by Dixie Reid
Sacramento Bee SACRAMENTO, Calif.--In 1925, when the automobile was still a bit of a novelty, Congress authorized an ambitious plan of national highway construction. Route 66 would link Chicago and Los Angeles.
It was just another highway until John Steinbeck published his novel The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. He described the desperate souls who fled the Dust Bowl for bountiful California on what he called "the Mother Road."
As cars became more common and families began taking driving vacations, lots of motor courts, truck stops and gas stations appeared along the 2,400-mile highway. There, too, were the endless cafes, often little mom-and-pop operations serving "homemade" food.
Marian Clark honors those places in The Route 66 Cookbook: Comfort Food from the Mother Road (Council Oaks Books, $24.95).This is a "deluxe" re-issue of her 1995 cookbook of the same name, celebrating the highway's 75th anniversary. (The last stretch of Route 66 was decommissioned in 1984.)
It includes new recipes from the classic cafes--for a total of 250--and 16 pages of color photographs.
The food along Route 66 was hearty and rich. Back then, nobody worried much about fat content, cholesterol and heart attacks. Fresh ingredients? Canned soup, canned vegetables, canned enchilada sauce and canned tomatoes with green chilies (Ro-Tel brand) enrich many recipes.
Fattening? Oh yeah. St. James marinated chicken (an Oklahoma recipe) calls for two cups of Kraft Creamy Golden salad dressing. Rod's Steak House (800-562-5545) Mexicorn chowder (Arizona) requires one pound of Longhorn cheese. The Oklahoma Millionaires candy needs one cup each of granulated and brown sugar and white syrup, two sticks of butter, four cups of pecans, 24 ounces of chocolate chips--and three ounces of melted paraffin to dip the finished candy squares in.
Clark takes readers on a chatty and folksy journey along the old road, revisiting such landmarks as the Pig-Hip Restaurant in Illinois, Red Chaney's Giant Hamburg (a sign painter's mistake that Chaney liked and never changed) in Missouri, the Big Texan steak house near Amarillo, and so on, ending up at the Belle Vue in Santa Monica.
Some eateries are gone, others still in business. Clark's book is nostalgic and entertaining. You can almost hear the waitresses' bidding farewell: "Y'all come back now."
Funk's Grove is a historic center for the production of maple syrup along Route 66 in Illinois.
Funk's Grove Route 66 Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup corn oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 cups flour
Preparation:
Cream margarine and sugars together, add corn oil, maple syrup and eggs and cream well. Sift together the soda, cream of tartar, salt and flour. Knead dry ingredients into creamed mixture to form dough. Chill dough for 1 hour.
Drop dough by teaspoonful on cookie sheet and press with glass dipped in sugar to flatten. Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 12 minutes or until browned.
Per cookie: 77 cal.; 1 g pro.; 9 carb.; 4 g fat (1 sat.; 1 monounsat.; 2 polyunsat.); 5 mg chol.; 56 mg sod.; 0 g fiber; 50 percent calories from fat
Prep time: 1 hour 20 min.--Includes one-hour chill time for the dough
Cook time: 12 minutes per batch
Yield: 7 dozen cookies.
