Böcker av Tom Kelchner

A two-volume charity cookbook like this is a rarity. The best guess is that there have been "hundreds of thousands" of community and charity cookbooks (CCBs in the parlance of historians who study them) published in the United States since the first one -- The Poetical Cookbook -- in 1864. Since they have been small, local efforts in practically every town and hamlet in the U.S. for 150 years, nobody has really collected them all or counted them. Some, no doubt, have had multiple printings, but an entirely new edition, with a changed set of recipes would be hard to find.Chicamacomico Cookery, Volume Two, is a phenomenon for more than its "rare sequel" status. It documents local history and the people who made that history. It was published by volunteers in the Chicamacomico Banks Volunteer Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary about 10 years after an earlier group put together Volume One. Only seven contributors to Volume One (1970-1973) were listed among the 84 contributors to Volume Two (1980-1983). Volume One seemed to contain largely local recipes - many for the fish and shellfish that were caught locally. In Volume Two, though, the recipes that the Outer Banks cooks submitted included many from outside sources -- different regions and places on the Earth far from "the Banks."Also, the women who contributed to Volume Two were more inclined to use their own names rather than "Mrs." and their husband's name as they did in Volume One. The Banks clearly had seen the effects of the women's movement of that era.The two volumes are full of recipes that obviously were important to families in a tiny community, on a historic barrier island, in one of the most storm-swept places in the United States. They are unique and they deserve to be preserved. We hope that these facsimile editions will help keep alive the memories of the people and the recipes and a little bit of the history of Waves, Rodanthe and Salvo, North Carolina - a place that was once called Chicamacomico.

This is a facsimile edition of a nearly forgotten little cookbook that epitomizes the spirit of the North Carolina's Outer Banks and evokes a name that is legendary there: Chicamacomico. Chicamacomico Cookery is a collection of unique local family recipes contributed by 43 residents of Rodanthe, Waves and no doubt other parts of the barrier island that extends north from Cape Hatteras. The book was published more than 50 years ago as a fund raiser by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Chicamacomico Banks Volunteer Fire Company. That organization is carrying on a life-saving tradition that springs from the most spectacular ocean rescue in the history of the U.S. Life Saving Service and the U.S. Coast Guard which descended from it. That event was the 1918 rescue of 42 sailors from the HMS. Mirlo a petroleum tanker that had been torpedoed seven miles off shore and set on fire by a German submarine. The crew from the Chicamacomico Life Saving Station fought through rough seas and burning fuel to save them. In following years, the rescuers were awarded medals by the British government as well as the U.S. Coast Guard. The lifesaving station (on the cover of the cookbook) is now a museum that honors the life savers, shows their way of life and keeps alive the memory of some spectacularly brave men of the U.S. Life Saving Service.