Crisp iceberg, cool shrimp,and creamy avocado, all tossed with a tangy dressing is what you want on a hot and sultry day. Though what also makes this dish such a treat is that it has a sense of place—Houston to be exact.
I first encountered this recipe for shrimp and avocado salad a few months ago when I was in Waco speaking on a panel about Texas food at Baylor University. The talk was presented by the Texas Collection, which as the name implies, is a large set of Texas books found in The Carroll Library at Baylor.
The collection, which is lead by director John Wilson and librarian Amie Oliver, has books about all aspects of Texan life—from history to food. And it’s the latter that made me very happy, as in the collection are almost 4,000 cookbooks focused on Texan cuisine. I had no idea that many were even in existence! The opportunity to spend two days going through just a few of those books was like being in cookbook heaven.
While there are some New York-city published Texas cookbooks in the collection, the vast majority are locally published community cookbooks—books that were produced by Texas churches, schools, civic clubs, and other organizations. These cookbooks are a treasure, as the recipes not only reveal what a community cooked at a certain point in time, but they can also give you a sense of the community’s values and will often have names of the community members listed, as well.
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