FROM AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE TO THE AMERICAN TABLE PART TWO

As promised, I am embarking on the remaining cookbooks with America or American in their title. I haven’t counted up the books that are in stacks at my feet. Over the weekend I found one that wasn’t with the other Americana cookbooks and I suspect there may be more. Additionally, I have a number of books that were in the Time Life series –one in front of me was a cookbook I found in a thrift store—no, my memory isn’t that fantastic – but this cookbook has a price that was written onto the cover with a red crayon—I know that any others with a red crayon price came from this thrift store—and I will need to search through all of the cookbooks to see what I can find. The problem I faced when we began unpacking all the cookbooks that were in storage, back in 2009, and I was trying to find shelf space for everything. (too many books, not enough shelf space). -sls

First, today, I want to tell you about a hardcover book bearing the title COOKING AMERICAN, written by Sidney w. Dean. Subtitled on the dust jacket, is the following: “This book establishes once and for all the gourmet tradition of American cuisine. It gives American food and cooking the prestige and glamour (sic) far too long attributed solely to foreign cooking.
Over 800 recipes gathered from all parts of the United States and Canada” Since Canada is included, that explains the variation in Glamor vs glamour. Where ever a Canadian spelling is used, I will type it as written in the book.
Included in COOKING AMERICAN offers chapter such as “For the Festive Occasion”, “Sauces for fish, meat, vegetables and poultry” “Outdoor Cookery” and quite a few others. “Cooking American” was published in 1957 with Illustrations from Dorothy Maas. **
From TASTE OF HOME” is a large and colorful hardbound cookbook with 735 reader recipes (I like the inclusion of a nod to the readers who contributed their recipes—this is the first time I have come across this). On the other hand, I have diligently searched for the copyright date, or the date RECIPES ACROSS AMERICA was released for distribution—but I can’t find the copyright date. This is a large cookbook and one of the reasons it’s so large, perhaps, is that each recipe is accompanied by a colorful photo of the recipes. In Part 1 you may recall, there was a cookbook titled “A TASTE OF AMERICA” also from Taste of Home magazine. **
THE BEST AMERICAN RECIPES 2004-2005 has a small subtit
le, “The year’s top picks from books, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet” and was edited by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens, with a foreword by Bobby Flay. (I had no idea who the two women were but easily recognized the name of Bobby Flay—I am on the internet and watch a lot of cooking shows—that’s how come I recognized Bobby Flay’s name. I turned to the Introduction, written by the two women and it opens with “We never quite know what we’re going to find when we begin combing through hundreds of cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers looking for the best recipes of the year—which is a good part of why this is such an exciting enterprise…it is not unlike a massive culinary treasure hunt..” (as I continued to read, I couldn’t help but think “hey! I’d like a job like that!”
The Best American Recipes for 2004-2005 was published in 2004 by Houghton Miffln Company in New York. **

My curiosity was piqued so I did what I always do next when I become curious – I googled the two names and discovered a wealth of information. Now, I don’t know if all of the information I unearthed represents a lot of cookbooks such as the one I own by the two women There are numerous listings but no indication that all of these are books or, perhaps, articles written by the two women. If there was one hardbound boo k of the Best American recipes for 200 4-2005, are there other books like this one? **

COOKING HEALTHY ACROSS AMERICA is a healthy exchange cookbook by JoAnna M. Lund with Barbara Alpert. I know I have seen the name JoAnna Lund before, elsewhere. This cookbook is spiral bound and was published in 2000. **

Along similar lines is a hardbound cookbook published by Prevention Magazine, titled LOW-FAT COOKING, and subtitled” FEATURING ALL-AMERICAN FOOD. This cookbook was edited by Jean Rogers, the food editor for Prevention Magazine. The book is packed with information—and we know now that you don’t have to be “on a diet” to want to eat healthy foods and have a healthy lifestyle. For reasons I can’t explain, I am unable to find a publishing date or a copyright date in this cookbook. Still, it’s well done and interesting. **

And while I am expanding on a similar theme, the next cookbook is THE NEW AMERICAN FARM COOKBOOK, subtitled “More than 200 recipes featuring today’s naturally and organically grown foods”. Written by Linda and Fred Griffith, THE NEW AMERICAN FARM COOKBOOK was first published in 1993.

In the Introduction, we read, “Perhaps it was Odessa Piper who started us off on this journey. When we first met Odessa at her wonderful restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, she said that the key to the quality o what she sent to the tables of her customers was the quality of what her suppliers to her. And her suppliers, it turned out, were farmers in her neighborhood, people she knew…”

So, THE AMERICAN FARM COOKBOOK is a combination of recipes and farmers in a particular region selling their produce to restaurants. (if I knew of a restaurant like this anywhere in my region, believe me I would share it with you! **

Next, I want to share with you a cookbook titled AMERICAN BUFFET, favorite regional recipes from members of the General Federation of Women’s Club, World’s largest and oldest women’s volunteer volunteer service organization (or WFWC Volunteer) which was published by Favorite Recipes Press (which I have written about in the past) and this collection of recipes was published in 1993. This is a nicely compiled cookbook with hidden spiral binding ( which just means, you can see the spiral binding inside the book but it is not visible from the outside—fyi, this type of binding is a lot more durable than ordinary spiral binding.

In the inside of American Buffet is a brief history of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs along with a couple black and white photographs explaining how they came about; I know we take for granted, today, of all the rights and liberties women have in 2017—but those rights didn’t always s exist. Someone – women – had to go to bat to receive those rights. (women were often thrown in jail for marching for women’s equal rights).

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs traces its roots back to Jane Cunningham Croly, an accomplished New York newspaperwoman who wrote under the pen name of Jenny June. Indignant that she and other women were denied admittance to a banquet honoring Charles Dickens in 1868 at the all-male New York Press Club simply because they were women. She determined to organize a club for women only. The name chosen for this club was Sorosis, a Greek word meaning “aggregation, aa sweet flavor of many fruits”
As Sorosis approached its 21st year, Mrs. Croly proposed a conference in New York that brought together delegates from 61 women’s clubs” There is more to the story and I am guessing that more can be found on Google.

The collection of recipes in AMERICAN BUFFET are accompanied by the name of the contributor, along with city and state and the origin of the contributor’s membership. This is a great cookbook for your collection replete with recipes I haven’t seen elsewhere. **
AN AMERICAN PLACE, by Larry Forgione, and subtitled ‘Celebrating the Flavors of America” is the proprietor of An American Place in NY City and the1766 Tavern in Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck NY. Published by William Morrow and Company in 1996. I have to confess, An American Place was a “gotcha” to my mind as I wasn’t expecting An American Place to be the name of a restaurant—but how could I, a southern Californian heart and soul know what is popular in New York City?

The Culinary visionary (Larry Forgione) largely responsible for the rebirth of Farmers’ markets across America and the availability of such quality ingredients as free-range chicken and the field green salad, finally produced his master cookbook.
Well, we know, don’t we, that farmers markets have spread throughout the country but its gratifying to learn who have been instrumental in creating such markets.

Recently (2006 and 2027) , I was visiting a niece in Bothell, Washington, north of Seattle—and whenever I have been to visit Leslie, I have enjoyed visiting some of the farmers markets in her area. In a paragraph in the dust jacket of An American Place, I read “Forgione’s passionate return to freshness has given birth to such cottage industries as local goat cheese producers, growers of specialty berries and field lettuces, the proliferation of smoked and cured fish and shellfish of all kinds, the return of old-fashioned apple varieties, even then raising of buffalo, which he brought back to the American menu nearly a full century since it last appeared.
On both of the above my recent visits to Washington, nieces (and my sister) have gone out to get jelly jars for me and we made blackberry jam the first time and a combination of blackberry and other berries such as raspberries and strawberries the second time. I could go crazy over the abundance of large beautiful fresh blackberries! **

BEST OF THE BEST FROM AMERICA cookbook is, quite obviously, by Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley, editors of the Best of the Best state series.

BEST OF THE BEST FROM AMERICA COOKBOOK published in 2005 by Quail Ridge Press, includes a full-color “we did it!” section that tells the story of how they accomplished the task of finding the best recipes in each state.

“More than two decades ago,” they write in the Preface, “we set out on a journey to find out what people across America liked to cook. Since the two of us have favorite recipes that are quite different—and we’re from neighboring states—Louisiana and Mississippi—we wondered, what are the favorite recipes and how are they different in Michigan and Arizona and Pennsylvania? We wanted to know what dishes are served for family meals, made for parties and tailgates, brought to church socials, etc. the pursuit of this goal proved to be the adventure of a lifetime. Not only did we discover extraordinary recipes, we met wonderful people and got a chance to visit a great portion of our beautiful country…”

BEST OF THE BEST FROM AMERICA COOKBOOK tells the story of how they accomplished the task of finding the best recipes in each state. Everywhere they traveled they asked about local fare and did their best to find it and taste it. They discovered that local cookbooks best revealed what people in that area cooked and often their stories attached to the recipes told them why. They received permission to use the recipes and in exchange listed the region’s cookbooks in a special “catalog of contributing cookbooks” section in each of the Best of the Best cookbooks so that others could purchase a copy of their book (I mentioned previously that a girlfriend and I would send for the local cookbooks referenced in those Best of the Best cookbooks—I no longer remember how many we sent away for – quite a few).

There is more to the book – and then there is the entire Best of the Best from America cookbook for you to delve into. **

I have AMERICA’S BEST RECIPES Hometown Collection, large spiral bound cookbooks, published by Oxmoor House for 1983 to Benefit he U.S. Ski Team, then 1988,1990, 1991, 1992, and 1994 as well as 1995, with just the titled America’s Best Recipes.
There are probably more books in the collection, with other dates—the above is what I have on my book shelves. **

Years ago—particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, I would send for any and all cookbooks published by various American food companies. For instance, A CELEBRATION OF COOKING IN AMERICA, subtitled Timeless Recipes from the Kitchens of Pet. Generally, these were recipes using Pet Evaporated Milk or other products created by Pet. The cookbook has hidden spiral binding and a colorful cover showing pumpkin pie, a couple of tacos and a few other baked dishes on the back cover. A Celebration of Cooking in America was published in 1984. **

Another cookbook from a food company is Land O’ Lakes AMERICAN HERITAGE COOKBOOK, subtitled Time-honored recipes from the Family Farm, published in 1999 by Land O Lakes and Creative Publishing. the American Heritage Cookbook is oddly shaped as cookbooks go, and was published in 1999. On the dust jacket is written “American Heritage Cookbook features over 50 original recipes submitted by Land O’Lakes cooperative members and employees. These recipes not only reflect the wholesome goodness of rural American life, but feature some of Land O’Lakes most delicious, high quality dairy products.

These recipes, hand-picked by Land O’Lakes test kitchen home economists, were chosen for their over-all flavor and great family appeal…”

Recipes are accompanied by beautiful color photographs of most recipes. I may have to Xerox some of the cookie recipes featured in American Heritage Cookbook.

(note—I confess, I don’t take my cookbooks into the kitchen—I copy recipes I want to try on my printer and make a note where it came from. I’m a stickler for keeping my cookbooks pristine.—sls) **

BERNARD CLAYTON was a cookbook author whose work I admired. Sadly, Mr. Clayton passed away a few years ago, in 2011.

He was the author of the Breads of France, Complete Book of Pastry, as well as Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Breads, Soups and Stews, and the Complete Book of Breads (a copy of this last one is sitting on my coffee table; I go through it frequently.

Well, the next cookbook I want to mention to you is Bernard Clayton’s COOKING ACROSS AMERICA, subtitled “Cooking with more than 100 of North America’s best cooks and 250 of their favorite recipes”.

There are a number of cookbook authors who have written about the recipes found in one end of the USA to the other. I want to share with you Bernard Clayton’s “Cooking Across America”

On the dust jacket of “Cooking Across America” is the following: Bernard Clayton and his wife, Marie, decided to go on the road in search of North America’s best cooks. He posted this brief note on the wall above his typewriter: “This will be more than a book of recipes. I am as interested in the cook as a person as I am in the thorough step-by-step presentation of the recipe. I believe these together have been the principal reason readers have found pleasure in reading and cooking with my books”
So, “for three years this sentiment defined their days. Driving a GMC van, they set out on the odyssey of a lifetime—what Clayton, a veteran news reporter and foreign correspondent before becoming a best-selling cookbook author, often called a ‘Dream Assignment’.”

There is a great deal more written on the dust jacket and for anyone wanting to know more, this will give you a good idea. “Cooking Across America” is a big thick cookbook explaining in Bernard Clayton’s own words what their adventure was like. **

“THE AMERICAN HERITAGE COOKBOOK” subtitled “more than 500 easy-to-make recipes complete and up-to-date together with 40 Historic Menus, was published in 1964, where new the book cost $6.95. It was compiled by the editors of American Heritage, the magazine of history. Recipes are accompanied by their historic background; in the dust jacket editors have written “More than 500 great traditional recipes, old and new, are gathered together in this new larger-size version of a perennial best seller. It is a book that views our past in terms of the foods our forefathers ate and the drinks they drank..”

This is one of those books I have to read through, first, taking in the historic background before going back to choose recipes to try. It’s also the kind of book I would have gone through in search of historic documentations when I was writing for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange in the 1990s. **

“AMERICAN GASTRONOMY”, an illustrated portfolio of recipes and culinary history, was written by none-other than Louis Szathmary; on the dust jacket cover they have listed him as “Author of The Che’s Secret Cook Book” published in 1974. I admit, I did a double-take when I came across this book—I honestly was unaware that I have it.

Followers of Sandy’s Chatter may recall that I have written about Chef Szathmary on more than one occasion. He has been my idol for years. I couldn’t appreciate him more if I discovered he was a long lost relative of mine.

An introduction to American Cookery, AMERICAN GASTRONOMY is illustrated with over 90 etchings, woodcuts, prints and photographs that together offer a fascinating look into the kitchens and dining rooms of yesteryear. Also included are reproductions of old advertisements of American food products and bills of fare from famous restaurants…”
Judging from the dust jacket, this cookbook was published at the time that Chef Szathmary was owner-chef of The Bakery, a restaurant of international fame located in Chicago; he was also the author of the best selling “Chef’s Secret Cook Book” and editor of a 15 Volume series of classic American cookbooks published by the Arno Press (I have yet to come across any of the cookbooks in the 15 volume series) **

A large cookbook about the size of a 3-ring binder is a book titled AMERICA’S HOMETOWN RECIPE BOOK, 712 Favorite RECIPES FROM MAIN STREET U.S.A., edited by Barbara Greenman.
This book has hidden spiral binding and a beautiful layout of recipes titled in red or blue backgrounds and I discovered, at the back of the book, recipe cards you can remove for anyone you want to share one of the recipes with. (That’s a first!)

Barbara Greenman, I discovered, developed and edited many cookbooks including The American Century Cookbook by Jean Anderson, Family Circle All-time Favorite Recipes, Family Circle best-ever Cakes & Cookies, and the America Loves—series by Linda West Eckhardt. She is also the editor of Back of the Box Cooking and back of the Box Cooking: 30 minute meals. **

The Four-Star American Community Cook Book with more than 350 Best-Ever Regional recipes chosen from America’s Community Cookbooks with An Patterson Dee, Editor. There is a lengthy introduction but the most outstanding feature of FOUR STAR AMERICAN COMMUNITY COOK BOOK are the recipes, with signatures of the recipe’s contributor and what community cookbook is the source of the recipe. **

AMERICA THE EDIBLE, subtitled “A hungry history from sea to dining sea, by Adam Richman, published in 2010, is yet another collection of recipes from far and wide. Writes the author in the Introduction, “American Edible is a collection of love letters to some of my favorite food places, their histories and the time I spent there. It is an admittedly idiosynernatic (sic) survey. These cities are a pastiche of the places I’ve lived, places work has taken me, places wanderlust and fate have plopped me in the middle of. There was no particular rhyme or reason to their selection, merely the fact that I have had wonderful and varied food experiences in each…” Per the dust jacket, we learn that Richman the exuberant host of Travel Channel’s Man vs Food, has criss-crossed the continent in search of the best eating experiences. **

Pierre franey’s COOKING IN AMERICA is the companion book to the public television series was written by Pierre Franey and Richard Flaste, and was published in 1992 by Alfred A. Knopf. Franey has written twelve cookbooks, counting this one, and his “60 minute Gourmet” column is syndicated nationally. Flaste is a longtime associate of Franey and has collaborated with him on two earlier books on food.

In the dust jacket to COOKING IN AMERICA, we learn that Pierre Franey celebrates American food—the rich lode of fresh produce and the cooking skill, ingenuity and lore that are among our national treasures—and provides us with 200 delectable recipes that are in themselves a celebration.

“Born in Burgundy and trained as a chef in the great French tradition, Franey has become a true champion of American cooking…he visits restaurants and their kitchens, from the elegant River Café in New York and the vibrant Tra Vigne in the Napa Valley of California…we follow him across the country as eh searches out local specialties and secrets, talking to all sorts of Americans, from crabbers in Maryland to citrus growers in Florida, from cattle ranchers in Nevada to strawberry an artichoke growers in California”.

Pierre Franey’s Cooking in America is richly illustrated by Lauren Jarrett and was published in 1992 by Alfred A Knopf, Inc. It is a beautiful hardbound cook with a glossy cover and a dust jacket with a photograph of Pierre Franey—and a comment at the end of the dust jacket, stating “This is a fitting tribute to America’s extraordinary culinary heritage” – I would say Amen to that. **

“EATING IN AMERICA” by Waverly Root and Richard De Rochemont is not a cookbook! From Google, we learn that rather, it is a history. It chronicles the history of American food and eating customs from the time of its earliest explorers to the present. Waverly Root (1903-1982) was an American journalist and writer who became widely known for his writings on food. EATING IN AMERICA was published in 1976. As I wrote above, no recipes. This is a comprehensive history. Well done! – sls **

ALL AMERICAN COOKBOOK II, edibles from notables is a spiral bound cookbook collection of recipes collected by Walsworth Publishing Company to assist yearbook staffs across the country to improve the quality and educational value of their publication. This is a spiral bound cookbook published in 1985 (and I have never seen a volume I) – more of a fun cookbook filled with recipes from who’s who in America back in 1985. Many of the contributors were in politics—governors and U.S. Representatives (such as Bill Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas!) You will have a good time checking out who contributed to ALLAMERICAN COOKBOOK II. **

THE I HEART AMERICA COOKBOOK from the American Legion Auxiliary from Tucson, Arizona is more of a booklet than a book and I am unable to find a publishing date in it—even so, it meets my criteria for something with “America” in the title—like so many of my cookbooks or cookbooklets, I no longer remember where I found it.

I have a Time Life American Regional Cookbook by the editors of Time-Life Books. This cookbook was published in 1978 by Little Brown and Company.

“Take 350 years of refining savory dishes brought by immigrants from all over the world, add the best of hundreds of new recipes inspired by the New World’s cornucopia of tempting foodstuffs and the result is a truly fine native product: the Time Life American Regional cookbook.

This compendium is a bountiful collection of more than 500 national and regional favorites as well as specialties from some of the nation’s best restaurants…this handsome book includes 45 pages of color pictures and step by step sequence photographs showing exactly how to prepare various dishes…” **
The following are a few of my absolute favorite cookbooks, kept in a bookcase near my computer for easy referencing:

THE AMERICAN CENTURY COOKBOOK, The most popular Recipes of the 20th Century is from notable cookbook author Jean Anderson, published in 1997 **

AMERICAN HOME COOKING by Cheryl Alters Jaison and Bill Jamison, contains over 300 recipes celebrating our rich traditions of home cooking, published in 1999 **

AMERICAN APPETITE, subtitled “The coming of age of a cuisine” is by Leslie Brenner, published in 1999. **

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD & DRINK, subtitled with more than 500 recipes for American classics is by John F. Mariani, was also published in 1999. **

I should mention something about my cookbooks—when used book stores began to sell their books at reduced prices before closing their doors—I haunted the used book stores in the San Fernando Valley and bought all I could afford. I don’t think there are any more used book stores in southern California. Amazon.com picked up where the used book stores left off.

It was a sad day for me when a girlfriend and I, back in 2008, drove up the California Coast and stopped in San Luis Obispo – I wanted to share my favorite used book store with girlfriend Sharon—and it was gone. Just an empty store front where one of my favorite used book stores used to be.

For that matter, I think—at one time, back when, there were four or five bookstores in SLO, within walking distance to one another—and Bob and I would make a point to visit all of them when we were spending a holiday in the area.

Quite possibly I bought many of the cookbooks I have listed in FROM AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE TO THE AMERICAN TABLE, PARTS ONE AND TWO in various used bookstores in the San Fernando Valley, in Burbank, California, Reseda, and San Luis Obispo. Nowadays, I buy most of my pre-owned books through Amazon.com—and its gratifying to me when I buy a pre-owned cookbook and it comes to me from a book dealer in a different part of the U.S.A. They are out there—you just have to know how to find them.

Sandra Lee Smith

FROM AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE TO THE AMERICAN TABLE

PART ONE

The following titles are all from my own personal collection of regional cookbooks—for what can be more regional, more American than the many cookbooks written by various authors?

I will provide as much information as possible, in the event someone wants to find some of these books. Some of the titles are not listed on Amazon.com while others are. For openers:

One of my earliest books by the Browns (Cora, Rose and Bob Brown) is Culinary Americana and the reason why I know it was one of the earliest books in my collection is because it contains an address label from when I lived on Terra Bella Street in Arleta, and I was numbering my books as I went along. Culinary Americana was #40A. Culinary Americana was compiled by Eleanor and Bob Brown (I believe this was after Cora and Rose had passed away and Bob re-married). In the Introduction, we learn that “Bob Brown first got together a cookbook collection for reference when he began to write about cooking. He had 1500 volumes which were purchased promptly by a grocery chain store as nucleus for their research library. It was then necessary for Bob to start a new collection. This was the origin of an interest in cookery books which lasted, and grew to the end of his life. Bob saw cookbooks as social and cultural history in America, particularly those regional books which were so close to the heart of the country”. After Bob’s sudden death, Eleanor continued work on this bibliography, CULINARY AMERICANA. **

Another huge favorite of mine since my earliest days of cookbook collecting is AMERICA COOKS, by the Browns, copyrighted 1940—and I never tire from reading it. If I remember correctly, my penpal Betsy Dearth found a copy of AMERICA COOKS for me.
America cooks is a fun cookbook, saluting all the states and including some rhymed recipes along the way.

FYI there are about a dozen cookbooks by The Browns, all a welcome addition to any cookbook collection ***

A SALUTE TO AMERICAN COOKING, by Stephen and Ethel Longstreet, (and illustrations by Stephen Longstreet), published in 1968, is a hardcover cookbook. A SALUTE TO AMERICAN COOKING is a hardbound cookbook published by Hawthorn Books in 1968 with a wide assortment of recipes. While leafing through the cookbook last night I came across recipes for Old Style Pickled Mushrooms, and Red Pepper Jelly, Farmer’s Pickled Red Cabbage, something different in making stuffed bell peppers and many other tantalizing recipes. Somehow I managed to acquire two copies of A SALUTE TO AMERICAN COOKING. **

One of the most famous cookbook writers decades ago was a woman named Clementine Paddleford (possibly a pen name) who wrote THE BEST IN AMERICAN COOKING, published in 1970. On the dust jacket, the publishers wrote, “Here is a veritable gold mine of regional and traditional food which includes hundreds of treasured recipes gathered from American housewives in 12 states and a few specialties from famous restaurants, governors’ mansions, and even the dining room of the U.S. Senate…Every type of food is included from hearty soups to tempting desserts have been particularly proud of their baking skills, there are recipes galore for breads, biscuits and rolls, pies, cakes and cookies.

Originally published as HOW AMERICA EATS this new edition contains all of the more than 800 superb recipes collected by Clementine Paddleford on her energetic travels from Maine to California, Florida to Alaska. As food editor of This Week Magazine and the New York Herald Tribune, she had a large and devoted following and readers who may have been clipped and saved from her columns will rejoice to find the best of them preserved in book form…” THE BEST IN AMERICAN COOKING was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons copywrite 1970. I am fortunate that even though the dust jacket to my copy of THE BEST IN AMERICAN COOKING shows wear, the book itself is in pristine condition. If you google her name, you will find a wealth of information. I may have to put together a separate blog post about her **

Another favorite of mine that I have referred to from time to time is Betty Fussell’s I HEAR AMERICA COOKING, (subtitled “a Journey of Discovery from Alaska to Florida, the Cooks, the Recipes and the Unique Flavors of our National Cuisine)” published in 1986 by Penguin Viking. More than just a cookbook, I HEAR AMERICA COOKING is more of a history book. **

AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE, was published by Simon & Shuster in 1990 and written by Phillip Stephen Schulz. This is a beautifully compiled cookbook with a striking dust jacket and starts—where else? With a chapter on Apple Pies. Schulz starts with a bit of biography on John Chapman, alias “Johnny Appleseed” who, on his own, planted thousands of apple trees in this country in his lifetime.

Schulz writes “….he was eccentric without a doubt, but not the bumbling character depicted by legend…while it is true he had an obsession with apples, he was educated enough to know that apples grown from seed revert back to their wild state. Instead of seeds, Chapman planted seedlings in carefully planned orchard sites, beginning on the Atlantic coast and attempting to work his way across the U.A….” Schulz reports “sad to say, Chapman only got as far was Fort Wayne, Indiana by the time he died in 1845…”
There is more to the story and a tantalizing array of apple pie recipes from which to choose. Many more recipes to whet your appetite as well. **

COLLECTOR’S EDITION AMERICA’S BEST RECIPES/HEALTHY EATING is another hard-cover cookbook which is accompanied by numerous color photographs of various recipes. I don’t have an author of this compilation but it appears to have been published by Landoll’s Inc., in Ashland Ohio. **

AMERICA’S BEST RECIPES, State Fair Blue Ribbon Winners was compiled by Rosemary & Peter Hanley, published in 1983 and could have been included in my collection of State/County fair cookbooks but it had “America” in the title. It contains over 250 mouth-watering recipes that have been blue ribbon prize winners at leading state fairs across the country. Published by Little, Brown and Company, this is another well compiled cookbook, although without photographs except for one on the cover. **
My copy of THE AMERICAN TABLE by Ronald Johnson is a soft-cover cookbook published in 1984 but my copy appears to be the First Fireside edition published in 1991. Subtitled “A celebration of the glories of American Regional Cooking” It reinforces my belief in Americana being another word for “Regional” cooking. I have referred to this cookbook many times.

One of my prize cookbooks is A TASTE OF AMERICA, subtitled “more than 400 delicious regional recipes shown step by step in over 1750 stunning photographs” published by Southwater 1998, 2009, an imprint of Anness Publishing in London. It’s not a hardbound book but not exactly a soft cover book either. It was previously published as The Ultimate American Cookbook. Authors are Carole Clements, Laura Washburn and Patricia Lousada. **

THE AMERICAN SAMPLER COOKBOOK, subtitled “America’s leading statesmen and their families share their favorite recipes, Regional Specialties, Downhome Classics and Gourmet Treats”. This cookbook was published in 1986 is contains more than 200 recipes and is a hardbound cookbook. **

AN AMERICAN FOLKLIFE COOKBOOK by Joan Nathan, was first published by Schocken Books in 1984. In an American Folklife Cookbook, food folklorist Joan Nathan tells the story of American food through its people, giving slices of life as she sees it in kitchens throughout the country. Nathans interviews are valuable social history and good reading…she presents 200 of the best of the many recipes she sampled. **
EARLY AMERICAN COOKING, Recipes from America’s Historic Sites, was compiled and edited by Evelyn L. Beilenson, published by Peter Pauper Press n White Plains, NY, published in 1985 and is a hardbound book, beautifully put together. **

CLASSIC AMERICAN, subtitled “Food Without Fuss” was compiled by Frances Mccullough and Barbara Witt, published in 1996 and is a hardbound book with a beautiful dust jacket. Frances is described as “a well-known book editor who specialized in cookbooks and Barbara Witt is a cookbook author and restaurant consultant. **
THE CHAMBERLAIN SAMPLER OF AMERICAN COOKING subtitled “In Recipes and Pictures, was published in 1961 by Hastings House, publishers in NY, and was written by Narcisse Chamberlain an Narcissa G. Chamberlain, and comes with each recipe accompanied by a photograph. Very readable cookbook. **

An AMERICAN GUMBO, subtitled “Affordable Cuisine for the Everyday Gourmet” published in 1983 by Linda West Eckhardt and is the first spiral bound cookbook I have come across (so far) but makes reading and following recipes a great deal easier than hardbound books. (just saying!) Be sure to read the chapter “Stocking the Everyday Gourmet Kitchen” – a lot of the recipes in this cookbook aren’t ones you will find everywhere else. **

KENNY COOKS AMERICA is a colorful soft cover cookbook written by Kenny Miller and on the back cover we read “The irrepressible Kenny Miller returns with a coast to coast culinary journey across the United States. He introduces us to the best in regional (italics mine—sls) cooking from Mexican border food to New York Jewish and from the soulfood of the deep south to the fusions of the Pacific rim…” copyright by Kenny Miller in 1998, another very readable cookbook. (*Kenny Miller might be called a latter day Clementine Paddleford).

First published in 1974, Evan Jones is the author of AMERICAN FOOD, THE GASTRONOMIC STORY, with a subtitle “Completely Revised and with more than 700 distinctive regional, traditional and contemporary recipes. This is one of my “go to” books whenever I am writing anything about the history of the USA and I want to know something. AMERICAN FOOD was published by Random House in New York. Of Evan Jones, James Beard wrote “I am delighted that Evan Jones has delved into the endless store of lore that is American Cookery. The quantity of previously untouched facts is tremendous. Filled with fascinating stories of how and where American cuisine developed …” **

CLASSIC AMERICAN COOKING by Pearl Byrd Foster subtitled “With over 250 recipes and special menus” is a fireside book published by Simon & Schuster and an Introduction written by James Villas, and drawings by Susan Gaber. My copy of Classic American Cooking has a soft cover and there is quite a story behind Pearl Byrd Foster as told by Villas and a fascinating story in the Foreword written by Pearl herself. CLASSIC AMERICAN COOKING was published in 1983. **

The Saturday Evening Post got into the act with their ALL*AMERICAN COOKBOOK which features a grandma making a pie on the cover while a little boy watches intently (a Norman Rockwell reproduction). This cookbook was compiled by Charlotte Turgeon and Frederic A. Birmingham and contains 500 great recipes. Published in 1979,

ALL*AMERICAN COOKBOOK is chock full of Rockwell paintings as well as early American ads. As interesting to read as well as check out the recipes. **

Over the years, I often supplemented my cookbook collection by ordering cookbooks published by various American food companies and sold to American housewives for a small charge and sometimes, perhaps, a label from one of their products.

Such was the case for AMERICA’S COUNTRY INN COOKBOOK, a spiral bound cookbook offered by R.T. French Company in 1984. The cookbook is made up of country inns and recipes for most of the states being represented. This cookbook is unique in presenting the various inns throughout the country. “some inns are large with many rooms,” write the editors, “Others are small, with only a few choice accommodations” Considering that this cookbook was published over thirty years ago, it’s possible that not all of the inns are still in business—even so, it’s a delight to read and check out the recipes.
HERITAGE OF AMERICA COOKBOOK is a spiral bound Better Homes and Gardens book,

published in 1993 and is called the Kitchen Companion—and is proof positive, I think, that BH&G is keeping up with the times. Recipes are divided into categories of the various sections of America –imagine my surprise finding a recipe for Cincinnati Chili in this cookbook! I will have to try the recipe to see how it holds up against my family’s Cincinnati Chili (we all have our own favorite) –and the BH&G recipe contains a few ingredients not found in my family’s chili recipe. **

GREAT AMERICAN FOOD, subtitled “from the pioneers to present day” is a large hardbound cookbook by Lesley Allin, published in 1994. This cookbook contains a lot of color pages of prepared recipes sure to whet your appetite. Really great format. **

Next is an oversized yet soft cover cookbook titled WHAT’S COOKING AMERICA by Linda Stradley and Andra Cook published by Three Forks Books an imprint of Falcon Publishing. WHAT’S COOKING AMERICA contains more than 800 family-tested recipes from American cooks of today and yesterday. In addition to all the recipes, the book is packed with tips and suggestions for various dishes you may make. (and my tip for oversized cookbooks? When I find a recipe I want to try, I make a copy of it on my printer; just about everyone has a printer nowadays—make a copy and use THAT one to make up the dish you want to try).

365 ALL-AMERICAN FAVORITES by Sarah Reynolds has inside spiral binding and was published in 1997 by John Boswell Management. I love the format to this cookbook; I love that it opens flat to follow a particular recipe. All I did was open the cookbook and I immediately found a recipe I want to try for Chicken Liver Spread with Pistachios and Dried Cranberries. What’s not to like? **

GREAT HOME COOKING IN AMERICA is by the Food Editors of Farm Journal, subtitled “Heirloom Recipes Treasured for Generations”. This is a hardcover cookbook published in 1976. Inside the cookbook is a list of all the cookbooks published by Farm Journal – 15 in all.

I have most if not all of the Farm Journal cookbooks. Years ago, my long-time Oklahoma penpal, Penny, introduced me to the Farm Journal cookbooks. That probably was in the mid-70s. we followed all of Farm Journal recipes religiously, especially the Farm Journal Homemade Cookies cookbook. I collect a lot of cookbooks. Back in the 70s, I cooked with Farm Journal recipes. That says a lot, doesn’t it? At that time in our lives, the Farm Journal recipes were the most reliable. **

AMERICAN REGIONAL COOKERY BY Sheila Hibben is a hardbound cookbook that, while she attributes various recipes to different places in the USA, the author has made a dedicated effort to provide recipes that are easy to follow with standard ingredients found in most kitchen cupboards around the country. In the Introduction, Sheila explains the logic and beliefs in how she produces recipes.

In the dust jacket of American Regional Cookery, the publishers explain “This is a cook book of indigenous dishes, that is, dishes which belong to the very soil of America, which have grown out of its fields and plains, its rivers and forests and sea lanes. It is also a book of the recipes preferred in each section of America: the way in which native dishes are cooked in Maine or Michigan or California, Boston, New York or New Orleans. In addition, there are recipes from Europe and the Orient which have become, in time a part of American culture, just as foreigners themselves became a part of our great nation”. This edition of American Regional Cookery was published by Gramercy Publishing Company. **

Cracker Barrel, Old Country Store, is a chain of restaurants which, regretfully, are not in Southern California—but there is one in Sioux Falls, where my son Steve & his wife Lori live—and there is a Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Nashville that I visited many times with my sister, Becky—so I am familiar with Cracker Barrel cuisine which is, to my way of thinking, down home food. Some where along the way I acquired a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Celebrates AMERICAN HOLIDAYS COOKBOOK VOLUME II, BY Phila Hach. Information about the author fills an entire page—so let me just say that she is the author of six previous cookbooks—one of which (be still my heart!) is titled FROM PHILA WITH LOVE, an intimate handwritten collection of her favorite recipes, but she also wrote Phila Hach’s United Nations Cookbook, a great collection of recipes received from the Ambassadors of the United Nations as well as OFFICIAL 1982 WORLD’S FAIR COOKBOOK, containing 600 of Phila’s favorite international, southern and Appalachian recipes.

The reason I am mentioning all of the above—is because I don’t have any of those cookbooks. I also learned that Phila is one of the South’s most sought after caterers.

The Cracker Barrel’s AMERICAN HOLIDAYS COOKBOOK was published in 1985; it is a spiral bound cookbook which makes it easy to lay open flat when you are following one of the recipes. I’ll have to try and find Volume I. **

AMERICAN SANDWICH, subtitled “Great Eats from all 50 States” is one of my favorite cookbooks—for one thing, I have been acquainted by mail and by computer with Becky Mercuri, the author. Becky was a columnist for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange during the same years I was writing for the CCE as well.

“America is a nation of sandwich eaters, “ Becky wrote in the Introduction to AMERICAN SANDWICH in 2004 when her cookbook was published. “We commonly live life in the fast lane and we necessarily dote on food that is portable. The sandwich has thus become a mainstay of our existence. Sandwiches are to Americans what pasta is to Italians or what tortillas are to Mexicans. Sandwich shops are everywhere. Take out and delivery are not just window dressing for many such businesses; they are integral to attracting and keeping a loyal clientele who commonly lunch at their desks or even behind the wheels of their cars. Even when eating in restaurants, Americans love sandwiches and not just for lunch. Sandwiches are now common offerings for breakfast and up-scale sandwich creations are even appearing on dinner menus.

Becky Mercuri has divided up the chapters by state (Alabama, Alaska) and provides sandwich recipes indigenous to that region. An enormous amount of work obviously has gone into AMERICAN SANDWICH and in the Introduction you will find background information and history for the sandwich.

AMERICAN SANDWICH is a softcover recipe collection but the covers- which I have seen on a few other cookbooks – is sturdier than ordinary soft-bound cookbooks. **

Sandra’s cooknote: I didn’t anticipate that I would find so many books in my own personal collection with “America” or “American” in the titles – and this doesn’t even include cookbooks with “USA” or similar titles – so I have divided the blog post into two parts. This concludes Part One.

TO BE CONTINUED

Sandra Lee Smith

CHRISTMAS LOVE FROM YOUR KITCHEN

Originally posted in 2011

Back in the days when I was raising four sons literally on a shoestring, there was generally not enough money for ANY thing, much less the toys and games the boys would ask Santa to bring. My husband (now ex) was self employed most of those years and his income was unstable and sporadic.

I had to make do with what we had in the pantry for meals when sales became non-existent. We had spaghetti so often that my youngest son no longer will eat it at all. I kept large tins filled with dried spaghetti, rice or pinto beans. No one ever went hungry but they all undoubtedly got tired of meatballs and spaghetti and corn bread and beans, made with pinto beans in my mother in law’s West Virginia style.

That was during the years I was a stay at home mom – from 1965, when I quit my job at Weber Aircraft to stay at home, until 1977, when I was offered a dream job by a dear friend. I love that job so much! I was employed by them until I retired the end of 2002. And the best part was, there was always money for groceries after that. The downside, of course, was not being at home all of the time—such as the time my youngest son ran his bicycle into a telephone pole and ended up in the emergency room. But could I have prevented that accident? Probably not. But it wouldn’t have taken as long to get to the hospital.

Well, aside from that – way back when I had only two young sons—and we had a lot of friends and families back in Ohio, I began baking cookies and making candies to give as gifts for Christmas. Gradually, I worked my way up into jellies and jams (at first putting them in baby food jars), then chutneys and preserves and all sorts of other good things to eat—baking pumpkin bread or making fruitcakes.

This led to discovering all the great cookbooks devoted to the topic of gifts from your kitchen. One of my favorites—it still is—was a book titled WITH LOVE FROM YOUR KITCHEN BY Diana and Paul von Welanetz, published in 1976.

Back when I didn’t have ten thousand cookbooks taking over the house, WITH LOVE FROM YOUR KITCHEN was a frequently thumbed through cookbook and I think this is where I learned that you can make your own sauces, mustards and marinades, pickles, herb blends and some unusual jellies, such as one made
from champagne.

Others that I sometimes rely on are “WHAT SHOULD I BRING?” by Alison Boteler, published in 1992—this is a nice spiral bound cookbook with ideas for just about any occasion, not just Christmas—there are ideas for bridal and baby showers, greetings, goodbye and get well gifts, annual events and holiday housewarmers…and a lot more—plus plenty of tips for wrapping things – the latter is my downfall…but my daughter in law, Keara, has me spoiled; she does most of my gift wrapping. Another favorite of mine is GIFTS OF FOOD by Susan Costner, published in 1984. You will go crazy over the recipes—160 delectable recipes and how to wrap them.

I’ll let you in on a little secret – I never noticed, before, how many of the titles in this category start out with “Gifts from –“ so let me give you a quick rundown on a few of them.

BH&Gs GIFTS FROM YOUR KITCHEN, 1976

GIFTS FROM YOUR KITCHEN, BY Carli Laklan and Frederick-Thomas, published 1955 by M Barrows & Co (a collection of 300 recipes)

GIFTS FROM THE KITCHEN by Norma Myers and Joan Scobey, published in 1973 by Doubleday & Co. (over 200 coveted family recipes)

GIFTS FROM THE PANTRY BY Annette Grimsdale, copyright 1986, published by HP Books (this is one of those oversize as in long but narrow soft covered books. I have been making my pickled watermelon from this cookbook for many years—because it uses the GREEN part as well as white and pink) Lots of other good recipes as well.

GLORIOUS GIFTS FROM YOUR KITCHEN by Lisa Yockelson, copyright 1984 – offers over 200 recipes.

GIFTS FROM THE KITCHEN by Famous Brand Names, copyright 2003—lots of great illustrations—so you will know what it’s supposed to look like when you’re finished,

WOMAN’S DAY GIFTS FROM YOUR KITCHEN, copyright 1976—no photographs but a lot of favorite recipes.

GOURMET GIFTS FROM THE KITCHEN, BY Darcy Williamson, published in 1982

SEASONAL GIFTS FROM THE KITCHEN, BY Emily Crumpacker, William Morrow & Company, 1983 (and oh, my! I bought this at the Book Loft in Columbus Ohio at the German Village…and the reason I know this? The sticker is still inside).

Also – THE GIFT-GIVERS COOKBOOK by Jane Green and Judith Choate, copyright 1971 and published by Simon & Schuster

And one more –

THE JOY OF GIVING HOMEMADE FOOD by Ann Seranne, copyright 1978 and published by David McKay Company. (If the name Ann Seranne sounds familiar – it should; she’s written many cookbooks. I’ll write something about Ann Seranne another time).

Well, this is just a sample of the gift-giving genre of cookbooks I have collected. Now that I have all of these out, I will have to thumb through them again and see what treasures I have forgotten.

Happy Cooking & Happy Cookbook Collecting!

Sandra Lee Smith

CROSS CREEK REVISITED

THE FOLLOWING WAS ALSO ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2011:

CROSS CREEK REVISITED

Asked if she had to choose between people and trees, she chose trees.
“Cross Creek is a bend in a country road, by land, and the flowing of the Lochloosa Lake into Orange Lake, by water…” (In first chapter of “Cross Creek”).

When I first conceived of the idea of writing about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and her Cross Creek Cookbook, the year was 1998 and I was writing, at the time, for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange, a newsletter for cookbook collectors. I mistakenly thought, at the time, that hardly anyone knew about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings anymore, aside from school children reading her classic Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Yearling”.

I would reintroduce her to the world – at least the world of Cookbook Collectors Exchange subscribers. Was I ever mistaken! Not only is Rawlings’ home in Cross Creek a National Historical Site, there is even a Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society and books about her life continue to be published, while many of her previously unpublished works have found publishers – and more importantly – an audience. Google Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and you will get 351,000 hits—and it’s thanks to Google that I have been able to find some of Rawlings’ lesser known works. Some of her previously unpublished material has been published in the past decade.

(A list of the books by MKR and as list of books about her and Cross Creek can be found at the end of this article).

She was a woman far ahead of her time and at a later time in history, would have been considered a feminist, yet—she was a latter-day pioneering woman in the continental United States.

She was an opinionated individual at a time when women were expected to be nothing more than “the little woman”, cooking and cleaning for the man of the house. In addition to her career as a writer, she maintained her orchards of oranges and pecans, often under the most difficult of situations and sometimes with very little assistance.

Rawlings was enormously popular amongst her friends, comfortable whether hobnobbing with the rich and famous or living with her impoverished scrub neighbors…at the same time she was a very private individual who relished her privacy and solitude. She could be at ease whether visiting the White House or attending a play on Broadway in New York—or hunting and fishing with the “fellows” – whether those fellows were themselves famous writers or her neighbor Floridian crackers*. She was openly frank about her preference to the company of men, rather than women.

(*The term “cracker” is very old, dating back to the time when the driver of oxen cracked yards of rawhide whips over his beasts. “There are ‘Georgia Crackers’ and ‘Florida Crackers’ Rawlings once wrote, saying “one hates the other as mothers and daughters sometimes hate.”)

In 1928, accompanied by her husband Charles, Marjorie first set eyes on Cross Creek. It was love at first sight for Marjorie – for Charles, maybe not so much. Marjorie was enchanted with its remoteness and the simplicity of life and immediately felt a connection to the land. (I can relate to this feeling, it was what I felt the first time I saw the Arleta house in the San Fernando Valley).

The property came with two cows, two mules, 150 chicken coops—and an old Ford truck. They had hoped to live off the citrus groves—that didn’t happen—but they WERE able to live off of Rawlings’ income as a writer. There is some speculation as to what ended the marriage between Marjorie and Charles. He didn’t like Florida or he may not have been able to deal with a wife more successful than he. One of the last things Charles said to her at the time of their divorce was “Of course, you realize you have no friends. Nobody likes you.” (Any of us who have had similar sentiments directed towards us at the end of a marriage could emphasize with Marjorie at this time in her life.) Then, too, Charles may have found Marjorie’s SUCCESS as a writer a bitter pill to swallow when he, himself, was also a writer but not nearly as successful .

Maybe sour grapes on Charles’ part? The world knows who Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was—what does the world know about Charles, except that he was her first husband?

Some years later Marjorie would remarry and that marriage would endure, even though she and her husband often lived apart while she pursued her career as a writer and he operated a hotel in St. Augustine, often causing rumors to fly that their marriage was unstable when, in fact, it was very secure.

Of her one writer – Roger L. Tarr writes, “Rawlings was not a feminist, at least not in the post-modern sense, but she was a strong willed woman who detested role playing. Equality of opportunity was paramount to her…what (she) fought against all her life—was the powerlessness of the average woman.”

In “Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings” which Roger L. Tarr edited, he writes that “Rawlings interest in the concept of justice and its application to human endeavor had a personal as well as a public context.

Her life in Florida led her to one of the most difficult issues she ever faced: racism. As a child growing up in Washington, D.C., and as a student at the University of Wisconsin, she had witnessed first-hand the effects of racial injustice. However, life in the South was quite another thing. There racism was blatant and it was accepted as a fact of life. When she moved to Florida, Rawlings by her own admission fell into the ethos of racism; it was all around her*….”

*(Sandy’s note: From 1979 to 1982, my husband and children and I lived in Florida. Racism was alive and well these many decades after Rawlings’ life—and what disturbed me most is that the racism was blatant).

Tarr continues, “Her (Rawlings) personal dilemma soon became a professional one as well. If she were to portray accurately the situation and the language of the people she wrote about, if she were to be honest…for the sake of historical record, how was she to treat the subject of racism? Her Cracker friends and Cracker characters were with few exceptions, racists.

Her dilemma was not unlike that of any writer whose subject is the Deep South. What was even more traumatic for her as the realization that she herself as often racist in attitude and in her use of language. Yet she had a deep commitment to the presentation and ennobling of the black culture…”
Prior to the publication of “The Yearling” in 1938, Rawlings’ fiction did not focus on the black culture. I think an important factor in her change of attitude were the years in close contact with African Americans, with the people who lived and worked with her from day to day and whose companionship became important I her life.

Writes Tarr, “Majorie’s personal attitudes began to change and in consequence so did the language of her fiction. By the mid 1940s, Rawlings admitted, ‘There is no question that we must all go out for ‘full equality’, meaningless though the phrase may be. Anything else is the height of hypocrisy’. (I am reminded of Maya Angelou’s oft-repeated quote by Oprah Winfrey, “When you know better, you do better.”)

With regard to women’s causes, Rawlings was outspoken on these since her student days at the University of Wisconsin.

Rawlings counted as friends many other famous writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Marcia Davenport, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Mitchell and Zora Neal Hurston. Rawlings even managed to hobnob a bit with Eleanor Roosevelt (who was a firm and famous advocate for the rights and equality of all people). Rawlings was once a guest at the White House and even slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.

You may know her best as the author of a most successful novel, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for her book “The Yearling” which went through twenty-one printings in just two years. “The Yearling” was also made into a movie, starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman.

Or, perhaps, if you are a cookbook collector like I am, you may be familiar with Rawlings’ almost-equally-famous “Cross Creek Cookery” I am fortunate enough to first editions of both “Cross Creek” and “Cross Creek Cookery.”
Rawlings did write prior to moving to Cross Creek; she and husband Charles both worked for the Courier-Journal in Louisville Kentucky for several years—he as a reporter and she as a feature writer.

It was a difficult time and Rawlings struggled after graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1918 to make her mark on the literary world. The USA had just emerged from World War I. She moved to New York City where she found employment, eventually, as a writer and editor for the War Work Counsel at their national headquarters of the YWCA. In her spare time she continued to attempt to sell her short stories and poetry, sometimes with a bit of success. From 1926 to 1928 she wrote nearly 500 poems for the Rochester Times-Union under the title “Songs of a Housewife”. (Roger L. Tarr edited the poems and published them under this title in 1996).

However, after a few years working in Kentucky, the pair realized their journalistic work in Louisville had little future and they returned to Rochester, where Charles became a traveling salesman but Marjorie was unable to find a market for her short stories. By 1922 she was writing feature articles for the Rochester Evening Journal and the Rochester American, under her own by-line. Occasionally, Marjorie’s feature stories made the front page of the Rochester Sunday American. A few years passed by with Charles trying to sell shoes and Marjorie attempting to sell her stories by free-lance writing*.

*(Sandy’s note: *It’s a curious paradox in writing—you need an agent to sell your work, but most agents don’t want to take you on unless you have had success selling. This is something I learned firsthand many years ago. There is an expression in writing, “Over the transom” which refers to an unsolicited manuscript, submitted by an author without the benefit of an agent.)

Feeling they needed a vacation, Charles and Marjorie sailed from New York down the East Coast and into the mouth of the St John’s River, on a Clyde Line Steamer. They soon discovered that the north central interior of Florida was nothing like the famous Florida Gold Coast—but it was during this visit, while Marjorie visited the scrub area, fished for bass on the lakes and took a boat trip on the74-mile long Ocklawaha River—that she “discovered” the remoteness and the mystery of the scrub, and the simplicity of the local people’s daily lives.

“Let’s sell everything and move south,” Marjorie suggested to Charles. “How we could write!” – And he agreed. They asked a friend to look for a place where they could grow citrus while they tried to find a market for their writing. In July, their friend told them of a place, 74 acres, a shabby farmhouse, two story bar, 3300 orange trees and 800 pecan trees. The price was $9,000.

Using a small inheritance Marjorie had received from her mother’s estate, they paid $7,400.00 down with the balance to be paid off at $500.00 a year.
“When I came to the Creek,” Marjorie writes in “Cross Creek”, “and knew the old grove and farmhouse at once as home, “there was some terror, such as one feels in the first recognition of a human love, for the joining of person to place, as of person to person, is a commitment to shred sorrow, even as to shared joy. The farmhouse was all dinginess. It sat snugly then as now under tall old orange trees, and had a simple grace of line, low rambling and one-storied….”

She relates that the house was cracked and gray for lack of paint; there was a tin roof that would have ruined a mansion, and the porch was an excrescence, scarcely wide enough for one to pass in front of the chairs. “The yard was bare and spotted with sandspurs,” she recalled, “with three lean Duchess rosebushes, left behind to starve, like cats….”

“Inside the house…the walls were painted a battleship gray and the floors a muddy ochre. The brick fireplaces were walled over with tin and filled with a year’s rubbish…” It took the Rawlings’ four years before the gray of the last room was decently covered with white, money for paint being scarce, and time so filled with other work that an hour with a brush was a stolen pleasure…”

But for Marjorie, it was love at first sight.

In writing of her love for this place, she wrote—again, in “Cross Creek”, “…I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to. In the lakeside hammock there is a constant stirring in the treetops as though on the stillest days the breathing of the earth is yet audible. The Spanish moss sways a little always. The heavy forest thins into occasional great trees, live oaks and palms and pines. In spring, the yellow Jessamine is heavy on the air. In summer the red trumpet vine shouts from the gray trunks, and in autumn and winter the holly berries are small bright lamps in the half-light….”

Marjorie began to sell some of her short stories, or sketches, about people and life in the Florida scrub—usually based on real people and true incidents, following the axiom to writers to write about the things you know best. It got the author embroiled in a lawsuit and the dissolution of a friendship between herself and another Cross Creek inhabitant, Zelma
Cason.

Zelma sued Marjorie for libel, then later changed the charge to invasion of privacy. It was the first time in Florida history that a case pitted privacy rights against freedom of speech right. Up to then, authors had been describing real people and using real names as a matter of course.
The courtroom battle dragged on for years, ending up in the Florida Supreme Court; the trial in Gainesville circuit court had ended up with a not guilty verdict. On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court reversed the verdict—but only awarded Zelma $1.00. (She had asked for $100,000). The case had taken five years and cost Marjorie $32,000 in legal fees. The friendship between the two women was severed. Zelma wept at Marjorie’s funeral—one wonders, was the lawsuit the result of poor advice given to Zelma? Oddly enough, the two women are buried not far apart from each other in Antioch Cemetery, near Island Grove, a few miles from Cross Creek.

What was certainly far more costly, in the long run, was the affect the trial had on Marjorie’s health, which was often precarious to begin with, and her psyche.

Mostly, though, the people who lived in Cross Creek didn’t read and were generally unimpressed with her other-worldly fame as a writer. One time, for lack of having anything else handy at the time, Marjorie used a copy of The Yearling to kill a snake that had gotten into the house. In describing the incident to her handyman afterwards, he chuckled and said “It sho’ do come in handy to write books.”

On the subject of snakes, elsewhere in “Cross Creek”, Marjorie wrote, “My determination to use common sense might have been my undoing. One late winter day in my first year I discovered under the palm tree by the gate a small pile of Amaryllis bulbs. The yard was desperate for flowers and greenery and I began separating the bulbs to set out for spring blooming. I dug with my fingers under the pile and brought out in my hand not a snake,
surely, but a ten-inch long piece of Chinese lacquer. The slim inert reptile was an exquisite series of shining bands of yellow and black and vermilion, with a tiny black nose. I thought, “Here is a snake, in my hands, and it is as beautiful as a necklace. This is the moment in which to forget all nonsense.” I let it slide back and forth through my fingers. Its texture was like satin. I played with it a long time, then killed it
reluctantly with a stick, not for fear or hate, but because I decided to cure the skin for an ornament on the handle of a riding crop. I salted the hide and tacked it to a sunny wall. I showed it proudly to my friend Ed Hopkins, who was teaching me the Florida flora and fauna.

He said, “God takes care of fools and children.”
The snake was the deadly coral snake. Its venom is of the cobra type, killing within a few minutes by a paralyzing of the nerves….” Mrs. Rawlings’ fear of snakes returned.
**
In 1931, Marjorie’s story “Jacob’s Ladder” was published in Scribner’s Magazine for which the author received $700.00—quite a lot of money at the height of the Great Depression! Since Marjorie had a great fear of snakes and a greater fear of encountering something worse in the outhouse after dark, the $700.00 paid for an indoor bathroom with a toilet ordered new from Sears Roebuck.

Elizabeth Silverthorne, author of “Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Sojourner at Cross Creek” writes that “part of her appeal to the natives [of Cross Creek] was her sincere interest in them and her frank eagerness to learn from them everything they could teach her, from how to prepare their natives dishes to how to hunt and fish…” Indeed, Marjorie became a good fisherman and a “pretty good hunter” according to her grove manager. A few years later, when her love of animals overcame her enjoyment of the sport, she still loved to go along with the huntsmen for the pleasure of the company and the enjoyment she got from being outdoors. In her own words, Marjorie said “There was great sport at first in all the hunting. Then it came to sicken me, and now I go to the pines as a guest and not an invader…”

And, as Marjorie came to understand the Cracker’s viewpoint, she also came to sympathize with it. In a number of her stories and novels, explains Silverthorne, “Crackers do things that are wrong according to the law but right according to their own code.”
In late summer of 1932, Marjorie went to live with a family in the big scrub country—she lived with them for over two months, helping with the chores, Washing heavy quilts by stomping them in wash tubs, helping to make lye soap and sleeping under a mosquito net, as the family did, with one sheet covered by a quilt. She scrubbed floors with corn shuck brushes and helped the family keep in squirrel meat. She did all of the illegal things the men of the scrub did, including stalking deer with a light at night, out of season.

Eventually, her first novel, “South Moon Under” was written. (“south moon under” was a native Floridian phrase, used by the people of the scrub, who were constantly conscious of the phases of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the wind. It was important for them to know that deer, fish, and other creatures stirred and fed ‘on the moon’ – at moon rise, at south-moon over, when the moon was at its zenith, at moon down and at south moon under—when the moon was directly under the earth). “South Moon Under” tells the story of a young man, Lant, who must support himself and his mother by making and selling moonshine, and what he must do when a traitorous cousin threatens to turn him in. Moonshiners were the subject of several of Marjorie’s stories and she lived with a moonshiner for several weeks, near Ocala, to prepare for writing the book.

“South Moon Under,” published in 1933, was chosen by the Book of the Month Club along with George Bernard Shaw’s “Adventures of a Black Girl in Search for God”. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ms Silverthorne writes that one of Marjorie’s most admirable qualities was her complete freedom from professional jealousy…she often wrote letters to writers whose work she admired and frequently struck up lifelong friendships with them as a result. She became friends with John and Margaret Marsh (you may know her better as Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone with the Wind”). Marjorie and Margaret discovered they had a lot in common.

One of my favorite stories about Marjorie is that of a meeting with Ernest Hemingway She was having lunch with friends at her husband Norton’s Castle Warden Hotel one day, and thought she recognized Hemingway across the room. She sent him a note that read, “If you are Ernest Hemingway, please come have a drink with us.”

He sent a note back, saying, “If you are Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, I’d be delighted”. (Marjorie had met Hemingway initially on a friend’s yacht).

After she read “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” she wrote a letter of praise to him and invited him and his family to visit Cross Creek to hunt. There are, actually, a wealth of stories about Marjorie and the well-known authors with whom she corresponded. She became friends not only with Hemingway and Margaret Mitchell, but also Thomas Wolfe, Robert Frost, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She also wrote to writers such as A.J. Cronin and John Steinbeck, praising them for their work.

In 1935, while continuously writing short stories which were published in various popular magazines of the day, Marjorie’s book, “Golden Apples” was published. It was one of her least well received books and she herself was disappointed in it. In a 1935 letter to her publisher Max Perkins, she called it “Interesting trash instead of literature.”
But she found enormous success in 1938 with “The Yearling”. It was her most famous book, for which Marjorie is best known. It is considered a classic in children’s literature. Oddly enough, she and her editor had agreed that the book would be written for adults but in a spirit that would appeal to children.

The story was based on an actual family living in the Florida scrub, and a boy who made a pet out of a deer, and in the end was forced to kill it. “The Yearling” was an instant success and received rave reviews. Two weeks after its publication, it was on the list of best sellers, where it remained for 93 weeks. During the first two months, 60,000 copies were sold, and in just over a year, it went through 21 American printings, selling over 500,000 copies. (Letters were sent to Marjorie, in response to reader appreciation for “The Yearling”, even fifteen years after her death. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939. (*My copy of “The Yearling” is from the Palmetto Edition which was offered at a special price of $1.30 only until Christmas, 1942.)

Following “The Yearling” in 1938, Scribner’s published her book “When the Whippoorwill” a collection of short stories, in 1940.

From the University of Miami, Treasuries of South Florida Library, comes this explanation of the title (which I had to do some searching to find):
The title, “When the Whippoorwill”, derives from another Florida country or Cracker expression, “When the first whippoorwill calls it is time for the corn to be in the ground.” This is a most appropriate title for a collection of stories about the lives of Florida Crackers. Readers are treated to this familiar Cracker terminology in the short story “Varmints.” The book also includes “A Crop of Beans;” “Benny and the Bird Dogs;” “Jacob’s Ladder;” “The Pardon;” “The Enemy;” “Gal Young Un;” “Alligators;” “A Plumb Clare Conscience;” “A Mother in Mannville;” and “Cocks Must Crow.” Many of the stories were first published in magazines, including “Varmints,” which appeared in the December, 1936, issue of Scribner’s. In “Varmints,” Rawlings offers a narrative tale of Quincey Dover’s troubles with “an unnatural mule belonging to two of her acquaintances.”

The typescript is accompanied by an autographed copy of the story’s first book printing in 1940. This copy is inscribed by Rawlings to her future husband Norton Baskin, and was a gift from him to the University of Florida Libraries.

Rawlings gave her manuscripts and correspondence to the University of Florida in 1950. This typescript typifies Rawlings’ writing process: she typed first drafts on cheap yellow second sheets, then revised generously, usually in pencil. As with the original manuscript of the Yearling, the paper used is pulpy and highly acidic. All the Rawlings’ manuscripts were, by the 1990s, too fragile for use, and could be consulted only by using the microfilm copies. The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society and other concerned individuals provided generous private support and the Libraries’ Preservation Department was able to purchase the supplies needed to treat and thereby conserve each page. Every sheet of manuscript paper has been deacidified, encapsulated in archival mylar, and bound in protective covers. Thus the originals may be examined by students and scholars without harm. The pages are kept in proper order, and are safe from the ravages of dirt, insects, dampness, and, insofar as possible, time.”

It would appear—judging from the prices I have encountered for pre-owned copies of “When the Whippoorwill”—that it was not as widely published as “The Yearling”. Some of the stories in “When the Whippoorwill” can be found in “Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings”, edited by Roger L. Tarr and published in 1994 by the University Press of Florida.

After the publication and huge success of “The Yearling” Marjorie’s publishers suggested a book about life in the Florida scrub. Marjorie’s thoughts were already running along the same lines; she didn’t have to fret over a title—the book named itself: “Cross Creek”. It was first published in 1942.

“Cross Creek was chosen for a Book of the Month selection, along with John Steinbeck’s “The Moon is Down”. Cross Creek received immediate critical acclaim with some reviewers calling her “a female Thoreau.”

“Cross Creek” rose to the top of the best seller lists and remained there for many months. The armed forces published a special edition of “Cross Creek” which led, in turn , to Marjorie being inundated with mail from servicemen…bearing in mind this was 1942 and the USA was deeply embroiled in World War II. Marjorie strived to answer all of their letters. I think the charm and quietness, the native humor and Marjorie’s love of the earth endeared her to the world during this difficult period in American history.
“Who owns Cross Creek?” Marjorie writes on the last page of the book. She answers her own question; “The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages. And after I am dead, who am childless, the human ownership of grove and field and hammock is hypothetical. But a long line of red-birds and whippoorwills and blue-jays and ground doves will descend from the present owners of nests in the orange trees, and their claim will be less subject to dispute than that of any human heirs Houses are individual and can be owned, like nests, and fought for. But what of the land? It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.” (I am inclined to think that it was with these words, this writing, that Marjorie must have decided she would leave the house and most of the property to the University of Florida).

“Cross Creek Cookery” grew out of the popularity of a chapter in “Cross Creek”, titled “Our Daily Bread” so when Marjorie suggested to her editors at Scribner’s that she compile a cookbook, they quickly agreed. Of her cooking, Marjorie wrote (in “Cross Creek”) “Cookery is my one vanity and I am a slave to any guest who praises my culinary art. This is my Achilles heel…” (I smiled, reading those lines; I could have written them myself). Because Cross Creek Cookery was a cook book, and I often review cookbooks, I will write a separate review of the book for you. “Cross Creek Cookery” was published by Scribner’s in 1942.

By the end of 1942, writes The Literary Traveler, “Both The Yearling and Cross Creek had been translated into 13 foreign languages and published in the armed forces edition. Shortly after Marjorie’s 50th birthday, the motion picture version of The Yearling starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman came out to critical acclaim.”

More than a decade would pass before Marjorie completed “The Sojourner”. She suffered from ill health (undoubtedly not helped by a heavy cigarette addiction—she smoked up to five packs a day of “Lucky Strikes”). She was in two automobile accidents and the slander lawsuit lasted five years. “The Sojourner” was published in 1953 to mixed reviews; that December, Marjorie died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. She is buried in Antioch Cemetery, a short distance from Cross Creek.

Her husband Baskin had written on her gravestone, “Through her writings, she endeared herself to the people of the world.”

In 1970, the Florida Parks Service began managing Marjorie’s home at Cross Creek. It needed a great deal of restoration. By 1980, there was just the house surrounded by a vast emptiness. Major restoration was completed in 1996, the year of MKR’s 100th birthday.

Marjorie had written, “I do not know how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.” These words bring tears to my eyes. I can relate. And I suppose this explains my love for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the books and short stories that she wrote. I feel in her a kindred spirit, even though she passed away when I was just a young girl myself—and had not yet discovered who SHE was.

Books by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
• South Moon Under, 1933
• Golden Apples, 1935
• The Yearling, 1938
• When the Whippoorwill, 1940
• Cross Creek, 1942
• Cross Creek Cookery, 1942
• The Sojourner, 1953
Published posthumously:
• The Secret River, 1955)
• The Marjorie Rawlings Reader, Edited by Julia Scribner Bigham 1956
• Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, edited by Roger Tarr,
1994
• Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Songs of a Housewife, edited by Roger Tarr, 1996

• Blood of My Blood, edited by Anne Blythe Meriwether, 2002

Books About Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the Creek

• Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Gordon Bigelow, 1966
• The Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Edited by Gordon Bigelow and Laura V. Monti, 1983

• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sojourner at Cross Creek, Elizabeth Silverthorne, 1988
• Invasion of P
privacy: The Cross Creek Trial of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Patricia Nassif Acton, 1988
• Idella, Marjorie Rawlings’ “Perfect Maid”, Idella Parker, 1992
• The Creek, J.T. Glisson, 1993
• Cross Creek Kitchens, Sally Morrison and Kate Barnes, 1993
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the Florida Crackers, Sandra Wallus Sammons and Nina McGuire, 1995
• Vegetable Gardening in Florida, James M. Stephens, 1999
• From Reddick to Cross Creek, Idella Parker, 1999
• Max & Marjorie (Letters Between Maxwell Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings), Edited by Rodger Tarr, 1999
• The Private Marjorie (Letters from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to Norton S. Baskin), Edited by Rodger Tarr, 2004
• The Uncollected Writings of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Collection of juvenilia, college writing, newspaper pieces, and stories of life in Florida), Edited by Rodger L. Tarr and Brent E. Kinser, 2007

–Sandra Lee Smith

THE MAN WHO ATE EVERYTHING

“The Man Who Ate Everything” by Jeffrey Steingarten. In the words of the New Yorker is “so well prepared, so expertly seasoned, so full of flavorsome surprises that if it were a meal, even Mr. Steingarten would have difficulty finding fault with it….it is a book worth celebrating” – and I agree!

Mr. Steingarten, who has been a food critic for VOGUE Magazine since 1989, is, in my words – a hoot! I have often laughed out loud, whether reading alone or with someone else in the room, in which case I usually have to read aloud, to share.

“the Man Who Ate Everything” was the 1997 winner of the Julia Child book award and a finalist, also in 1997, of the James Beard Book Award.

Mr.Steingarden trained to be a food writer at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the HARVARD LAMPOON. For over eight years has been a food critic of Vogue Magazine.

When I leafed through THE MAN WHO ATE EVERYTHING, my attention was riveted to a chapter called The Smith Family Cookbook….I thought “wait a minute—I’ve read this before….somewhere else” and of course I had. It was a chapter included in a charming little book called “Favorite Cookbooks” by Moira Hodgson for whom I wrote about in the CCE (Cookbook Collectors Exchange) some years ago, earning myself a few new fruitcake penpals along the way.

Mr. Steingarten’s book is a collection of essays, not a cookbook (although you may find a few recipes interspersed throughout the book, as when he writes about his challenge to find the perfect pie crust). The author writes with great humor while providing food for thought. (*I could have told him, there isn’t a perfect pie crust and saved him all the work)

If you are the kind of cookbook person who often wonders how something in the culinary world came about, this is the book for you.

“When Jeffrey Steingarten was appointed food critic for Vogue, observe the publishers, Vintage Books, which is a division of Random House, “he systematically set out to overcome his distaste for such things as kimchi, lard, Greek cuisine, and blue food. He succeeded at all but the last: Steingarten is ‘fairly sure that God meant the color blue mainly for food that has gone bad’. Steingarten devotes the same Zen-like discipline and gluttonous curiosity to practically everything that anyone anywhere has ever called “dinner.” As I tend to agree with Mr. Steingarten’s gut feeling about blue food, with perhaps the exception of blueberries, I felt I had met up with a kindred spirit.

Take, for example, his essay called “PRIMAL BREAD”. “The world is divided” explains the author “Into two camps: those who can live happily on bread alone and those who also need vegetables, meat and dairy products…bread is the only food I know what satisfied completely all by itself. It comforts the body, charms the senses, gratifies the soul and excites the mind. A little butter also helps…”
What follows is a day by day account of Mr. Steingarten’s pilgrimage to make the perfect loaf of bread.

Introducing a chapter called “Playing Ketchup”, the author writes “When rumor recently reached my ears that U.S. sales of salsa would soon eclipse those of ketchup, catsup and catchup (these words all mean the same thing) he rushed down to his local supermarket, planting himself in the ketchup department and stood a lonely vigil as though my presence alone could stanch the tide of chunky piquant salsa that menaced from the opposite of aisle 5…”

Jeffrey Steingarten is a funny man although sometimes so droll that you aren’t sure whether he is being amusing or sarcastic. I laugh anyway.

All of you cookbook collectors who love to curl up at night with a good cookbook, “THE MAN WHO ATE EVERYTHING is a delightful diversion from strictly reading recipes (although the ones included in this book are treasures!)

Additionally, this is the kind of book you can carry around with you going to the doctor or the dentist or waiting for kids to get out of school.

Although printed some time ago, THE MAN WHO ATE EVERYTHING can be found on Amazon.com with a wide variety of copies, both new and pre-owned, starting around $3 or $4.
Review by Sandra Lee Smith@sandychatter

BY PRESIDENTIAL DECREE…LET THEM EAT SOUP (PART 2)

PART 2

President Taft (from my hometown of Cincinnati!) the biggest and heaviest of all American Presidents, was also partial to turtle soup.

Terrapin soup was one of President Taft’s favorite luncheon recipes, but when it was served at State’s dinners, a special cook was hired for the $5.00 charge to cook just the soup—given what I now know about killing and cooking turtle, I’m willing to bet that the reason a special cook was hired to cook the terrapin wasn’t so much the cooking end of the job as it was –first kill one turtle.

Mrs. Taft was a great one for invading the White House kitchens to peek into the pots and pans and undoubtedly did so even when the special cook was in attendance. Mrs. Taft kept three cooks in the kitchen but seems to have “gone through” them one after another, possibly due to her habit of invading the White House kitchen to taste what was in the pots! **

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s family LOVED soups. Throughout the many years of the Roosevelt administration, soup pots and kettles were kept simmering on the White House stoves. One of the President’s favorite was pepper pot soup, while Cream of Almond was one of Eleanor’s favorite soups. They also favored fish chowder and something called Mongole Soup (made with yellow split peas and tomato juice) which was an inaugural day favorite. Poppy Cannon tells us that Mongole Soup was also a hearty midnight snack for the Roosevelts house guests.

TO MAKE PRESIDENT (FDR) ROOSEVELT’S MONGOLE SOUP you will need
Yellow split peas
Tomato juice
Onions
Salt & pepper

Soak ½ cup of yellow split peas overnight. In the morning, drain the peas and set over low heat with 2 cups tomato juice. Simmer several hours or until the peas disintegrate. Seasons with 1 tsp grated onion and salt & pepper to taste. Serves 6.
**
However, a favorite Roosevelt soup story involves turtle! Like so many of his predecessors, the president loved turtle and terrapin soup. Shortly after his inauguration, some terrapin were sent to him as a gift. The creatures roamed around the White House cellars, terrorizing Mrs. Nesbitt, the housekeeper.

When she ruined the first terrapin after it was cooked, the President was furious so that the next time terrapin arrived at the White House, the president hired someone from the Metropolitan Club to prepare it!

(it should be noted there is a RITUAL to killing and cooking turtles. (I will spare you the details…trust me, you don’t want to know!)

“In the end,” writes the History Channel on Google, “turtle soup became the victim of its own overwhelming popularity. It migrated from presidential dinners down to railway dining cars, and finally to the red and white Campbell’s can in the 1920s. by World War II, harried cooks had long tired of dressing their own turtles, and cheaper and tastier canned options to turtle became available. Newfangled convenience products like TV dinners and Spam were the final strikes against the increasingly unfashionable turtle soup and by the 1960s, it had gone the way of the pepper pot, served only in certain regions of America…” (from The rise and Fall of Turtle Soup on Google)

The Roosevelt Family enjoyed Philadelphia Pepper Pot soup, Chicken Soup Amandine, and Sara Delano Roosevelt’s Fish Chowder (Sara was FDR’s mother) as well as Green Gumbo, a luncheon favorite of FDR’s along with Crab Gumbo.

Moving on to the Trumans administration—Mrs. Truman was a very private person and resisted any attempts to divulge favorite recipes. That said, Mrs. Truman made herself popular with all the staff in the White House. She knew what she wanted, she knew how things should be done, and how to give orders in a pleasant way. A household employee who said “this is not how the Roosevelts did this” was quickly replaced.

Poppy Cannon doesn’t name names in the Presidents Cookbook and it has been eons ago, so I think it’s safe to say that the person who made that remark was undoubtedly Mrs. Nesbitt, who was hired by Mrs. Roosevelt and came to the White House with them from Hyde Park. (During Mrs. Nesbitt’s reign, it was undoubtedly her way or the highway).

The Truman ways were not the Roosevelt ways. Mrs. Truman took the household bookkeeping in hand and ran it herself. She ruled out breakfast for the daily sleep-out employees, to cut the huge food bills. Every day she sat at her desk and tried to run the White House like a business.

Mr. Truman was a senator prior to becoming Vice President going into FDRs fourth administration and enjoyed Senate Bean Soup, a recipe that has appeared in numerous cookbooks but I discovered that the recipe in Poppy Cannon’s cookbook is made with CANNED SOUP – so I am a bit nonplussed where I found the canned bean soup recipe—the following is an authentic copy of Senate Bean Soup:

TO MAKE SENATE BEAN SOUP

2 CUPS DRY NAVY BEANS
3 QUARTS WATER
1 MEATY HAM BONE
½ CUP MASHED COOKED POTATOES
3 ONIONS, MINCE
4-5 STALKS CELERY, MINCED
2 CLOVER GARLICS, MINCED
¼ CUP MINCED PARSLEY
SALT & PEPPER
LEMON SLICES* OPTIONAL

SOAK BEANS OVERNIGHT IN WATER. ADD HAM BONE AND SIMMER 1 HOUR OR UNTIL BEANS START TO GET TENDER. ADD MASHED POTATOES AND MIX UNTIL SMOOTH. ADD ONIONS, CELERY GARLIC AND PARSLEY AN DSIMMON 1 HOUR LONGER OR UNTIL BEANS ARE SOFT. REMOVE THE HAM BONE, THEN DICE MEAT AND RETURN MEAT TO SOUPL THIN WITH HOT WATER IF NECESSARY. (SOUP SHOULD BE THICK) SEASON WITH SALT AND PEPPER. GARNISH WITH LEMON SLICES. SERVICES 10-12.

*I made this soup exactly as directed and decided it needed more color; so I added a small can of tomato sauce and a couple carrots, diced or sliced, to the soup. Back where I come from, we don’t add lemon slices; we DO add a tablespoon of Apple Cider vinegar to our individual bowls of bean soup, just before eating. Yum!

The Eisenhowers were partial to soup, too. Oxtail soup, cream of almond and cream of celery were a few favorites, along with Stone Crab Bisque, and cream of Artichoke soup.

It was well known that one of President Eisenhower’s own specialties which he prepared himself, was a vegetable beef soup. President Eisenhower was an amateur chef and enjoyed thumbing through cookbooks and experimenting with recipes. The President prided himself on his homemade soups but this detailed recipe for a plain vegetable soup was more than two pages in length! He began with some practical instructions for preparing chicken broth but ended with a rather unusual suggestion for garnishing the soup:

“The best time to make…soup is a day or so after you have had fried chicken and out of which you have saved the necks, ribs, backs, etc.—uncooked. As a final touch, in the springtime when the nasturtiums are green and tender, cut them up in small pieces; boil them separately and add them to your soup. (I have never seen nasturtiums mentioned in a recipe before!

According to Poppy Cannon in THE PRESIDENT’S COOKBOOK, President Eisenhower enjoyed making an old fashioned beef stew for sixty, with directions calling for 20 pounds of beef in 3 gallons of beef stock–You may not want to make a beef stew for sixty people (does anyone have a soup pot big enough?) but you might enjoy experimenting with President Eisenhower’s beef stew scaled down to feed six—-so to make President Eisenhower’s Beef Stew:

Beef for stew (1-2 pounds)
Butter or other shortening
Canned bouillon (or packaged beef bouillon cubes—1 beef bouillon cube with 1 cup of water equals one cup of beef stock)
Water
Bouquet Garni*
Small Irish potatoes
Carrots
White onions
Tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
Flour

Brown 2 lbs beef cubes in 2 TBSP shortening, then add 2 cans bouillon and 1 can water. Simmer, covered, until meat is nearly tender. Add bouquet garni* and 12 potatoes, halved, 1 bunch carrots, cut in 1” lengths, 12 small white onions, 2 large tomatoes, cut in eighths, salt & pepper. Remove bouquet garni and drain off liquid. Return gravy to pot and cook over low heat until well thickened.

(Watch for sales on any cut of beef, such as 7-Bone or round bone roast. Cut the meat into cubes—its much easier than buying beef that has already been cut into cubes. Cook the bone-in in a pot of water to make your own beef stock.

*To make a bouquet garni (not Eisenhower’s instructions—these are my own—sls) I consulted the Grand Dame of cookbooks, Irma Rombauer who advises in JOY OF COOKING that a Bouquet Garni can vary in makeup but usually includes a bay leaf, thyme and parsley, basil, sweet marjoram, summer savory, celery or chervil. Tie the fresh or dried herbs in a bouquet made with 4” squares of cheesecloth. Tie the ends together and bind securely. Bouquets of dried herbs can be made in advance and kept in a tight fitting container, preferably one that is light-proof. You never use a bouquet garni more than once and add it only in the last half hour of cooking. Don’t be afraid to experiment and use herbs that your family enjoys.

Another similar bouquet garni is Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook calls for:

3 sprigs parsley
1 sprig celery or small stalk celery
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
9 peppercorns
2 whole cloves
**
The Kennedys were also soup eaters and one of their famous favorites was Hyannisport Fish Chowder which all of the Kennedys were said to enjoy. According to Francois Rysavy, who was the French Chef to the Kennedys, “The President was a ‘soup, sandwich and fruit’ man for lunch. His luncheon was almost bound to be soup.

To make President Kennedy’s Favorite New England Clam Chowder, South of Boston Style:

4 dozen medium hard-shelled clams
5 cups cold water
1 2-inch cube salt pork, diced*
1 large onion, chopped very fine
4 medium potatoes, diced
Salt & pepper to taste
2 cups milk, hot
1 ½ cups heavy cream, hot

Wash clams thoroughly. Place them in a deep pan with the cold water, covering the clams. Bring to a boil and boil 10 minutes or until shells open. Strain the broth thoroughly through cheesecloth and reserve. Remove clams from their shells; clean and chop. Combine salt pork and onion in a saucepan. Cook gently over low heat, about 3 minutes, do not brown. Add broth and potatoes. Cook until potatoes are render. Add clams. Remove from heat and slowly add milk and cream which has been heated. Serve immediately.

One of the recipes frequently mentioned in connection with Mrs. Kennedy was Boula Boula soup which contained (surprise!) turtle. Mrs. Kennedy’s Boula Boula soup was served at the White House on United Nations Day. (However, the days of 300 pound turtles being presented to the White House are a thing of a past. White House Chef Rene Verdon provided a recipe for making Mrs. Kennedy’s Boula Boula soup substituting peas along with 2 cups canned green turtle soup but I don’t think you can find turtle ANY where anymore–Fresh, frozen or otherwise. Most turtles are an endangered species. In my own family, mock turtle soup—at one time (many years ago!) was made with the head of a cow—back in the days when the head of a cow was something you could order from the butcher; at some point in time, ground beef was substituted for the head of a cow.

To make President Kennedy’s favorite onion soup you will need:

3 medium onions, finely sliced
4 tbsp butter
1 TBSP flour
2 ½ pints beef stock
Salt and pepper to taste
French bread
Shredded Swiss cheese
Additional butter

Cook the onions and butter in a heavy pot. When they are browned or translucent, sprinkle with flour. Allow to brown a little longer, then add the beef stock, salt and pepper. Cook 15 minutes. Slice the bread ¼” thick. Butter lightly and then brown in oven. Put the onion soup in casserole or serving dishes.

There are numerous published books written by the employees who worked in the White House; in the 1960s, I began collecting White House BOOKS, specifically memoirs by white house employees—not just those compiled by the White House chefs. One of the first that I found was Henrietta Nesbitt’s “The Presidential Cookbook”, published in 1951. Many of these books have a tendency to overlap with other White House cookbooks (sort of shades of which came first—the chicken or the egg).

That being said, the Martha Washington Cook Book does NOT contain a recipe for her Crab Bisque although Henrietta Nesbitt’s Presidential Cookbook contains a recipe titled Martha Washington’s Crab Soup (1951) repeated by Poppy Cannon, in The Presidents’ Cookbook (1968), repeated again by John R. Hanny in his Secrets from the White House Kitchens in 2001.

Henrietta Nesbitt was invited by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt to go with them from Hyde Park to the White House as their housekeeper. Mrs. Nesbitt was at that time was well into her fifties and she would remain housekeeper for the next 13 years for the Roosevelts and one year with the Trumans.

I started searching for books by White House employees after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—there were numerous memoirs by JFK’s friends and employees close to him, as well as those who worked for Mrs. Kennedy (despite by being required by Mrs. Kennedy to sign an agreement NOT to write any memoirs about them.

Then once I really got underway in my search for White House memoirs, I discovered numerous published works by those employed by FDR or those who were personal friends of FDR and/or Eleanor.

Recently, I began to notice re-writes of those early books—presumably the copywrites have expired on those early memoirs. I purchased, from Amazon.com, a reprint of “White House Diary” by Henrietta Nesbitt, originally published by the author in 1948. I had an original edition of White House Diary and lost it somehow, so recently I ordered another copy from Amazon.com for my home library. I also ordered President Jimmy Carter’s “White House Diary” to supplement my original White House library. **

Poppy Cannon’s “the Presidents Cookbook” ends with the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was vice president at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. As vice president, LBJ was sworn in while on Air Force One flying back to Washington DC. No soup recipes are in Cannon’s final segment of presidents.

At the completion of the one term Johnson fulfilled as president, he announced he would not be seeking another term as president; he and Ladybird returned to Texas. Perhaps he felt those shoes of Kennedy’s were too big for him to fill.

My reference material is taken from books in my own library. Some years ago (1990s) I wrote a 4-part article for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange on the White House, primarily by White House Employees. When it was complete and had been printed in four issues of the CCE, I then had the idea of compiling an article based on soup recipes favored by presidents and their wives.

Reference:

THE MARTHA WASHINGTON COOK BOOK (Recipes from the personal cookbook of Thomas Jefferson, by Marie Kimball, originally printed 1940

THE PRESIDENTIAL COOKBOOK, feeding the Roosevelts and their guests, copyright 1951 by Henrietta Nesbitt

THE MOUNT VERNON COOKBOOK compiled by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association copyright 1984

THE PRESIDENTS’ COOKBOOK, by Poppy Cannon, copyright 1968, covers presidents from George Washington to Lyndon B. Johnson.

SECRETS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE KITCHENS, by John R. Hanny copyright 2001

THE CARTER FAMILY FAVORITES COOKBOOK, COPYRIGHT 1976 BY Ceil Dyer

THE WHITE HOUSE CHEF COOKBOOK, copyright 1967 by Rene Verdon, over 500 recipes and menus by the man who was White House chef during the Kennedy years

–Sandra Lee Smith

BY PRESIDENTIAL DECREE…LET THEM EAT SOUP

(PART ONE

Beautiful soup so rich and green
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for danties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!

(From The Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland)

Is there anything quite like a bowl of hot soup? It nourishes and sustains us on a cold and wintry day. Nothing restores us quite like a bowl of hot soup, that COOLS us off, and what could be tastier, then, than a chilled bowl of gazpacho? Another soup served cold long ago was Senegalese Soup, made with chicken broth.

French peasants, for many centuries, recognized the value of having a soup pot simmering on the back of the stove every day. Any leftover bits of meat or vegetables were tossed into the soup kettle—nothing was ever wasted, A bowl of nourishing soup was available, then, at any time.
Decades ago, housewives knew the value of feeding a nourishing beef bouillon or chicken broth to an invalid. A pot or kettle of soup can be very simple—beef broth, for instance, can be very simple, or it can be hearty, like clam chowder or beef stew. Today’s thrifty cook knows she can toss bits and pieces of leftover meat and vegetables into a plastic container or zip lock bag and FREEZE them; when she is ready to make a pot of soup, she can just toss the leftover bits into a soup pot.

If you think of soup as just something that comes out of a can, you are in for a surprise! Homemade soup is one of the easiest, most nourishing foods you can possibly serve to your family…and it can be very, very inexpensive made from odds and ends of leftovers in your refrigerator from leftover pot roast or a ham bone—or simply by chopping up some fresh vegetables, adding a few beef or chicken bouillon cubes and whatever other seasonings you like.

When I was a little girl, vegetable soup was served at dinner (called supper when I was a child), first as a broth, sometimes with homemade noodles Then as an entrée, we had the potatoes, carrots and meat from the soup pot—while my father and brothers spread the cooked marrow on crackers.

It may surprise you to know that many American presidents were very partial to soups—enough so that history has left us a legacy of their soup preferences!

Our first president, George Washington, loved seafood and was especially partial to Martha Washington’s crab soup. According to Poppy Cannon in her book “The President’s Cookbook” it also became a favorite of FDR’s and President and Mrs. Eisenhower.

Many decades later, Martha Washington’s Crab Soup was served at the Senate Wives Red Cross Luncheon; First Lady Mrs. Ford like it so much that the recipe was sent to the White House chefs who were able to reproduce the crab soup to Mrs. Ford’s satisfaction, whereupon it became a Ford Family favorite.

(I would imagine that President Washington, with his ill-fitting dentures, found sops easier to eat and digest, too! George Washington had a favorite vegetable soup recipe also).

To Make Martha Washington’s Crab Bisque, you will need the following:

Enough crab to make ½ pound crabmeat
1 TBSP butter
1 ½ TBSP flour
3 hard-cooked eggs, mashed
Rind of 1 lemon, grated
Salt & pepper to taste
2 ½ cups milk
½ cup sherry
Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Boil enough crabs in salted water to make ½ lb crab meat. Combine the butter, flour, eggs, lemon rind, salt and pepper. Put the milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour it slowly into the egg mixture. Now combine the crabmeat with the milk mixture and boil gently 5 minutes. Add the cream and take it off the stove before it comes to a full boil. Add sherry and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Serves 4-5.

Martha Washington also favored a Mexican black bean* soup; these recipes found their way into Martha’s manuscript cookbook. Quite possibly her recipe was given to her by President Jefferson, as he, too, had a favorite Mexican Black Bean Soup recipe. Martha obtained recipes from other notables of her times. Many years later, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Nixon were also partial to Black Bean Soup.

(*I think we have had a resurgence of black beans in the past few decades—I don’t recall seeing it—or any recipes calling for black beans when I was raising my children—sls)

The Martha Washington Cook Book offs quite a few other soup recipes, from making French Broth, to Barley Broth, French Pottage to a Gruel of French Barley.

One of our first presidents, Thomas Jefferson, was so fond of soups that he wrote an essay, “Observations on Soups”. Which reads “always observe to lay your meat in the bottom of the pan with a lump of butter. Cut the herbs and vegetables very fine and lay over the meat. Cover it close* and set over a slow fire. This will draw the virtue out of the herbs and roots and give the soup a different flavor from what it would have been putting the water in first…when the gravy produced from the meat is almost dried up. Fill your pan with water when your soup is done, take it up and when cool enough, skim of the grease quite clean. Put it on again to heat and then dish it up. When you make white soups never put in the cream until you take it off the fire. Soup is better the second day in cool weather. (“cover it close” may have meant with a tight fitting lid)

TO MAKE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON’S BLACK BEAN SOUP:

2 CUPS BLACK MEXICAN BEANS
2 ½ QUARTS WATER
2 LBS SHORT RIBS OF BEEF
SALT & PEPPER TO TASTE
1 CUP WINE
3 SLICES TOAST, MADE INTO CROUTONS
BUTTER

Wash beans and add to the water with the short ribs and seasonings. Boil over low flame 3-4 hours or until beans are soft. Remove meat, pour remainder through colander, pressing beans through. Remove to pot with small pieces of meat and stock; simmer about 10 minutes longer. Take from stove, add wine and pepper to taste. Serve immediately with croutons browned in butter. Serves 8-10.

President Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and fittingly one of his favorite soup recipes was Gumbo. Another favorite soup of President Jefferson’s was potato soup, as prepared by his cook at Monticello.

Yet another well-liked soup recipe of President Jefferson was pea soup, made, of course, with peas from his own garden. Every Monday at Monticello, tomato soup was served. Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha, who shared his interest in recipes (call receipts back then) gave the recipe to Martha Washington. Yet another favorite recipe written by President Jefferson’s daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph was a recipe for okra soup.

John Adams, like all early pioneering Americans, learned to use corn in many different ways. It was a legacy given to us by the American Indians. A favorite soup of President Adams was corn soup. Another favorite dish was succotash soup. Perhaps the Adams’, who spent some years living in Philadelphia, developed a taste for the Pennsylvania-Dutch corn soup. The following corn and tomato soup, with dumplings, is credited with Ohio origins…but it might have originated in Pennsylvania.

TO MAKE CORN AND TOMATO SOUP WITH DUMPLINGS:

A MEATY SOUP BONE
1 ONION, SLICED
SALT AND PEPPER TO TASTE
A DOZEN EARS OF CORN
1 DOZEN TOMATOES
DUMPLINGS

Cover bone well with cold water. Add seasonings and onion. Shave off the grains of corn and also scrape out the pulp. Add to soup pot. Peel, then cut up the tomatoes. Add. Let it come to a boil and then reduce the heat and cook slowly 3 hours.

TO MAKE DUMPLINGS

1 EGG
1 CUP SOUR MILK*
½ TSP SALT
FLOUR
½ TSP BAKING SODA

Beat egg slightly. Stir soda into milk and add. Mix in enough salted flour to make a very stiff batter. Drop into boiling soup from a teaspoon. Cover, and cook 20 minutes. Serve at once.

(*I take it for granted that everybody knows these things—but in case you don’t—to make sour milk, just add a teaspoon of white vinegar or lemon juice to regular milk…wait a little bit and it will become “sour” milk).
**

Many presidents have enjoyed turtle or terrapin, according to White House history. One of the first presidents to receive a gift of turtle was President John Adams. A friend bestowed a 114 pound turtle upon the president.

In his diary, his son—John Quincy Adams—mentions that on a July 4th dinner served at the White House during Tyler’s administration, turtle soup was made from a turtle weighing 300 pounds, a present from Key West*

It is said that John Quincy Adams never failed to mention with whom he dined or how often, so that when he mentioned in his diary having eaten turtle at a dinner, it must have been an impressive occasion.

*More about turtles later!

Dolley Madison, considered for many decades to be the quintessential Washington hostess, served as hostess for Thomas Jefferson, who was widowed. Dolley, who left neatly handwritten notes containing her favorite recipes and home remedies, treated visitors—even drop-ins—with a bouillon laced with sherry. To make Dolley Madison’s hospitable bouillon, you will need:

4 lbs beef 1 veal knuckle
3 small carrots
2 turnips
1 pot hot pepper
3 small white onions
1 bunch parsley
5 quarts water
Sherry

Place all ingredients except the sherry in a large pot and simmer for 6 hours. Cool and strain.

Chef Rysavy, in a TREASURY OF WHITE HOUSE COOKING, tells us that Dolley liked to let her bouillon stand overnight before skimming off the fat. She would store the bouillon in a cool place and heat a portion of it as needed. Just before hot bouillon was served, a little sherry was added. Serves 20.

President Fillmore may not be well remembered by American historians (or school children) but he DID install the first real bathtub with centrally heated running water. His wife installed the first library in the White House while President Fillmore also installed the first real STOVE in the White House kitchen. Prior to that time, all the Fillmore cooking was done over open fireplaces. There is a story that the Fillmore cook was horrified at the idea of cooking on such a “thing” and that the President had to go visit the patent office to get detailed directions for operating it. But, like all new contraptions, once the white House staff got used to it, they couldn’t imagine getting along without it.

President Fillmore was a thrifty man – it seems only natural that one of HIS favorite soup recipes was an old fashioned vegetable beef soup which was more like a stew. Again, according to Ms. Cannon’s book “The Presidential Cookbook”, when President Fillmore’s soup was “…ready to serve, the solids were removed from the soup kettle to a platter. The soup was served first, consumed, then the soup bowls were re-filled with the meat and vegetables from the platter. (I wonder if my mother ever knew that her soup was served exactly the same way as the Fillmore presidential administration—I read that the president’s wife saw no reason to switch to clean plates after the broth had been eaten).

A favorite soup of Andrew Jackson’s was “Old Hickory Soup”, also a local favorite with natives of Jackson’s North Carolina. The recipe begins “Crack one gallon hickory nuts…”

Julia Tyler, wife of President John Tyler, seems to have been partial to a “torup” stew, torup being a variation of huge turtles that were native to the Eastern Shore of Long Island, where Julia grew up. (Julia was President Tyler’s second wife, and many years younger than he. The marriage created something of a stir in Washington. The “torup” stew was said to taste a lot like chicken. (I’ve heard that said about alligator, too—that it tastes like chicken.

Oyster stew and terrapin stew were listed amongst many other dishes listed on President Lincoln’s second inaugural ball menu. This was a bit of a far cry from President Lincoln’s first inaugural at which mock turtle soup was served.

While most food historians claim that President Lincoln had very little interest in food, it seems a fair assumption that turtle soup was a favorite dish, being served at both of President Lincoln’s inaugural celebrations. The President even planned the menu for his second inauguration. And even though historians claim that Mr. Lincoln was not interested in food or eating, it seems that he loved fruit pies and some of the ladies in Springfield shipped fruit pies to him—no small feat in the mid-1800s.

(I sometimes wonder if the president just didn’t like the way most foods were prepared for him. I grew up thinking I hated rice. I hate cabbage, I hate stewed rabbit. I didn’t really hate those foods; I hated the way they had been cooked. I was an adult living in California before I ever discovered that rice didn’t have to be cooked to a gluey-lumpy-pasty ball of gunk! I didn’t hate those foods; I hated the way my mother cooked them.

One of the best rice recipes served to us at a friend’s house was a rice pilaf that was outstanding. It was long after I met Bob that I discovered how delicious corned beef and cabbage could be, cooked gently in a slow-cooker, wedges of cabbage added in the last hour of cooking.

The Benjamin Harrisons were a soup loving family, with corn soup and fish chowder amongst their favorites. Another favorite served by Mrs. Harrison was “amber soup” which was a hot clear soup that she served at White House teas and receptions. It was made from both chicken and ham, along with assorted vegetables.

Teddy Roosevelt’s family, having a special interest in India and the Far East, were partial to a chilled Senegalese soup, made with chicken stock and curry but they also enjoyed a corn chowder. I did some searching for Senegalese Soup and found a recipe from 21 Restaurant, stating that theirs is one of the few places in this country where you can still find it. The classic garnish is diced poached chicken; this version substitutes chutney; to make Traditional Senegalese Soup you will need:

3 tart apples, such as granny smith
2 TBSP unsalted butter
2 carrots, chopped
1 large white onion, chopped
¼ cup raisins
1 garlic clove, chopped
3 TBSP curry powder*
2 TBSP all purpose flour
8 cups chicken broth
1 TBSP canned tomato puree
½ cup heavy cream

Garnish: bottle mango chutney or poached chicken, diced
Peel and core apples and chop. In a heavy kettle, heat butter over moderate heat until foam subsides and cook apples, carrots, onion, raisins and garlic, stirring occasionally, until they begin to soften, 10-12- minutes. Add curry powder and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add flour and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Stir in broth and tomato puree and simmer, covered, 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Stir in cream and salt to taste, and simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes.
Cool soup and in a food processor or blender, puree in batches until smooth. Strain soup through a sieve into a large bowl and chill until cold, 2-3 hours. Garnish each serving with about ½ tsp chutney (or a small amount of diced, poached and chilled chicken cubes.)

*Personally, I’m not crazy about curry powder, so 3 tablespoons of curry powder would be too much for my palate —I would reduce this to one or two tablespoons curry powder, tops. – sls

(TO BE CONTINUED)

THE 75 BEST BOOKS (REVISITED)

A recent article in my PARADE* magazine caught my attention; this one by writer Ann Patchett is titled “THE 75 BEST BOOKS OF THE PAST 75 YEARS”.

Well, I’m sure you can imagine—I begged to differ. I rarely read books that are on best seller lists—I pick & choose what I find interesting.

When Parade asked Patchett to compile a list of the best 75 books to celebrate the magazine’s 75th anniversary, her first response was, “Not a chance!” –She says she could picture the mountains of furious letters complaining about all the great works of literature she’d left off. But when she asked the staff at Parnassus Books, the Nashville store she co-owns with Karen Hayes, to take it on as a group project, they agreed.

What they discovered in the process is how wildly they disagreed about everything, except how much they loved books. “We wanted novels, sure”, she writes, “but we also wanted picture books, science books, histories and young adult novels. We wanted things that were old, like “The Old Man and the Sea”, but also things that were hot off the press, like “When Breath Becomes Air” (which I am totally unfamiliar with).

Patchett continues, “The most important thing about creating any list is figuring out ways to narrow it down, so we decided to choose 75 books from just the last 75 years (sorry, Grapes of Wrath, you just missed the cut) and books written only by North Americans, because if we opened it up to the world we would miss plenty of gems out of sheer ignorance and wind up with a lot more than 75 books!”

She says “that seemed like a reasonable solution until we realized that meant leaving off Harry Potter, a deal breaker for half of our staff, so we defaulted to books written in English.
Behold, a mash-up of a list that exemplifies the passionate convictions of 17 booksellers. Are they the best 75 books from the past 75 years? Judge for yourself…”.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)

“This book is so perfectly executed—literature at its most engaging. When I think about so many of the books on this list, I’m also thinking about the books that didn’t get on. Personally, I love “A Handful of Dust” slightly more than “Brideshead”, but I was outvoted.”

The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1949)
“This book belongs to no era. It’s pure wisdom.”

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)
“This book is on the list because Mary Laura Philpot, who’s in charge of our online literary magazine, Musing, pretty much said she’d quit if we didn’t include The End of the Affair and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. We all had books that we refused to be flexible on. Greene’s body of work is both large and wildly diverse: There are the political Greene novels, the comic Greene novels, the romantic Greene novels. If you’re just picking one, it’s not going to be representative of his entire body of work, so in the end we went with the one Mary Laura loved best. I have to say, I completely agree with her.”

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (1953)
Writes Patchett “Nine Stories is a book I’ve gone back to at different moments in my life, and I always find something new. I’ve passionately loved different stories at different times, first “Teddy,” later “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor.” I could list all of them. It’s also the most perfectly balanced collection of stories I know. There are no weak links. The Catcher in the Rye is a great book when you’re a kid, and Franny and Zooey is a great book when you’re in your 20s, but Nine Stories can see you through your entire life.”

Books in the 1960s:
“America was so vulnerable in the ’60s. I think of the pain that the country suffered through because of the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement–it tore our hearts open, and that openness is the place from which great art is often made.”

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child (1961)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
“These two books make a nice pairing because, in extremely different ways, they’re books about women finding their art and their daring. Plath and Child both test themselves to see what they’re capable of, and that set the tone not only for the ’60s but for the rest of our lives.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
“This book was the guide to the ’70s. The world as we had known it in the ’50s was finished. Who knew what was coming? This is the book that says everything we used to know is gone, but what’s up ahead may be a lot cooler than anything we could have ever imagined.”

Maus by Art Spiegelman (1980)
“The first graphic novel to address a serious subject—one of the first graphic novels for adults I had ever seen, this book made us look at one of the most painful and widely documented atrocities in history with fresh eyes. Maus made us think again. Its influence has certainly been clear in the rise of graphic novels, but I think it’s spread throughout all art forms, going all the way up to the play Hamilton. How can the artist make his audience fully experience history? Present it in the most unexpected way.”

The Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling (1997–2007)
“The Harry Potter phenomenon was and still is incredibly uplifting because it turned children into readers. It gave them a profound connection to characters, and that nearly rabid need to know what was coming next. The readers and the characters grew up together, and the passion for the books spread to the parents and then to the next generation. Any child who grew up reading Harry Potter knows that she is fully capable of later reading something like Great Expectations, because she’s had that experience of losing herself in great big books.”

On Writing by Stephen King (1999)
“It would be impossible for a bunch of booksellers to decide on their favorite Stephen King novel, but we all agreed On Writing should make the list. You don’t need to be a King fan, a horror fan, or someone who wants to write to love this book (though Stephen King’s horror fans who want to write will be deeply satisfied). It’s just a great book about determination, and how the past shapes us, and how the love and support of a single person can make all the difference. It’s also the best explanation of addiction, and overcoming addiction, that I’ve ever read.”
(I don’t consider myself much of a Stephen King fan—with the exception of some of his early works, in particular “Four Seasons” – four short stories which all, I believe, were made into films–sls)

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (2005)
“Some people feel intimidated by David Foster Wallace’s books, and some of his books can be intimidating. By adding Consider the Lobster to this list, we’re suggesting a book that shows Wallace’s brilliance at its very best while still being accessible. This is a very funny book, very manageable, but the writing is never less than dazzling. He continually asks us if we’re thinking about what we’re doing, because he’s thinking about what he’s doing every second.”

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016)
“The book grabs the reader from the opening pages and never lets go. That’s why it’s so perfect for right now. There are so many demands on our time and attention, and Elizabeth Strout actually gets our attention, all of it, by simply and directly telling us an unforgettable story.”

I DID agree with Ms. Patchett on a few titles—one of the first for 1940 is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith (no relation) published in 1943. Several other titles are unfamiliar to me, despite my lifetime of being an avid reader, moving from membership to various libraries to buying bags of books in the bi-annual library sales.

While many bookstores, to my dismay, have gone out of business, all you have to do is attend just one of the Friends of the Library book sales to discover that people are—despite the death of bookstores—still reading books. And I’m guessing that most of the books we purchase from the pre-owned selections at Amazon.com are from used bookstores that are finding customers throughout the country with this format.

The selections from Pachett for the 1950s are partially familiar (“The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway, “Charlotte’s Web” (E.B. White), “The Once and Future King” by T.H.White, “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov—I haven’t read any of Patchett’s 1950s selections and don’t plan to go into Amazon.com and look for any of them. Included in 1950s as well was “Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger” I remember struggling through “Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger—yikes! In my honest opinion, best sellers of the 1950s also left much to be desired.

Pachett moves on to the 1960s—certainly I was an avid reader by this time. I scoured used book stores and thrift shops in downtown Cincinnati. Listed by Pachett for the 1960s? “Night” by Elie Wiesel, “The Rabbit Angstrom” by John Updike, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. I didn’t buy/read Julia Child’s cookbook in the 1960s—but I DID buy and read “To Kill a Mockingbird” and at some point in time, I also saw the film version starring Gregory Peck.

I now have several copies of “The Art of French Cooking” and have given most of my French cookbooks to my niece in Seattle, who – along with her husband – love French cooking.

Around in 1960 or ’61, my father brought home several copies of a Methodist church cookbook that he purchased from a co-worker at Formica, for a dollar each. My mother got a copy as well as my sister Becky and myself. That was really the introduction to church and club cookbooks for me. I tried many of the local Cincinnati recipes and began to wonder if there might be other church or club cookbooks such as this one. It was an awakening for me.

In 1961 we—husband Jim, one year old son, Michael, and I–moved to California, returning to Ohio in 1963 to await the birth of second son Steve. When Steve was four months old, we—now a family of four-returned to California, driving a treacherous route covered with snow and ice until we reached the middle of Texas. I had begun to collect books but my tastes were selective at this time.

I began buying used books (fiction novels, mostly) wherever I could find them cheap. I began reading whatever I could find. I remember going through all of Agatha Christie’s novels, paperbacks bought for ten cents each at a used book store on Lankershim Boulevard, when Michael was a toddler. We had an apartment on Sara Street. I walked to this book store with Michael in a stroller—at ten cents each, I could buy ten of Agatha Christie’s mysteries for a dollar.

Thinking back, I had a small bookcase in my bedroom when I was a teenager. My first books of my own were five Nancy Drew mysteries, a Christmas present from my brother Jim. I was probably ten or eleven at the time.

When I was still a pre-teen, I accompanied my Uncle Cal to the drug store on Carl Street to pick up a prescription for my mother. I picked up a paperback copy of the Diary of Anne Frank and sensing my interest, my uncle bought the book for me. I read it over and over, until the pages fell out of the book. It was the first non-fiction book I had ever read (years later I collected everything I could find about Anne Frank.)

I remember finding a copy of GONE WITH THE WIND at my grandmother’s, when a family she rented the second floor to disappeared without paying the rent, leaving behind an assortment of things. That copy of GONE WITH THE WIND was amongst those discards. GWTW was the very first unabridged novel that I read, up to that point. I think I was about fifteen years old. And, I had to read GWTW half a dozen times to really “get” it—I had to grow into Margaret Mitchell’s account of love, life and the American Civil War.

I also remember reading PEYTON PLACE as a teenager, which was considered scandalous and not suitable reading for good Catholic girls. Everybody was reading it (by later standards, PEYTON PLACE was actually pretty tame.) It should be noted that neither GWTW or Peyton Place made the list in Ann Patchett’s list.

By the time I became an adult and was buying books left and right, now scouring used book stores in the San Fernando Valley—I had acquired some of my favorite authors.

An early favorite author was Shirley Jackson, whose novels I read and collected. Then I discovered Janice Holt Giles and along with girlfriend Connie, we searched for HER published novels. Also early on, I discovered Ardyth Kennelly and made a diligent search for her books (unfortunately, Ardyth only wrote four or five novels and I was never able to discover why her writing career was cut short).

As for Shirley Jackson, she was the author I tried hardest to emulate—she could write bone-chilling mysteries such as “The Haunting of Hill House” (which was made into a movie) – or side-splitting humor such as her autobiographical Life Among the Savages” and “Raising Demons” which may have become offensive to her four children when they were old enough to know that they were the subject of those two books.

In 1965 I began to collect cookbooks – but none were purchased NEW—I began buying church and club cookbooks with assistance from a new Michigan penpal, Betsy, who also collected cookbooks.

Vacation trips with my sons to Cincinnati in the first half of the 1970s led to trips in downtown Cincinnati to scour the used bookstores to search for club and church cookbooks from various groups throughout Cincinnati but from neighboring Kentucky and Indiana as well. One year we returned to California by greyhound bus because you could ship up to five large boxes of books back to southern California without any additional fees.

In 1977, I returned to work full time, ending the summer vacations in Cincinnati.
As I got older, many of the titles of favorite authors became easier to find, thanks to the Internet.

When I bought a house in 2008 and despite giving away truckloads of books to the Burbank Friends of the Library, I filled over 600 boxes with books and other belongings n(such as cookie jars and recipe boxes) while my son Kelly made weekend trips from the San Fernando Valley to the Antelope Valley, then transferred all the boxes of books to my new garage once we moved into our new home.

In 2010, my housemate, Bob, built a library out of half of my garage space—cookbooks filled all the bookshelves inside the house, and my collections of fiction, collections of First Ladies and Presidents went into the new library; I unpacked boxes of books as fast as Bob put up shelves. And despite all the newly found book space, I donated more than five large boxes of books to the Lancaster Friends of the Library.

At last I had enough shelf space to put all of titles by favorite authors into alphabetical order (with the exception of my absolutely favorite authors, who are in a bookcase in my bedroom) so that I can tell you that favorite authors range from Maeve Binchy and Gwen Bristow to Michael Connolly and Patricia Cornwell, Harlan Coben and Jeffrey Deaver to Janice Holt Giles and Norah Lofts, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, from John Sandford to John Steinbeck—who I was late in discovering after a trip to Monterey Bay with a girlfriend.

In more recent years, I discovered—and fell in love with—books by Robert Morgan, starting with The Hinterlands, as well as the body of works by Adriana Trigiani. I think my love for American pioneer fiction started with Janice Holt Giles but is still going strong today with pioneer fiction by Robert Morgan and Adriana Trigiani.

In the past few years, I have begun downsizing some of my books, primarily to provide shelf space for other favorite titles—easily a lot more than seventy five. 

–Sandra Lee Smith

*for the unfamiliar, Parade is a leaflet of perhaps half a dozen pages that appears in my L.A. Times Sunday newspaper.

AN UPDATE ON THOSE INCOMPORABLE BROWNS: CORA, ROSE & BOB — COOKBOOK AUTHORS

AN UPDATE ON THOSE INCOMPORABLE BROWNS: CORA, ROSE & BOB — COOKBOOK AUTHORS
(previously posted 9/2012)

Back in 1965, when I first began collecting cookbooks, one of my first cookbook penpals was a woman in Michigan, Betsy, who has remained my friend to this day. I have been the happy recipient of many of her cookbooks as she began to downsize.

Betsy was the person who “introduced” me to the Browns – Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, authors of over a dozen really fantastic, outstanding cookbooks. Betsy had some duplicates of the Browns’ cookbooks and sent them to me. Well, I was quickly hooked. And it was the Browns’ “America Cooks” (published 1940 by Halcyon House), that really turned me onto church-and-club community cookbooks. (I was stunned to see “America Cooks” listed at $300 by an antiquarian book dealer. I bought an extra copy for $5.00 some time ago and gave it to someone who didn’t have a copy!)

Everyone of you who reads cookbooks like novels (and thinks you are the only person in the world who does this) would find “America Cooks” a most readable cookbook. Since “America Cooks” was published in 1940, others have followed in the Browns’ footsteps with dozens of cookbooks with “America” in the titles. None can compare with The Browns’ “America Cooks”.

In the foreword, the Browns wr0te, “We put in twenty years of culinary adventuring in as many countries and wrote a dozen books about it before finding out that we might as well have stayed at home and specialized in the regional dishes of our own forty-eight states. For America cooks and devours a greater variety of viands than any other country. We’re the world’s richest stewpot and there’s scarcely a notable foreign dish or drink that can’t be had to perfection in one or another section of our country….”

“For many years we Browns have been collecting regional American cooking lore, gathering characteristic recipes from each of the forty-eight states (Hawaii and Alaska had not yet become states in 1940) with colorful notes on regional culinary customs. Our collection is complete and savory. It has been our aim to make this America’s culinary source book, a means whereby each state and city may interchange its fine foods and dishes with every other, from coast to coast and from border to border. Here are forty-eight different cookbooks merged into one handy volume—a guide to the best in food and drink that this bounteous country offers. Obviously, no one person nor three, can cover every kitchen, even with such enthusiastic help as we have had from several hundred local authorities. But we believe this is our best food book, and in order to build it bigger and better in later editions, we should like to swap regional recipes and gustatory lore with all who are interested…”

And seventy something years later, I think “America Cooks” remains the Browns’ best food book. However, that being said, I found the most elusive cookbook of the Browns to be “THE VEGETABLE COOK BOOK”, subtitled “FROM TROWEL TO TABLE” by Cora, Rose and Bob Brown. Published by J. B. Lippincott Company in 1939—I only recently obtained a copy through Alibris.com and paid a whopping $25.00 for a copy. (I justified it by it having the original dust jacket and being a first edition—although to tell the truth, I rarely spend that much on a book. And it seems that other copies are going for much higher prices.

Cora Brown, Robert’s mother, was born in Charlotte, Michigan, graduated from the Chicago Conservatory of music, married and brought up a family. She took up writing fiction and in 1920 went to Brazil to become co-publisher with her son and daughter in law, Rose. Cora lived with Bob and Rose in Japan, China, France, Germany, etc, becoming familiar with foreign customs and kitchens and collecting recipes with Rose. Cora is the author of “The Guide to Rio de Janerio” and co-authored ten cookbooks with Bob and Rose.

Rose Brown was born in Middletown, Ohio (not far from my hometown of Cincinnati), and graduated from Barnard College and Teachers College. She was a teacher, interior decorator, and journalist, contributing articles on cooking to Colliers, Vogue, This Week and other magazines. Rose was co-author with Cora and Bob on most of their cookbooks. One cookbook that does not list Cora is “Look Before You Cook” which shows Rose and Bob as authors. One cookbook authored solely by Bob Brown is “The Complete Book of Cheese.” “Culinary Americana” was written by Eleanor Parker and Bob Brown—Eleanor becoming Bob’s wife after Rose’s death.

According to Lippincott, the initiation of Rose into the mysteries of cooking was over a camp fire with game and instruction by her father. During World War I, she worked as a writer for the Committee of Public Information in Santiago, Chile. In Buenos Aires, Mrs. Brown became co publisher with Bob Brown of weekly magazines in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico and London. Rose Brown had her own kitchen in a dozen countries and traveled all over the world, always pursuing her hobbies of collecting recipes and cooking lore—and going fishing with her husband. Rose Brown passed away in 1952.

Bob brown was born in Chicago and was graduated from Oak Park High School and the University of Wisconsin. He arrived in New York in 1908 to enter the writing lists, contributing verse and fiction to practically all the periodicals of the time. One of his first books, written after the end of Prohibition, was called “Let There Be Beer!” He then collaborated with his mother and wife Rose on “The Wine Cookbook,” first published in 1934 and reprinted many times. A 1960 edition was re-named “Cooking with Wine” .

Robert Carlton Brown (1886-1959) was a writer, editor, publisher, and traveler. From 1908 to 1917, he wrote poetry and prose for numerous magazines and newspapers in New York City, publishing two pulp novels, “What Happened to Mary” and “The Remarkable Adventures of Christopher Poe” (1913), and one volume of poetry, “My Marjonary” (1916).

In 1918, Bob Brown traveled extensively in Mexico and Central America, writing for the U.S. Committee of Public Information in Santiago de Chile. In 1919, he moved with his wife, Rose Brown, to Rio de Janeiro, where they founded Brazilian American, a weekly magazine that ran until 1929. With Brown’s mother, Cora, the Browns also established magazines in Mexico City and London: Mexican American (1924-1929) and British American (1926-1929).

Following the stock market crash of 1929, the Browns retired from publishing and traveled through Asia and Europe, settling in France from 1929-1933. Brown became involved in the expatriate literary community in Paris, publishing several volumes of poetry, including” Globe Gliding” (1930), “Gems” (1931), “Words” (1931), and “Demonics” (1931), as well as “1450-1950” (1929), a book of visual poetry. While in France, Brown also made plans toward, and wrote a manifesto for, the development of a “reading machine” involving the magnified projection of miniaturized type printed on movable spools of tape. Arguing that such a device would enable literature to compete with cinema in a visual age, Brown published a book of “Readies”—poems by Gertrude Stein, Fillipo Marinetti, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and others, typeset in a manner appropriate to operation of his projected reading machine. Although Brown’s reading machine was never developed, his papers include letters and papers pertaining to its projected design and technical specifications, as well as a collection of his own published and unpublished visual and conceptual writing. (Bob Brown was way ahead of his time – today, we have the Kindle and Nook. I can’t help but wonder if someone came across his manifesto and ran with it).

In 1933, Brown returned to New York. In the 1930s, he wrote a series of international cookbooks in collaboration with Rose and Cora Brown. He also lived in cooperative colonies in Arkansas and Louisiana, visited the USSR, and wrote a book, “Can We Co-Operate” (1940), regarding the parameters of a viable American socialism. In 1941, he and Rose returned to South America. While traveling down the Amazon they amassed a substantial collection of art and cultural artifacts and collaborated on a book, “Amazing Amazon” (1942). The Browns eventually reestablished residence in Rio de Janeiro, where they lived until Rose Brown’s death in 1952.

After thirty years of living in many foreign countries, and following the deaths of Cora and Rose, Bob Brown closed their mountain home in Petropolis, Brazil, and returned to New York, where he married Eleanor Parker in 1953. Brown continued to write and ran a shop called Bob Brown’s Books in Greenwich Village and ran a mail order business until his death in 1959. Shortly after Brown’s death, a new edition of “1450-1950” was published by Jonathan Williams’s Jargon/Corinth Press.
During his lifetime, Bob Brown authored more than a thousand short stories and thirty full length books.
The Browns appear to have used a number of different publishers for their cookbooks. While “Soups, Sauces and Gravies,” “Fish and Sea Food Cookbook,” Salad and Herbs” were published by Lippincott, “The Complete Book of Cheese” was published by Gramercy Publishing Company. “America Cooks” and “10,000 Snacks” were published by Halcyon House and “The European Cook Book” by Prentice-Hall, Inc. A few were published by companies I am unfamiliar with; “The Country Cookbook” by A.S. Barnes and Company, and “Most for Your Money Cookbook” by Modern Age Books. “Culinary Americana”, co-authored by Brown Brown and Eleanor Parker Brown, was published by Roving Eye Press (Bob Brown’s own publication name). For whatever reason, the Browns appear to have shopped around whenever they had a book ready for publication. (Or did they copyright them all first, and then shop for publishers?)
Recently, I began to rediscover the fabulous cookbooks written the Browns. Some unexpected surprises turned up—for instance, as I was browsing through the pages of “Most for Your Money” I found a chapter titled “Mulligans Slugullions, Lobscouses and Burgoos”—while I am unfamiliar with mulligans and lobscouses, I’ve written about slumgullion stew in sandychatter and have received messages from readers from time to time, sharing their stories about slumgullion stews of their childhoods. It starts out “Jack London’s recipe for slumgullion is both simple and appetizing…” providing some enlightenment about the history of slumgullion. (some other time, perhaps we can explore the obscure and mostly forgotten names of recipes).

And – synchronicity – I had just finished writing about sauces for my blog when I rediscovered, on my bookshelves, the Browns “Soups Sauces and Gravies” which simply reaffirmed my belief that the best cookbooks on sauces will be found in older cookbooks. This cookbook by the Browns was published in 1939.
The most complete list I have of the Browns’ cookbooks is as follows:
The Wine Cookbook, by Cora, Rose & Bob Brown, originally published in 1934, revised edition 1944, Little Brown & Company. In 1960 Bob Brown published a reprint of The Wine Cookbook with the title “Cooking With Wine” and under his Roving Eye Press logo.

The European Cook Book/The European Cookbook for American Homes is apparently the same book with slightly different titles. Subtitled The Four in One book of continental cookery, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France. I saw and nearly purchased on the internet an English version of the same book from a dealer in England. I already have three copies, don’t need a fourth! However, it should be noted that the original European Cook Book for American Homes was published in 1936 by Farrar & Rinehart. The 1951 edition with a shortened title was published by Prentice-Hall.
The Country Cook Book by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1937 by A.S. Barnes and Company.
Most for your Money CookBook, by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1938 by Modern Age Books
Salads and Herbs, By Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1938 by J.B. Lippincott
The South American Cookbook (what I have is a Dover Publication reprint first published in 1971. The original was published by Doubleday, Doran & Company in 1939 – Cora, Rose and Bob Brown
Soups, Sauces and Gravies by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1939 by J.B. Lippincott Company
The Vegetable Cookbook by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1939 by J.B. Lippincott
America Cooks by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1940 by Halcyon House.
Outdoor Cooking by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1940 The Greystone Press (*notes that parts of this book appeared in Collier’s and Esquire magazines)
Fish and Seafood Cook Book by Cora, Rose and Bob Brown, published 1940 by J.B. Lippincott Company
Look Before you Cook by Rose and Bob Brown, published 1941 by Consumers Union of the United States, Inc.
10,000 Snacks by Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, published 1948 by Halcyon House—the format and chatty style of 10,000 snacks is quite similar to “America Cooks”.
The Complete Book of Cheese, by Bob Brown, published 1955 by Gramercy Publishing
Culinary Americana by Eleanor Parker Brown and Bob Brown is a bibliography of cookbooks published in the cities and towns of the United States during the years from 1860 through 1960. It is believed that the first fund-raiser cookbook was compiled and published during the Civil War, by women to raised money for the Sanitation Commission. Culinary American focuses primarily on “regional” cookbooks, and notes that, “Certainly, it was after the War (i.e., the Civil War) that we find them printed in many states of the union,” writes Eleanor Parker Brown in the Introduction to Culinary Americana, “A survey of 200 cookbooks of our own collection, published at various times during this last century in Massachusetts showed that they came from seventy-four different cities and villages. In the case of many of the smaller places, these titles constitute the only books ever printed in these localities, which makes them important landmarks in the history of bookmaking in the state.
The regional cookbooks are a treasure trove of original recipes, as well as a record of old ‘receipts,’ reflecting the nationality background of the settlers of the community. Thus you will expect, and find, German foods in the old books of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Scandinavian receipts in the pamphlets of the Midwest, and Spanish dishes in the booklets published in the southwest…the little books, some in the handwriting of the contributor, often with signed recipes, gives us a glimpse of the gallant women who proudly cooked these meals and generously gave up their secrets ‘for the benefit of…others…”
Eleanor Parker Brown also shares with us, in the introduction, “Bob Brown first got together a cookbook collection for reference when he began to write about cooking. He had 1500 volumes which were purchased promptly by a grocery chain store as nucleus for their research library. It was then necessary for him to start a new collection. This was the origin of an interest in cookery books which lasted, and grew, to the end of this life. Bob saw cook books as social and cultural history in America; particularly, those regional books which were so close to the heart of the country…”
Eleanor says that after Bob’s sudden death, she continued work o this bibliography.” Culinary Americana includes listings of all the regional cookbooks we could either locate or obtain information about. It runs the gamut from ‘fifteen cent dinners for families of six’ to the extravagant and elaborate collations of Oscar of the Waldorf….”
“Culinary Americana” is the kind of book that cookbook collectors simply drool over.
As an aside, I find it curious that the Browns flooded the cookbook market within the span of a few years; from “The Wine Cookbook”, published in 1934, to “Look Before You Cook” published in 1941, the Browns published eleven cookbooks. Then they appear to have gone on hiatus until 10,000 snacks was published in 1948. However, given the extent of their travels and living in countries all over the world – it crossed my mind that perhaps all of these cookbooks were “in the works” while they lived abroad—and perhaps came home to get their cookbooks published. I’m speculating, of course. The first time I wrote about the Browns (for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange in 1994) – information was scarce. Almost everything I wrote about was gleaned from the books or their dust jackets. Today, thanks to the internet, there is more biographical information available but not enough to satisfy my greedy soul. Of all the authors I have collected in the past 45 years, those by The Browns remain my all time favorites. I was stunned to discover Bob Brown had a bookstore and that he wrote over a thousand short stories and 30 full length books. Yowza – this trio did it all.
Another update! Some months ago I was stunned to receive a message on my blog from Rory Brown—Bob Brown was his great grandfather; Cora Brown was his great-great-grandmother. It isn’t the first time (and hopefully won’t be the last) that a descendant of someone I have written about on Sandychatter has written to me. It was with Rory’s assistance that I located a copy of the Browns’ Vegetable Cookbook. I’m not sure why this particular cookbook has been so elusive—possibly because it was never reprinted like some of the other cookbooks have been? The Brown descendants have mentioned the possibility of having the books reprinted—wouldn’t that be nice?
Meantime, here’s a bit to chew on from The Vegetable Cookbook – it starts out “Speaking of Spinach” and introduces us to Cora’s great-granddaughter, Sylvie—then age 4—at a Thanksgiving dinner of the whole Brown family “Last Thanksgiving” which I assume to have taken place in 1938, since the book was published in 1939. The Browns noted that “She possessed herself in patience until the napkin was knotted in place and the plate set before her. Surveying the many good things, she made a quick choice, jabbed her fork into the beans with a forthright gesture, appraised the mouthful, wiped a buttery trickle from her chin, beamed around at everybody and gave a little squeal of delight—‘Oh, I just love string beans, don’t you, Bob?’” and the authors take it from there.
Well, I love Spinach and home-grown cooked green beans (aka string beans) and the Browns write that “Greens are only an appetizing nibble at our subject, for in Florida alone, the State Department of Agriculture lists more than sixty local favorites” which they go on to list. The Browns stated they had, for years, been ardent readers of seed catalogs and had gardens of their own whenever they had the chance. It was from growing their own that they had the idea of writing The Vegetable Cook Book – from Trowel to Table”. They wrote of being fed up with “woody turnips, wilted spinach, limp beans and peas that would give you some bruises on the gullet, frayed heads of cauliflower, broccoli and iceberg lettuce past their prime, as well as those terrible lopsided little scallions that are sold for spring onions by grocers nowadays, we got a head start with a compost bed and survey of half a hundred catalogs…”
I wonder what the Browns would think if they could observe the produce department in many supermarkets more than seventy years later—the array is, admittedly, dazzling—but I find too often that whatever I buy fresh needs to be used almost immediately. A few days later, most lettuce and other greens has to be thrown out.
But returning to The Vegetable Cook Book – I was entertained (and reminded of personal experiences) as they wrote of their first vegetable gardens, forgetting what was planted where when the little sticks identifying various veggies would be lost or blown away and other hit-or-miss experiences…everyone who has had similar experiences will relate. For almost 25 years, I had a house-mate also named Bob, who tended our compost and planted the veggie gardens at our home in the San Fernando Valley, until we moved to the Antelope Valley in 2008 and discovered the need to re-learn gardening in the desert.
But getting back to my favorite cookbook authors, following their introduction and induction into vegetable gardening, the Browns move forward, alphabetically from Artichokes and Asparagus to Avocados (with a side-trip into the variables of vegetables that are a fruit, or fruits that are a vegetable, such as tomatoes and avocados). There are chapters on cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery and chives, Kohlrabi and parsley, parsnips, peas – and many more…all the way down to Yams. I suspect that possibly one reason why The Vegetable Cook Book is so difficult to find is that it’s a dictionary of sorts, listing all the vegetables available to the Browns—with ways to cook them—maybe it belongs with my reference books rather than the cookbooks!

“The Vegetable Cook Book, From Trowel to Table” may pose a challenge for sandychatter readers to find a copy—but it’s sure to become a favorite reference cookbook if and when you do. (Cookbook collectors love the challenge of searching for a particular book).

—Sandra Lee Smith

GOODBYE, MOCKINGBIRD

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—-Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it” – Harper Lee quote from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

“Shoot all the blue jays if you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” – from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

In the Saturday, February 20, 2016 issue of the Los Angeles Times, they printed a lengthy obituary of a very well-known author, Harper Lee, who passed away at the age of 89. I was a huge fan of her 1960 novel “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

Until Charles Shields wrote “MOCKINGBIRD, A PORTRAIT OF HARPER LEE” published in 2006 by Henry Holt and Company, too not much was known about Harper Lee, who remained a very private person for most of her life.

Despite this, she endured “a punishing promotional tour” to promote the film “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”, starring Gregory Peck in 1962.

One writer noted that “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD” published in 1960 at dawn of the civil-rights struggle has been called the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of its day.

Like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, MOCKINGBIRD is built around the depredations visited on a black man in the South, Tom Robinson, who is defended against a trumped-up rape charge by a white lawyer named Atticus Finch.

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and sold over 30 million copies in dozens of languages. In fact, it has not been out of print since it was first published and has been required reading in many high schools.

Shortly after TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was published, it was picked up by the Book-of-the-Month-Club and the Literary Club and a condensed version appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine.

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts” – from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

The following year, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD won the Pulitzer Prize as well as several other literary awards. Horton Foote wrote a screenplay based on the novel and used the same title for the 1962 film adaptation. Lee visited the set during filming and gave a lot of interviews to support the project.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD earned eight Academy Award nominations; the movie version won three awards, including best actor for Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Finch. The character is said to have been based on Lee’s father.

In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her “outstanding contribution to America’s literary tradition”, at a ceremony at the White House

(I am noting that she never refused attendance for events such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom; after reading articles on Google and the lengthy article that appeared in the L.A. Times on February 20, 2016, I don’t think Lee was against luncheons with her friends of family or friends—I concluded that she just got fed up with reporters and as a rule refused all requests for interviews).

In 2007, also, Lee suffered a stroke and struggled with various ongoing health problems including hearing loss and limited vision and problems with short-term memory.

After the stroke, Lee moved into an assisted living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Using a magnifying device to read, necessary for her macular degeneration, Lee was able to keep up with reading. Her sister once said that “books are the things she cares about”.

In 2013 Lee filed a lawsuit in a federal court against literary agent Samuel Pinkus charging that in 2007 Pinkus engaged in a scheme to dupe her out of the coyright TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, later diverting royalties from the work.

In September 2013, a settlement was reached in the lawsuit.

In 2014, Lee allowed TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to be released as an e-book; she signed a deal with HarperCollins to release TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD as an e-book and digital audio editions. But, Lee explained (for which I wholeheartedly understand) that she was “Still old fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries…” She said she was amazed and humbled that MOCKINGBIRD has survived this long.

While TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was the first novel Lee had published, it wasn’t the first one she wrote. Her first novel, GO SET A WATCHMAN had been submitted to a publisher in 1957. When the novel wasn’t accepted, Lee’s editor asked her to revise the story and make her main character, Scout, a child. Lee worked on the story for two years and it eventually became TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD.

For decades, Lee shunned requests for interviews and claimed she was finished with writing—so that when HarperCollins announced in early 2015 that they planned to publish a new Harper Lee novel, they received a mixed bag of responses—from delight to dismay. The title of the “new” novel, GO SET A WATCHMAN was actually written years earlier and was discovered by Lee’s lawyer in Harper’s safe-deposit box.

With reports that 88-year old Lee suffered failing health, questions arose about the publication of the novel. Lee issued a statement that she was “alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to WATCHMAN”. Alabama officials investigated and found no evidence that she was a victim to coercion.

Controversy aside, WATCHMAN broke pre-sale records for publishing house HarperCollins and was on target to become one of the fastest selling literary works in history.

Harper Lee (whose first name was actually Nelle) passed away in her sleep on February 19, 2016, at the age of 89, in an assisted living facility in Monroeville, Alabama.

“People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for” – from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

And finally, she wrote, in MOCKINGBIRD, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what”.

I was going on twenty years old when TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD” was published. There was a reason why it resonated with me, personally, as a human being. I don’t think I ever suffered from any racial feelings or beliefs.

When I was about fifteen years old, I wrote a short fictional story called THE STORY OF GLENDA. Glenda was a young woman whose father was a black man and her mother was a white woman. I would type my stories one page at a time, single spaced—and then share them with childhood girlfriends and high school classmates who all waited with bated breath for the next installment.

About the time Lee was writing TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, I was writing short stories trying to change the racial beliefs of people with whom I came in contact. I didn’t know or come in contact with any African Americans throughout my childhood or adolescence.

God is good; fourteen years ago, my biracial grandson was born. He is the light of our lives.

Harper Lee also wrote “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience”.

–Sandra Lee Smith