It's the nonfood photographs in Lisa Fain's new cookbook that truly sing the homesick blues of the writer known as the Homesick Texan. Rows of corn, misty expanses of bluebonnets, cows scattered in a verdant pasture, a lonely barn befriended by cottonwood trees and bales of hay in a yellow field under a cloudless heaven. There's even a picture of stadium lights against a dramatic sky taken at the football field at her alma mater, Cy-Fair High School in Cypress, where her mother lives.

She includes these images in "The Homesick Texan's Family Table: Lone Star Cooking from My Kitchen to Yours" (Ten Speed Press, $29.99) because they, like the mouthwatering photos of her homespun recipes, are pure Texas. "The Homesick Texan's Family Table" is Fain's second collection of Texas food recipes - a follow-up to 2011's "The Homesick Texan Cookbook," which was inspired by the blog she started in 2005 after moving to New York. Her Homesick Texan blog, a collection of Texas-born recipes and remembrances, was nominated this year for a James Beard Foundation award for best individual food blog. (Fain takes all her own photographs for her blog and for her cookbooks.)

Even though she gets to Texas often, Fain still pines for it. And she remains a natural storyteller of Texas foods and foodways. Her love and longing for the food she grew up with is evident in the recipes she shares, many drawn from a family that loves nothing more than cooking, eating and sitting for hours around the dinner table.

Fain's new batch of recipes come from family recipe cards, old newspaper clippings her family kept; she even has recipes written on the backs of napkins and bank statements. The recipes also come from family functions including weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and funerals (she even has a booklet of the food donations from the potluck held after her great-grandfather's burial: deviled eggs, potato salad, pea salad, congealed salads, fried chicken, ham hominy casserole, pecan pie and lemon pie).

Fain, a seventh-generation Texan, is fortunate to have an extended family that enjoys cooking. Their culinary know-how shows up in Fain's recipes for staples such as biscuits, cheese balls, potluck salads and casseroles, stews, chili, soups, enchiladas, ribs, ham, jambalaya, shrimp boils and a bunch of sweets including cakes, cookies and pies.

The book's recipes are preceded by anecdotes, some quite rich. Her recipe for Chicken Spaghetti, for example, looks back at her great-uncle Jamey's inauguration as president of Texas A&M University-Kingsville in the 1960s. That day, her family made a trip to South Texas to watch Gov. John Connolly swear in her uncle to his new post. Fain speculates that her great-grandmother's recipe for "Mrs. Connolly's chicken spaghetti" might well have come from socializing with the Connollys that day.

"Did she get it from her? We don't know. Maybe she did," Fain said. "My great-grandmother was really outgoing and assertive. It's very possible she swapped recipes with Governor Connolly's wife."

More Information 'The Homesick Texan's Family Table' By Lisa Fain Ten Speed Press, 288 pp., $29.99

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Back stories like that enrich "The Homesick Texan's Family Table" like a bacon grease roux for Southeast Texas gumbo (a recipe Fain includes in her book). We talked to Fain recently about her family, her recipes and her new cookbook.

Q: Are these recipes left over from your first cookbook?

A: No, I went back to the drawing board and started from scratch.

Q: How?

A: Every time I come home to Texas I eat a lot with family and friends. A lot of the recipes were inspired from these meals. I have a thick folder of recipes - some are newspaper recipes, some are hand-written cards. I go through them and get inspiration from them.

Q: You're lucky enough to have family recipe cards. Tell me about them.

A: My grandmother has given me some recipe cards, but she also gave me my great-grandmother's recipe cards. I have recipes going back to the early 1900s, which is pretty cool.

Q: What does being a seventh-generation Texan feel like, and how does that inspire you?

A: It feels pretty good. Like most Texans, my family is very proud of being Texan. I grew up thinking how wonderful Texas is and that we've owned land that's been continuously farmed since the 1840s and lived here before it was a state. When you're taking Texas history in school and connecting the things you're learning with your own family history, it feels pretty special. I'm passionate about Texas food, and I'm pretty true in my blog and my books to Texas foodways.

Q: Almost every recipe in the book comes with a memory. You sure do have a lot of relatives who cook. Do you feel particularly blessed to have grown up with such enthusiasm for food?

A: Everyone cooks on both sides of my family. I grew up thinking that's just the way things were. But I have friends whose families never did cook, and that's unusual to me. So I feel totally blessed. Yes, and totally appreciative.

Q: Writing down and preserving recipes must be very important to you.

A: Absolutely. I'm a big advocate for cooking with your loved ones while they're still here. I receive so many emails from people who say things like, "Thank you for giving me this recipe for pecan pie. My grandmother died, and we didn't get the recipe, and it tastes just like hers." Food really connects us with our heritage and where we're from. If you have the ability to get these recipes that are cherished, definitely try to get them down on paper.

Q: So many cookbooks chase after what's hot, new and trendy. But your cookbooks are steeped in regional foods and folkways. Would you call yourself old-fashioned?

A: I guess it's a little bit old-fashioned in that I basically try to do everything from scratch. That's an old-fashioned approach. Also, what's old is new again, and people are recognizing that food tastes better when it's fresh and when it's made from scratch. People are embracing that.