Cookbook Introduction & Acknowledgements
Hi everyone,
Cookbook Introduction
Introduction &
Acknowledgements
Why We Updated our
Church Cookbook
Fundraising
is most often the reason for developing a community cookbook, a practice dating
back to 1864 in the United States when Maria J. Moss published and sold A Poetical Cookbook to raise money to
help subsidize medical costs for Union soldiers.
Almost all households have a community
cookbook passed down by family members, as I do. Mine is Grecian Festival by the Sea, a church cookbook that my mother
edited and collated from recipes contributed by church members. M.F.K. Fisher,
the exquisite writer of all thing’s culinary, commented in her book The Art of Eating that “community
cookbooks are utterly useless unless you know some of the women whose prized
recipes are printed in them.” Fortunately, I know all of them. Many years ago,
I remember asking my mother if she would write down her recipes. She agreed by
including them in the Grecian Festival by
the Sea cookbook, but put other people’s names on them. She even had my
name on a recipe! xii
The first
edition of the Grecian Festival by the
Sea cookbook was dedicated to the new Greek Orthodox church built in 1991
in Long Beach, California, a church built to resemble the white-washed churches
adorning the Greek Islands. The origins of this community Grecian cookbook
remain stamped in my memory as a maze of white 4x6-inch index cards covering
the floor of our family room. All the recipes were handwritten because my
mother didn’t type. The recipes were accepted at face value and not re-tested
for accuracy nor organized with a template in mind. In all honesty, I think
information was lost in translation before the cookbook was sent to the print
shop. Certain accepted food brands in 1991 are no longer
available. When I first began using the cookbook, questions came to mind: Did
Yia Yia (grandma) really use an official measuring cup or was it a handful?
What do the initials t.p. really mean – tablespoon, teaspoon, toilet paper or
is it a typo?
Many years ago, I tried making my mother’s “famous” butter tea cookies (kourabiethes), the kind of cookie made with real butter and covered in mounds of sifted powdered sugar. Everyone loved them so much that church members would often ask my mother to whip up a couple hundred for special occasions such as a baptism or a wedding. My kourabiethes tasted good, but in my hands, the recipe made only two dozen cookies instead of four dozen as written in the cookbook. After several failed attempts trying to make four dozen cookies, I asked my mother, “What happened? What did I do wrong?”
“Oh,” she
replied. “That’s a typo. It should be two dozen”
That’s
when I knew I would like to edit this local treasure of family recipes
graciously contributed by the church ladies. No more t.p. abbreviations and
incorrect dozens. According to my calculations, if I re-cooked at least four
recipes each year for 30 years, I would be done with the cookbook by the start
of my retirement. I retired, and the new cookbook edition is still a dream, but
now with a glimmer of hope. A team of church members along with a few friends
and relatives are pulling together to check out each recipe for accuracy and
duplications. A blog site, Longbeachcookbook.blogspot.com, was developed to
share and organize tested recipes with the modern addition of videos and
pictures. I invite you to look at the blog and please make comments. Or you may
reach me at MKootsikas@gmail.com
with any questions.
Acknowledgements
Thank you
to Lia Kakaris, Philoptochos president, for her support and direction; Dr.
Andrea Hall, who helped format the cookbook and found out that her local church
community enjoyed her Greek cookies so much she was asked to make more for the
bishop’s visit; and to Matoula Batshoun with her special Greek cooking
insights. A special thank you to Nicholas, Stephen, Laura and Steve, who were
always available and willing to answer my computer questions. A big shout-out
to the neighborhood kids, taste-testers William, Sylas, and Freya. Thank you to
all my friends, cousins, and nieces who tested recipes.
house on
the backyard patio to enjoy dinner with my grandma, great-aunt, Uncle Nick and
his family, along with our extended family of Greek-American friends. It was
our version of my big fat Greek dinner party.
A huge thank-you to the special members of the
church who contributed their recipes in 1991.
Thank you
to my cousin Penny Handras Round for her editing skills, co-chefs and
organizers Bonnie Pillaro and Sandra Whittall, sous chef extraordinaire Renee
Barot, grammarian Donna Sievers, future cookbook editors Chloe Andrews and Dr.
Sina Bacol, Dr. Jody Roubanis for her excellent home-economics insights and my
dear friend Marilyne Coats, who helped out so much when we first started this
project, may her memory be eternal.
I can’t
forget my California State University Long Beach (CSULB) OLLI Class foods
classmates who helped me survive Covid by talking about food on Zoom every
Monday morning and who even volunteered, under the leadership of Yesmean
Rihbany and Norma Stein, to test many of the recipes. Because of OLLI, I
discovered the CSULB book store with their excellent printing department.
Finally, a special thank-you to my
husband Paul, who has the best philosophy when it comes to Greek cooking. As
Paul says, “When you think you have enough mint, add some more.”
Kali Orexi!
Maria Kootsikas-Montalbano, September, 2024
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