INTERVIEW:
INTERVIEWER:
DATE:
PLACE:
THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAH
Virginia Jones
Esther HacHillan
August 3 , 1984
The Institute of Texan Cultures
FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL - 1984
H: This is an interview with Virginia Jones from the Cactus
Cafe, Folklife Festiva l XIII, August 3, 1984.
The principal reason that I' ve got you here, Virginia, is
b ecause I want to know about chicken fried steak.
How did you -- you are coming from the Cactus Cafe?
J: Yes , Ham.
H: And how do you happen to call it that? And how do you
happen to be here?
J: The Cactus Cafe got it's name from a singer who is from
Colorado City whose name is J. Boy Adams . He recorded a song
about a Cactus Cafe that actua lly existed at one time in Colo­rado
City. And the song was about this old cowboy t hat would
go in and drink coffee early in the morning and tell cowboy
stories. And so we took the name "The Cactus Cafe" and actually
even brought the original sign up a t one time ,
H: Oh?
J: Just an old tin sign. Actually, the Cactus Cafe -- that's
not an uncommon name for a restaurant in West Texas.
Jones
M: Uh huh. I'm sure it isn ' t . Tell me how -- what 's the
singer ' s name?
J: J. Boy Adams .
M: Is it B-O-Y?
J: Uh huh.
M: J. Just t he initial?
J: Yes , it ' s l ike John Boy, af t er his father , this is J. Boy
after his father .
M: J. Boy Adams .
2
Now , as I told you before, Texas peop l e have such a love affair
with chi cken fried s t eak. And everybody has favorite cafes and
favorite recipes and whatnot . And I ' d l i ke -- have you any idea
where al l this start ed? Where is chicken fr i ed steak coming
from? And what , in your opinion, is the right way to make it?
J: My husband thinks that possibly it came from the Wiener
Schnitzel in Germany because German people did come and settle
in Southwest Texas. And he thinks that probably -- and further
west where beef is so popular) that t hey just kind of devised
that recipe f or themselves.
We make our chicken fried steak pretty much the way I make it
at home, and that is, we get regular round steak and we have
it only tend e r ized one time so that it will hold together. We
cut it ourselves , we cut the cutlets into steak fingers , put it
in a mixture of flour, s alt, pepper and t enderizer. Then in a
mixture of eggs a nd milk , kind of l e t it drip out, and then back
i nto another mixture of f lour , salt and pepper. And t hen we
quick freeze them to bring them to the Folklife Fest i val.
M: Oh you do?
Jones
J: Yes .
M: You make them into fingers. Is that -- that's not normal
in a cafe is it? Or in a restaurant? Or in a horne?
J: Yes it i s .
M: Is it?
J : In west Texas, steak fingers are very popular. Except,
usually , if you order them out, you will get what we call the
pre- fab meat. The that has the soybeans and is preformed.
J: Ours is not. Ours is actually cut from the beef.
M: It's really meat .
J: Uh huh.
3
M: You said flour and salt and pepper. Is there any -- there ' s
no hot stuff -- no chili -- no picante?
J: No. Nothing.
M: You fry it?
J: Yes.
M: What do you fry it in?
J: We fry them in just deep fryers .
M: Oh,in deep fat?
J: Yes, in deep fat. And the way to fry chicken fried steak
is to fry it quickly where it will get crusty on the outside
and still remain tender on the inside; as opposed to chicken
that, you know, gets crusty on the outsi0e but you have to cook
it a long time to get it done inside. You don ' t have to cook
chicken fr i ed steak real ly all that long to get it done on the
ioside. Of course, you don't want it dried out. You want it
to remain tender.
M: Well, now I -- when you say tenderizer , is that that stuff
Jones 4
M: like" Adolph's" or something like that?
J: Yes, Mam. We did that because if you would have your own
done in the grocery store, you might have it tenderized several
times. You know, run through the tenderizer machine. But it
might -- ours would fall apart as much as we have to handle
it.
M: Oh that machine. I see.
J: So we just had it put through the tenderizer machine one
time, just to get it kind of tenderized and break it up, and
yet not have it where it was hard to hold together.
M: But you still after that, through t he machine once, you
still have some of that tenderizer powder.
J: Yes, Mam. Actual ly this is the first year we've done that.
J: We've done it several different ways, but this is basically
the way we do it. We want our meat to be tender , but we want
it to be real, too. And that's why we use the real cutlets.
M: You don't want it to be mushy either? Sometimes when you
over-tenderize it, i t is just like eating mush . I hate it that
way.
J: Right.
M: Well now , I
'fie. o.:'~
have" Texans
J: Yes. (laughter)
argue by the hour about the gravy.
M: The gravy that goes on chicken fried steak , now how do you
make that?
J: O.K. And people are fascina t ed by this. Apparently , not
a lot of people make their own gravy. And even l ess numbers
must make the cream gravy -- it is what we make -- the milk
gravy -- as opposed to brown roast gravy.
Jones
M: Yeah.
J : Al l right. You make -- you put i n some grease - - and if
you~edoing your chicken fried steak
the grease you fried your meat in.
M: Oh.
you just take some of
5
J : So it has the flavor. You put some grease in your skillet,
then some flour and salt and pepper and make a roux.
M: Uh huh .
J: Then you gradual ly add your cold milk, stirring a ll the
time , and just stir it over the medium- hot heat until it gets
thick . And it ' s not real difficult to make , but you will find
that if you've made it four or five times , it wi l l never be the
same consistency. Sometimes you ' ll come out with it a little
thicker and sometimes a little thinner . But this is the way to
make the cream gravy we have.
M: Well , that ' s i nteresting . You use the same fat that you
did the frying in?
J : Yes.
M: You get some of the meat fl avor that way .
J: Well , yes . That ' s the way we do it at home now . You can
use jus t shortening and we have d one that some here to have,
you know , the real clean shortening.
M: That ' s interesting.
J: I don ' t mean clean as opposed to dirty , but as I mean as
opposed to not cooked a lot .
M: Used . Uh huh .
What kind of fat do you use for the deep fat frying?
J: Lard . Shortening .
Jones
M: You do "Crisco" or one that's white?
J: Well, we buy commercial shortening.
M: Yeah.
But it's one that's white?
J: Like "Crisco".
M: But you don't use lard?
J: You could. I don't think it would make a whole lot of
difference. But we actually use shortening.
6
M: It's supposed to be less troublesome and lower cholesterol,
or something like that.
J: Right.
M: What is the reaction to people coming in? Now, do you sell
a lot? Is it a popular thing? In the Folklife?
J: Yes, it is a popular thing. The first year that we came,
we had people come up and ask us if we were selling fried cactus.
Then they'd find out that we were from West Texas and they'd ask
us if it was rattlesnake meat. And we had some people ask us if
it was chicken.
But as we have been here over the years, this is our fifth year
to come, most people seem to know now what we have. And we don't
have to explain it. (laughter)
M: Well all of a sudden I have noticed -- I read all the --
every weekend there are in both the papers -- there are
criticisms or critiques of different restaurants around.
J: Dh huh.
M: And time and time again, chicken fried steak comes up.
J: Dh huh. (laughter)
M: "They make the best chicken fried steak in San Antonio."
Jones 7
M: or "Their chicken fried steak is tough." or "Their gravy
isn't any good."
Time and time again.
J: Uh huh.
M: So I think the public is being educated, but it seems to
me that chicken fried steak is very basic to the Texans.
J: It is i n West Texas.
M: It is in West Texas. Are you from. .?
J: Yes, Mam. In the home.
M: Is it?
J: Oh, yes . In fact, I am a lover of chicken fried steak and
r -' {
I really order it out.
M: Oh.
J: Because I know the way I like it and I am often times d is-appointed.
And I think a lot of times the meat, maybe, isn't
as good as it should be. Or, they will use -- they have packaged
gravy mix -- and a lot of restaurants use that. And we don't
think that's as good as making it from scratch.
M: No, I don ' t either. I think that's awful.
Did you say -- are you from Colorado City?
J: Not originally. But I have lived there for five years.
And I am a West Texas girl.
M: Are you. So you know what's what about West Texas, don 't you?
J: Well, I've eaten chicken fried steak all my life.
M: Have you?
J : Although I didn't grow up havin' it in my home, so much, but
I had a friend. I think it's interesting to note that probably
a lot of .poor people used to eat chicken fr ied steak. Because
my friend grew up in a home where the father had been killed
Jones 8
J: when she was very young . And t hey didn' t have very much
money, but they had chicken fried steak all the time. Whereas,
my family, we weren't rich but we were more middle class, we had
roast and steak and things. Of course , I had a rancher for a
granddaddy, so we had our own beef.
M: Yeah. You had meat.
J: But I think chicken fried steak has been popular for a long
time.
M: Well, I can remember when I was young , the round s teak was
a cheap buy.
J: Right.
M: And when you talk about your friend who didn't have much
money, I can remember my Mother tenderizing it pounding flour
into it, with the edge of a saucer.
J: Yes, or I've even done this myself -- used a glass -- and
pounded it on the cabinet. (pounding table) (laughter)
M: Well, she always -- I can still see her doing that thing.
But is there any -- is there a special ~ that goes with
chicken fried steak? What kind of potatoes? What kind of veg­etables?
J: Usually , they serve french fries.
M: Oh, do they?
J: Or baked potatoes in West Texas. N6w we are serving some­thing
that's not exactly -- goes with chicken fried steak --
but is a good addition to it -- and we cal l -- they're hot puffs.
And what the y are is canned biscuits. And you can buy the
cheapest canned biscuits available.
M: Oh?
Jones 9
J: And you deep fry them like you would a doughnut. They puff
up and they a r e good with the cream gravy and we also serve them
with honey. And you can poke holes in i t like you do in a sopa­pilla
, a nd pour the honey in. And that's what we serve at our
booth -- the chicken fried steak - - the hot puffs -- and the
cream gravy and honey.
M: That ' s interesting . I was going to say you've got to have
something to put that cream gr avy on. French fries potatoes
wouldn't do.
J : No. Well , yes. Oh, yes. We eat the cream gravy with.
M: On french fried potatoes?
J: Oh, that ' s one of my husband's favorite meals. In fact,
sometimes if I 'm not going to prepare supper or somethi ng -­he
will go in and cook french fries and make a bunch of cream
gravy.
He loves that.
M: He d oesn ' t mind it getting - - getting the gravy on the . . ?
J: No. In fact we have a restauran t in Colorado City and it
does have very good chicken fried steak and we always order
extra cream gravy to go with our french fries.
M: Oh really? I ' ve learned something I didn 't know -- that you
deep fat fried that. I thought it was a piece of -- you see I
you can see I'm not a native Texan - - I thought it was a piece
of meat l ike t hat saut~d in fat on t he skillet.
J : Well , of course you can fix round steak that way , but I don 't
think it ' s as good . Now at home , you don't have to deep fry. In
other words , when I say that , when we deep fry i t , we completely
submerge it here in the grease. Because we have the cookers .
Jones
J: At home I don 't do that because I just don't want to use
t h a t much grease and be bothered with i t. I j ust use an iron
skillet and fry it on one side and then turn it and fry it on
the other.
M: Uh huh. But you do the fingers -- a l ways.
J: No . Not a l ways . Not always, no.
M: Oh .
J: The reason we're doing the fingers here is because peopl e
are eating with their hands .
M: It' s easier to serve .
J: And it's easier to serve . And you wi l l find it in fas t ­foods,
like Dairy Queens sells chicken fried steak fin ger s.
M: Do they?
J: Uh huh .
10
M: Your husband thinks that it comes from Wiener Schnitzel?
That's awful ly int eresting , you know . I never gave it a t hought
because Wi ener Schnitzel always has a frieu egg on top.
J: Uh huh.
M: And it is battered though, isn't it?
J : Well, it's simi liar . You can see how possibly, you know,
that could be the origin even though we ' ve made a .
M: And it's always veal -- it's always vea l in Europe. But in
Texas veal is not very popular.
J: Well, i t used to be. I' ve been married about 22~ years
and when I first got marr ied , I bought veal cutlets for
chicken fried steak .
M: Did you?
J : Uh huh. But now you can hardly ever find veal and I buy
round steak.
Jones
M: And if you do , it's so expensive.
J: Uh huh.
M: It is so costly.
J: We can 't buy it out in West Texas -- in small West Texas
towns.
11
M: We can now get it. Krogers i s selling it now . It's white
veal like I grew up with and it's pretty good, but it's not
quite right yet.
It doesn't quite suit me.
M: Have you got anything else you want now on this tape?
J: You all might be interested to know how we did come out here.
M: Oh, I think that would be interesting. Yes . Of course.
J: My husband and I -- we came to the Folklife Festival as a
family on a vacation six years ago and we were fascinated
by it like most peopl e -- and he went back and said "You know,
they've got everything there but Chicken Fried Steak. And since
that's the national food of West Texas , I'm going to write them."
And he wrote them a letter and in the letter he said, you know,
that they didn't have this and he thought that they should.
And he said since I cooked the best chicken fried steak in
Texas, I think you ought to invite me and my organization to
come out.
M: (laughter)
J: So that is how we got to come to the Folklife Festival.
M: Oh, I think that's wonderful . That's wonde rful.
Your organization -- what did he mean when he said "his organ-izationll?
J: All r .ight. My husband is a Minister and he has two small
Jones
J: churches: One in Color ado City and one in Snyder.
And we came out the first year from both churches: the women
of both churches came out. Of course, the men help us, too .
M: Sure.
J: And now it's just the women of Colorado City -- they're a
little larger church and so they are coming now with -- as I
say the men come and help us. But it's our organization that
sponsors it. It is the Women of All Saints Episcopal Church,
Colorado City.
M: Is it really?
J: Uh huh.
M: And Snyder. Where do you live?
12
J: We live in Colorado City. Snyder is 25 miles away and my
husband goes over there twice a week and visits people and does
things in his office and then on Sunday he has a church service
in Colorado City and a church service in Snyder.
M: Both places?
J: Uh huh.
M: I wish I could remember the name of a girl I used to know
who went back to Snyder and she . I'd like to know what be-came
of her. That is interesting. And this is a church -­sort
of a church group.
J: It's the women of the church, yes, Mam .
M: How do they work this thing when you sel l for how many
coupons? How much does your thing . sell for ?
J: We sell -- what we call a steak finger basket for 10 coupons.
And that has two steak fingers. Sometimes we give more if the
steak fingers are small because cutting it from the cutlet, we
Jones 13
J: don 't always have the same size steak fingers .
M: Sure.
J: And then we serve that with a puff and gravy. Then you get
one finger, you know, sample of the food .
M: Oh, do they?
J: And we can give one finger for five coupons and then we
give puffs -- probably the best buy at the Folklife Festival
is our puffs . You get two puffs with honey for two coupons .
We have kept it that way and I think we were inspired several
years ago by this little boy who looked to be poor -- came up
to our booth and he was so thrilled that he could get something
for such a small number of coupons -- and I bet he came back
four or five times. And I tell my husband we should always have
something that's really cheap for people who come and don't have
very much money.
M: That ' s a great idea. And of course we should say on the
tape that a coupon is worth 20¢ and that means that you ' re sell-ing
that whole thing for $2.00, isn't it?
That's fair enough for these d ays.
What I mean is, now, do you get -- does your church get anything
from this? Do you make yo""
do~get a profit?
J : Well, the women of the church -- we do make money from this.
Some years it 's been better than others because we do have our
expenses. And we come from a great distance. We don't provide
expenses for the people such as food allowance or travel allow-ance.
We do pay for their motel bills . And the people that
work in our booths can eat or drink anything in the booth with-out
being charged.
Jones 14
M: So, how do you split it -- do you -- any profit is yours?
J: No. The Folklife the Institute of Texan Cultures takes
a part of the profit.
M: And you get the other part .
J: And then we get the rest . And then we t ake our expenses
from that and hope we have something left over (laughter).
M: Oh, I see . Do you have to pay for your own motel?
J: Oh, yes.
M: I thought the Institute did that. They d i d that a number
of years ago.
J: They did do that. They did provide rooms , but now we have
to pay for our motels.
M: Do you?
J: Uh huh. We certainly do.
M: Times are tough aren't they?
J: (laughter)
M: Thanks ever so much. I'm so glad you could do this.
J: Well, thank you . I ' ve enjoyed it!
END OF TAPE I , Side 1, 17 minutes