That's the title of a book I found on Project Gutenberg today:
Good Things to Eat, As Suggested by Rufus - by Rufus Estes
The title amused me, so I downloaded it. And the title may seem silly, but this book slaps.
Turns out Rufus Estes was born into slavery in 1857. He started working at the ripe old age of 5, after everyone capable of holding a gun ran off to the Civil War. Rufus's mother and six siblings still needed help post-war, so Rufus kept working. Eventually he joined the Pullman porter service, where he served delicious train meals to such luminaries as two unpopular Presidents and the era's equivalent of Taylor Swift.
I'm going to try some of these recipes.
They're very 1911. Which is to say that they're deadass simple. Several of the soup recipes are basically just vegetable + butter + salt and pepper + water (broth if you happen to have some bones lying around you can boil for several hours). But Rufus pretty obviously loves cooking. In my experience, when people really love to cook, whatever they throw in a pot usually comes out worth eating.
Also, Rufus is poetic af in the introduction of this book and precise af in the instructions for his recipes. Which - for a man who has had exactly one year of schooling - tells me he was probably smart as hell. A hacker of meals, if you will. This is another reason I would like to honor Rufus by trying some of his recipes.
Some of them, unfortunately, I will have to skip. There are several recipes for organ meats, which I'm not prepared to try. I barely eat regular meat. Though it's nice to know Rufus has my back if I find myself needing to eat liver or kidneys in the post-Trump apocalypse.
Also there is a recipe for chestnut soup that sounds great, but the American chestnut is practically extinct now. The one tree we had on the family farm got blighted several years ago. (It survived a direct lightning strike - twice - but it couldn't survive the blight.) The chestnut was the pigeon of trees in Rufus's time. He'd probably be dismayed to learn we let them all croak.
If the things are good to eat, I will review them too. Meanwhile, let us proceed upon Rufus's suggestions.
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