Texas Eats by Robb Walsh

Author:Robb Walsh [Walsh, Robb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60774-113-8
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2012-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

THE GERMAN BELT CIRCA 1850

ON HIS JOURNEY ACROSS TEXAS in the 1850s, Frederick Law Olmsted entered the German Belt after leaving Austin. In the Guadalupe River Valley, he met up with a German butcher from New Braunfels who had helped a neighbor dress some hogs and was now on his way home.

“He had been in this country eight years,” wrote Olmsted. “He liked it very much; he did not wish to go back to Germany; he preferred to remain here. The Germans generally were doing well, and were contented. They had a hard time at first, but they were all doing well now—getting rich.”

On entering New Braunfels in the company of the butcher, Olmsted observed that the place looked like a village in Germany. The houses had porches and gardens and were painted or stuccoed, and there were many workshops and small stores.

“ ‘Here,’ said the butcher, ‘is my shop … and if you are going to stop, I will recommend you to my neighbor, there Mr. Schmitz.’… It was a small cottage of a single story, having a roof extended so as to form a verandah, with a sign swinging before it, ‘Guadalupe Hotel, J. Schmitz.’

“I have never in my life, except, perhaps, in awakening from a dream, met with such a sudden and complete transfer of associations. Instead of loose boarded or hewn log walls, with crevices stuffed with rags or daubed with mortar, which we have been accustomed to see during the last month … instead, even, of four bare cheerless sides of whitewashed plaster, which we have found twice or thrice only in a more aristocratic American residence, we were—in short, we were in Germany.

“There was nothing wanting; there was nothing too much, for one of those delightful little inns which the pedestrian who has tramped through the Rhine land will ever remember gratefully. A long room extending across the whole front of the cottage, the wall pink, with stenciled panels, and scroll ornaments in crimson, with neatly-framed and glazed lithographic prints hanging on all sides; a long thick dark oak table with rounded ends; oak benches at its sides; chiseled oak chairs;… four thick-bearded men … all bow and say ‘Good morning,’ as we lift our hats in the doorway.

“The landlady enters, she does not readily understand us, and one of [the men] rises immediately to assist us. Dinner we shall have immediately, and she spreads the white cloth at an end of the table.… An excellent soup is set before us, and in succession there follow two courses of meat, neither of them pork, and neither of them fried, two dishes of vegetables, salad, compote of peaches, coffee with milk, wheat bread from the loaf, and beautiful and sweet butter—not only such butter as I have never tasted south of the Potomac before, but such as I have been told a hundred times it was impossible to make in a southern climate.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.