sugar; cakes, cookies and pies); A Handful of Heaven (decadent desserts); and The Final Touch (nutritional charts, index, recipe contributors, and ordering information). From Bleu Cheese and Spiced Walnut Terrine; Dried Cherry Chicken Salad; Aunt Effie's Monkey Bread; and Hazelnut Meusli; to Bavarian Meat Loaf; Cabbage and Sweet Pepper Medley; Mother's Lazy Daisy Cake and Broiled Coconut Icing; and Watermelon Granita, A Thyme To Remember will become an instant family favorite meal planning reference whether for daily family fare or special celebratory occasions!

Initially drawn to the book because of its appearance - very pretty. Recipes are easy to prepare and delicious.

Many recipes are original and not found in any other cookbook. Was given a list of foolproof recipes from a friend who recommended the book. I am surprised at how many of the recipes I have tried already.

Good purchase.

Beautiful book with great recipes. More upscale than home cooking, but easy to use. Killer desserts -especially the Texas Peach Belini Cake and White Chocolate Bread Pudding. Lots of good recipes for a variety of salads, especially asian salad dressings. A gold seal says it's the official millennium cookbook for Dallas.

This isn't just a cookbook, it's a visual feast. Just reading the recipes makes you want to run to the kitchen and rattle the pots and pans. It is a MUST HAVE for anyone who loves to cook or even someone who doesn't, because it tempts you into trying each and every dish. Easy steps, well explained and palate pleasing. You won't be sorry and you will be the envy at every dinner party. GET IT NOW!!!

This is a great cookbook. I've had time to experiment with several of the recipes and am very pleased with the results I've obtained. I can't wait to entertain again - this stuff is great! Thanks!

This book has delightful and tasty receipes. It is for the discriminating cook as well as those of us that are more "common" with our talents. The variety will carry you through the year and still have a good surprise for New Years dinner the next year. Check out the photos and you will see how down home cooking can be presented elegantly!

Casa Adobe is a terrific source book for those contemplating living in an adobe or any other earthen style home. Photographs with informaive descriptions tease the casual reader, while those already familiar with Mexico, Arizona, and the Southwest immediately jump head first into the well-written, beautifully illustrated text. Joe P. Carr and Karen Witynski take you to Sante Fe and the surrounding areas with early photographs of adobe structures. Then you are taken to country and contempory homes and structures that best reflect what Casa Adobe is all about. The last chapter of the book is especially helpful foranyone interested in adobe, stucco, or rammed earth homes. It gives sources and individuals to contact as well as galleries and suppliers. My next purchas will be Casa Yucatan, written and photographed by the same collaborative authors.

Casa Adobe depicts homes, haciendas and holiday getaways that have blended handcrafted details, natural materials, and cross-cultural furnishings to express the elegant simplicity of adobe homes, from their humble beginnings to their current renaissance.
--Natural Home Magazine, December 2001

Many people find the lines and textures of an adobe building at once seductive and compelling. This book is all about the unique aesthetic of houses made of mud. Third in a series of four books on popular residential design in Mexico and the Southwest, this book contains photos of spectacular adobe homes, inside and out, in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and various places in Mexico.

The book documents the evolution of adobe from its historic past to its most modern applications, including interior details and architectural elements. The authors chose well the buildings they use as examples for their premise that "adobe is an old tradition with a new future," the recurring theme of the book.
--New Mexico Magazine, May 2002

I absolutely love this cookbook. My dad has a recipe in it and it is fabulous. It is called "Roger.....Cookoff Chili". This recipe alone is reason to buy the book. It is true TEXAS chili. My dad is the best. That's all.

When I go to make anything I always go to this book first.The recipes are simple and easy to follow. I usually have the ingredients on hand. My favorite is the No Peek Stew. I can put it in the oven 3 hours ahead of the meal and forget about it. It is a complete meal in a dish. I also love the Texas Cake which is one of my children's favorite. There are many great appetizers recipes that I always use for my parties time and time again.

This is my favorite cookbook because I can pick any recipe from it, follow the directions and it turns out great. My children like the Chicken and Wild Rice. What I love about it is I can put it in the oven on low and cook it while I run the kids to lessons and practices. The Texas Gold Bars are a popular dessert with my friends and my Bunco group loves the Hot Artichoke Dip and too many others to list!

Ann Cummins sets most of the twelve stories in her debut collection, RED ANT HOUSE, in small desert towns and reservation communities that dot the American Southwest --- locales surrounded by "miles and miles of sand" and not much else. This extreme setting, which she evokes through tactile details, informs almost every aspect of the book, creating an atmosphere of hostile uncertainty, determining the course of characters' actions, affecting and even invading them: "The inside of the cab felt like sand, and so did the inside of her mouth," Cummins writes in "Headhunter." "The tops of her arms had separated into hundreds of little lines, and her hand, when she touched it to her tongue, tasted like salt . . . The absence of moisture gave the landscape an edge, like glass."

Cummins, who studied and now teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University, uses this jagged terrain to create tension in her stories and evoke the desolation of its inhabitants. She renders this landscape in rough-hewn prose that bursts with short, targeted sentences and blunt declarations of brutal insights. The result is a collection of textured stories that are shorn of all unnecessary words and details: they are rangy but precise, unpredictable but seemingly ineluctable.

Several of the stories here, including "Bitterwater" and the standout "Trapeze," are about whites living on reservations, "company people" who feel like outsiders and who chafe at the wide-open boredom of the desert. They feel constantly on their guard, never at home in their own homes, and always looking beyond the horizon for a means of escape.

Theirs is an anywhere-but-here mentality. In the short "Dr. War Is a Voice on the Phone," Dina abandons her sick aunt and her uncle snoring in his chair to join a man who called her out of the blue. For her, strangers like Dr. War are preferable to family, and the unknown --- despite its threats and dangers --- is more attractive than the known.

Cummins writes persuasively about this need for escape, which is strongest and most artfully pronounced in the stories narrated by young girls just reaching or still suffering through adolescence, frightened by the demands of adulthood and the larger world. In "Where I Work," a young woman cherishes her new apartment and dreams about how she will furnish it, yet she cannot hold down a job to pay for it. In "Bitterwater," Brenda rushes into a teenage marriage to a Todacheene Indian named Manny, only to watch him grow from an idealistic young man into a jaded drunk.

"Whatever's happening inside you," a cancer-ridden mother tells her son, Peter, in "Crazy Yellow," "remember that you are about to change. If you feel like you're in a well, you're about to climb out of it. That's the nature of life." She doesn't warn him, however, about the terrors that await him on the surface. Left alone while his mother undergoes more tests, Peter stirs up more trouble for himself than he could imagine. The tragic inevitability of climbing out of that well makes this and the other stories in RED ANT HOUSE so devastating.

Ultimately, these characters long for "one sweet moment" away from the world and all its troubles. Few of them get to enjoy it, but their dreams of something more than the wasteland around them enliven these solid, sturdy stories and reveal Cummins as a genuinely talented and immensely sensitive writer.

--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

If you like impeccable prose combined with the dark details that make us all human, mixed in with a little surrealism, this collection is for you. Ann Cummins is a masterful writer--no wonder she gets the great quote from Dave Eggers!--and I will look forward to her future work. Each one of these stories packs a very powerful punch and will leave you emotionally affected, no matter how tough you think you are. :)

2003 is shaping up to be a really great year for short story lovers. Already this year John Murray published "A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies," ZZ Packer published "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," and now Ann Cummins gives us the terrific "Red Ant House." These stories are the best single collection I've read since Flannery O'Conner published "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The characters are real and the stories are memorable. I've read Cummins in the "New Yorker" and in the "Best American Short Stories," but it is a real treat to have 12 of her stories in one book. She's just about as good as it gets when it comes to short stories. Happy reading!

I was so inspired by this book, that I used it to plan a one week gastronomic vacation in Texas. Using this book as a guide, we got several of my fellow Texans living in Nooooo Yawk City together a scavenger hunt around the Hill Country in search of food, golf and honky tonks using this book as a guide. The record weight gain by a member of our expedition was 8 pounds, which is a pretty strong recommendation for this book. I strongly suggest renting youself a bigass Cadillac or SUV and doing a tour yourself w/ Texas on the Halfshell at your side. Of note, although the authors do mention their propensity to get speeding tickets on their one year drive around Texas, they did not give any details of where the Dept of Public Safety guys were hiding. Watch out for the uncompromising DPS cowboy in Dripping Springs. He will refuse to believe that you haven't been drinking if you've been to Lukenbach, which I hadn't. God Bless Texas!!!!

As previous writer, it is the best TexMex cookbook ever published. I have had my copy since it was published in 1982. Pages have worn out, I have to find another copy. These recipies are not for the squimish, but for people who have a taste for the hotter side.

Do not use this book if you are looking for nuevo Tex Mex or heart healthy, dietetic fare. I've been using this cook book for over 10 years as my basic, definitive reference for classic recipies. While it is the best book that I have ever seen for its shear number of award wining chili recipies, it is also excellent for salsas, barbeque (dry rubs and sauces), beans (Red Caldwell's Beans-R-Best) and chicken fried steak. Believe everything they say about technique and difficulty of making good Texas barbeque. I have just about worn out my second copy and will soon start looking for my third.