Home » Discussion Forums » Blog Post Discussion » The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited
| The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited [message #31643] |
Tue, 20 July 2010 19:18  |
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 Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
Senior Member
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Peg Bracken is an inspiration.
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
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| Re: The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited [message #31654 is a reply to message #31643 ] |
Tue, 20 July 2010 23:04  |
EMoon
Messages: 664
Registered: March 2009 |
Senior Member |
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Love to cook, and love Peg Bracken. I had one of those paperback copies of IHTCB and wore it out, bought another and wore that out, and I think the battered and yellowed remnants of that one are SITH (somewhere in this house.) Also "The Impoverished Student's Handbook of Cookery, Drinkery, and Housekeepery" which sometimes fit my budget (ahem) better.
Though I've now acquired a new friend (~5 years now? under 10 anyway) who is a fabulous cook and who arrives on her rare visits with a boatload of wonderful food that she cooks for me. I have discovered that scallions and shallots aren't the same thing (who knew? Not I!) and capers are not shrunken peas (well, they LOOK like shrunken peas in the jar!) and there's this wonderful dark, dark, gooey stuff in jars that costs the earth and enables even me to make rich gravies (um...demi-glace, it says on the jar.) She's Italian; her brother's a professional chef, and if she cooked concrete blocks I would eat them with delight.
As a result, I've started cooking again, though not every day. Especially not everyday in midsummer when I have a book deadline rising over the horizon. But sometimes. Tonight (after a day of farrier's visit and one of the beasts being beastly about it, plus the grind to get the words done, plus the discovery of the cutest little mysterious bug EVER on the end of a clothespin when I was hanging out laundry which would not move to the outside of the clothespin for its photograph) I sent my amiable spouse down to Mano's for Mexican food takeout. We ate it out of the plastic containers, with no guilt whatsoever. (He had to go to Mano's because I had gone to the bank earlier, run into the mayor, and narrowly escaped being made chair of a planning board on water conservation. I love M- dearly, admire her vastly, and she does four times as much for this town as anyone else, BUT she is not writing books. I have husband, son, two horses, and a head full of stories that want out.)
Anyway: Peg Bracken is a Kitchen Saint.
E
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| Re: The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited [message #31657 is a reply to message #31643 ] |
Wed, 21 July 2010 03:51 |
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Diane in MN
Messages: 2730
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
Senior Member |
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I never had a copy of the IHTCB, but used to look for Peg Bracken's magazine column--I forget which magazine it was, but it inhabited doctors' offices, hairdressers' shops, etc.--because she was always funny. My mother didn't have a copy, either (my father was a true meat-and-potatoes-and-dessert man, so just about any cookbook would have been superfluous) but she'd have had no problem with the concept. She didn't hate to cook, but she much preferred doing other things, and if cake mix and Shake-and-Bake made more time for, say, gardening, that was just fine. Pie, however, was always from scratch. You have to draw the line somewhere. 
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited [message #31660 is a reply to message #31643 ] |
Wed, 21 July 2010 07:21 |
skating librarian
Messages: 570
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
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About the peanut butter and catsup canapes ... on Ritz Crackers. I never knew where the idea came from ... a young second cousin served them to my brother and me. It was a "you'll never guess what these are" moment. We loved them and my brother soon started making PB and catsup sandwiches.
Please understand that we would have suffered through twelve years of unrelieved baloney and cheese sandwiches on rye in endless school lunches rooms if we hadn't learned to make our own sandwiches, and my mother rarely saw fit to buy anything other than baloney. The variations were the cheese ... swiss or american ... and the condiments ... mustard, mayo, or catsup.
Back in the dim dark ages, when we kids were sent to the "rumpus room" when our families visited one another, even suburban little boys sometimes bought into the "madras shorts for a cook out are cool" way of looking at things. Catsup with peanut butter is the main thing I remember about those cousins. But we both learned to cook in self defense. My brother worked as a short order cook in college, and is still a good cook with the basics (thank goodness, as now that Mom is blind and Dad needs round the clock minding, he has been hired as the primary caregiver and does a lot of cooking).
I turned into more of a baker and for my brother's 58th birthday I have perfected a recipe for New Jersey bakery style crumb buns. He ate most of the dozen I made last week and wants to learn to bake with yeast so that he can satisfy his craving ... Maine is not a good place for authentic crumb buns. Anyway, life does take odd twists.
Who knew that Peg Bracken had a hand in it ... I may have to take a look (too many cookbooks in my kitchen). I find an old Fannie Farmer a great antidote to the overly complex recipes which seem to have haunted us ever since "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
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| Re: The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited [message #31673 is a reply to message #31643 ] |
Wed, 21 July 2010 12:48 |
claning
Messages: 266
Registered: February 2010
Location: California |
Senior Member |
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| EMoon wrote on Tue, 20 July 2010 23:04 |
Love to cook, and love Peg Bracken. I had one of those paperback copies of IHTCB and wore it out, bought another and wore that out, and I think the battered and yellowed remnants of that one are SITH (somewhere in this house.) ...Anyway: Peg Bracken is a Kitchen Saint.
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Yay more Peg Bracken fans! My mom bought the books, really enjoyed them, and passed them on to me. I don't cook much, and even though I can't use a lot of her recipes (I'm vegetarian) I enjoy reading her tremendously. Lots of good advice. I know I've read the cookbook, the Appendix (another cookbook), the housekeeping book, the etiquette book (at least as sensible and funny as Miss Manners) and her travel book. Used versions are starting at one cent plus shipping on Amazon. Hmmmmm......
O Chris Laning <claning@igc.org> - Davis, California
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| Re: The I Hate To Cook Book, revisited [message #31724 is a reply to message #31643 ] |
Thu, 22 July 2010 11:15 |
PamAdams
Messages: 248
Registered: May 2010 |
Senior Member |
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Hey, I had just finished re-reading the IHTCB. Nice obituary as well. Luckily, A Window Over the Sink is also on my shelf and will be today's lunchtime reading.
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