A bit of writerly excitement

 

Cottage pie
Image courtesy Mary Dulle

For some time now, I’ve beenfiddling with a project I tentatively titled, Mom and Me in Kitchen. Iwant to somehow capture the importance of learning to cook from my mom in theFifties with all that decade implies about foodways in America. It was a timeof vast change—WWII was over, the soldiers were home, the post-war economy wasbooming. America was optimistic.

Food manufacturers faced achallenge: realign their product from feeding the military to feeding thepublic. And thus fast food, convenience food, prepared foods—all those wereborn. The food industry launched a massive advertising campaign based on thepremise that housewives did not like to cook. Cooking was a chore they hadinherited, because of their gender, and they longed to have it simplified forthem. The less time in the kitchen, the better. Advertisements boasted ofprepared meals that could be on the table in fifteen minutes or less—think Swanson’sfrozen turkey and mashed potatoes dinners.

Not all American housewives boughtthat fifteen-minute dream. Surveys and polls showed a lot of hold-outs, womenwho were still scratch cooking for most of their meals. My mom was one of thosehold-outs. Oh, sure, she fell for some of the hype—we occasionally ate Spam,and when she and Dad were going out, she satisfied my BFF and me with cans ofspinach and Franco-American spaghetti. We thought we were in food heaven. Butmom still canned her own tomatoes, made her own applesauce, baked pies andcakes, even angel food, from scratch. And made seven-minute icing, which tookpatience and dedication. She made her own bread, and today my kids still clamorfor her dinner rolls, with a pat of butter hidden inside each.

My cooking today reflectsthat. I make some of the dishes I learned at her elbow, but more than that, thedishes I make today build on what she taught me in that Chicago kitchen. Sothat’s what I wanted to write a cookbook about. Easier said than done.

For some time I havefloundered trying to explain my culinary interest and to justify my weekly foodblog, “Gourmet on a Hot Plate.” I enjoy the occasional challenge of asophisticated and difficult recipe but mostly I want to cook familiar things,the kind of food I grew up eating. For instance, last night I made a meatloafjust for me—no one else was around for supper, and I figured I’d have leftoversfor lunches. Tonight I made a shepherd’s pie—I don’t think my mom ever madethat, but it’s in the spirit of the food she cooked. I just wasn’t sure whatkind of label to hang on that approach to cooking in the 21stcentury.

So I was reading Laura Shapiro’sSomething from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, awonderful resource, and I came across this line: “In culinary history, the ordinaryfood of ordinary people is the great unknown.” For me, it was an Aha! moment. That’swhat I’m trying to talk about. Menus from upscale restaurants and magazinearticles about the rich and famous tell us about gourmet food, but peoplelikemy mom didn’t write about their dinner. So far in research about the Fifties, Ifind only the upscale or the bizarre, but not the ordinary—no tuna casserole,not chicken tetrazzini, no meatloaf. And that’s my niche.

I can bypass the bizarre—all thosejellied salads and sandwich loaves iced with cream cheese and most of theconvenience recipes. To James Beard’s horror, Poppy Cannon, author of TheCan-Opener Cookbook, once made vichyssoise with frozen mashed potatoes, oneleek, and a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup.

The more I read today and tooknotes, the more I realized that this was going to be a memoir about my mom.That’s okay. She’s a good role model. And I’ll have to delve into that. Born in1900 (we could always figure out how old she was), she lived through two worldwars, the Depression (and oh my, did the effects linger). She was widowed at thirty-fourwith a young son. I won’t put her on a pedestal, but I will say despite all shehad a terrific sense of humor, and our kitchen episodes often involvedlaughter, if not the outright giggles.

So that’s where memory and Momare taking me, and I’m having a good time with it. Writing can be fun.

I want to end tonight, though,with a hope that we all pray for both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Mostof them are innocent pawns caught in a war fomented by men with power who courtviolence. It’s not a question of right or wrong—it’s a question of human livesand unbelievable suffering and grief. Pray for peace.