cooking | rebekahjmarshall

(Poem 364 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

We’re going through Mema’s
old cookbooks to see which
to keep and which to let go,
and the slices of 20th Century
home life represented through
food are an interesting study.
If I had more time, I would
categorize them and photograph
them all by decade before
selecting several recipes from
each and do themed nights
from the 50s, 60s, 70s and so on.
But, alas, I do not have that
kind of young people energy
anymore, so thinking such
thoughts and then writing
about them is about as far
as I can get, and that is ok.

Take for instance, a Home
Economics textbook from
1944 called Everyday Foods
that teaches girls to wear an
“inexpensive house dress,
or smock, or apron” and it
“should be washable, attractive,
and of course spick-and-span.”
Also, don’t forget your
“handkerchief…placed safely
in a pocket.” Wouldn’t want to
forget that—super important.
Girls are also encouraged
to be very careful what they eat.
They are given a list of “What
Carelessly Chosen Food May Do
To You: It may give you a ruined
waistline and a poor figure, a pallid
complexion, bowlegs, premature
old age, and deficiency diseases.”
They were seriously warned against
“pellagra, beriberi, rickets, anemia,
and scurvy.” I hope the boys
were warned somehow, as well.

Other favorites are the 70s style
cookbooks that favored varying
degrees of red, yellow, and brown
thematic layouts featuring many
Jello desserts and shrimp cocktails.
I notice a lot of celery and things
shaped into balls—ham balls,
coconut ice cream balls, Swedish
sausage balls, cocktail meatballs,
chilled melon balls; I could go on.
And what is baked Alaska? I am
so confused, even though I was
alive during that decade.
And bisques, who was eating so
much bisque? Do people still
eat bisque?

The 70s also saw the invention
of the crock pot. People weren’t
exactly sure what to call this
new cooking art form, but my
favorite is the Crockery Cooking,
though “crockery” as a term never
really caught on. It sounds fancy.
There is an introduction that
explains how to use a crock pot
and why it’s a good idea. I love it.

The 80s was the decade of
microwave cooking and Mema
had several books that not only
teach what a microwave is,
how to use it, how not to use it,
and how to cook every imaginable
food in one—bake a cake, bread,
pie, check; oysters casino, escargot,
clams-in-the-shell, coquilles, check;
whole casserole, check; coffee, check;
steak, small turkey, whole roast, check;
the microwave is a miracle invention
capable of revolutionizing the
American kitchen, but rule #1:
“Do not attempt to operate this
oven with the door open.” I guess
people had to be told you can’t sit
and watch it cook with the door
cracked a bit the way you would
with your stove or the lid of a pot.
The Amana Touchmatic II
Radarange Microwave Oven
Cookbook does due diligence
with teaching the importance
of not using metal implements
(it even explains arcing), and
assures the reader that every
recipe has been tested in a real
microwave by a “trained home
economist.”

We also found a binder of
recipes from Grandad’s mother,
Frances Capitola Bearden,
including such delicacies as giblet
sandwich spread, chicken a la king,
potato candy, mince meat (for
which you need an average size
hog head), loquat jelly, prickly
pear jelly, spudnuts, potato donuts,
salt dough for kids to play with,
homemade soap, and the best
carp bait for fishing with (which
include Wheaties, cottonseed
mill, and black strap molasses,
among other interesting spices.)

I did not inherit even one ounce
of interest in cooking, but my
daughter is very excited about
trying some of these recipes,
and it is going to be an adventure
to taste some long lost delicacies
of the last 80 years. Mema was
like me, a functional cook, capable
of feeding whatever size crowd
needed a full belly with satisfying
results. Nothing fancy, nothing
gourmet, but tasty and filling.
The fact that she saved so many
recipes with the good intentions
of trying them out someday
makes me chuckle because she,
like me, didn’t even like to cook.
She just enjoyed reading the
recipes, looking at the pictures,
and imagining the fun conversation
at the dinner parties when everyone
would be gathered around the table
having a good time. It wasn’t even
about the food. It was about the
entertaining, the laughter, the
storytelling, the getting together.
It was about all of us that she loved
and wanted to nurture with food.