The saddest cookbook in the world?

The Golden Age Cookbook: The Key to Happier and Healthier Golden Years

By Phyllis MacDonald Doubleday & Company 1961.

Don't bother opening me. I'll just bring you down.

Just in case the recent hint of Spring in the air was cheering you all up, The Golden Age Cookbook is here to bring you back down. From the gray-blue cover with its sad wheat ring to its mildly condescending tone this book just screams "Give up!" Well, actually, it more whispers in a despairing tone: "just give…up." While I believe the designer was aiming for dignified, the result 40 years later is just depressing.

According to the jacket copy, this is the first cookbook designed for older people. If that is the case, I applaud MacDonald for seeing a need and tying to fulfill it. Cookbooks for special diets and special populations are now a popular niche, but I can imagine that at some point they would have been innovative. A Kirkus Review entry from the time points out that the book serves a real need. But at least today we acknowledge that people with special needs still have full lives.

MacDonald begins with a list of do's and don'ts--helpfully reproduced on the back cover. The first one is the tip that sold me on the book: "Have at least one hot food at every meal." This made me laugh and shudder at the same time. And a reaction like that means I need to own that book!

As for the recipes, they are a mix of convenience foods and simple cooked meals. Considering the 1961 vintage, the use of canned soups and the like is actually restrained and perhaps realistic, in that it allows for its readers to purchase parts of their meals.

This is clearly a dietician's book obsessed with nutrients over flavor, but its woefully inadequate seasonings (there is little called for besides salt, pepper, paprika, and dried parsley) are also a function of its time and place--America before the ethnic food boom, before hippies and back-to-the-land (at least the 60s version) and before Julia Child had us all hooked on something better than Dried Beef Sandwiches and Baked Stuffed Franks.

Some gems:

Surprise Tomato Meatballs with Steamed Rice The surprise is a can of V8!

Deviled Ham French Toast I admit I am both repelled by and drawn to this idea.

Oyster Milk Toast Evaporated milk, canned oysters and toast.

Escalloped Macaroni and Tuna Tuna, noodles, cream of celery soup, pimento and American cheese. There's just something about tuna in these older books that makes my skin crawl. And I like tuna!

Sap season

I have a minor leaning toward learning to live off the grid. I love the Foxfire series of books and the idea of DIY projects like creating a pergola out of repurposed rebar. However, I am not that interested in actually doing the projects--work, friends, books, and other fun gets in the way. Plus, being raised by handy people in farm country teaches you early just how much work is involved in pioneer activities. Thank God for the Rototiller and running water. I may not get any projects done, but my back is still in good shape.
 

Last of the 2013 vintage. Note I failed to filter it.

But I do like complex cooking/food projects. A couple of years ago I noticed the local natural parks and historic sites were all offering demonstrations on how maple syrup is made. Which got me thinking about the maples around me. Were they sugar maples? Could I get something out of them?

I had always heard/assumed that you could only do sugaring if you had a lot of trees and a sugar shack and boiler, etc. That is, it was a job for professionals. But when a friend showed up for brunch one day with a jar of homemade syrup from her old farmer neighbor, I got interested. A little poking around county extension web sites and I found it was a pretty simple process. The hard part of the information gathering was trying to find instructions for the really small-time hobbyist.

The upshot is that this is the 4^th year we've tapped my parents' trees. We don't get a lot of syrup, but it's fun to do and makes me feel like I am getting something for nothing. Plus, we can taste the changes in the syrup as the season goes on, not to mention how it varies from other local producers.

We tapped a little late this year. I don't know what kind of harvest to expect given the unusually harsh winter. But it's nice to go out and check on the trees, see how the sap is running, and listen to the birds chatter at you.

And this is perhaps the ultimate in cook's treats--drinking off a cup of the fresh sap. It's a serious spring tonic when slugged from the collecting jug while surrounded by snow on a sunny day in late February. Crystal clear like spring water, you can taste the light sweetness of sap--but it doesn't just taste like sugared water. There are very slight notes of fruit, flowers, and minerals. I have to stop myself from just drinking it all. Much like when you go berry picking, you have to stop eating the berries already and put some in the bucket.

Most of the homegrown syrup is destined for pancakes, but I like to make buckwheat crepes with sautéed apples at least once--the delicacy of home syrup can really shine through.

Morning Food by Margaret S. Fox and John Bear of Mendocino's Café Beaujolais (Ten Speed Press, 1990) has a recipe that I've been tempted to try for hot cereal cooked in sap. I'm sure it's good, but I don't love hot cereal enough to use the sap on it. Morning Food is a great book that I often flip through on Saturdays for some breakfast inspiration. Café Beaujolais seems like an ideal mix of California's natural foods and indulgent eating. There are Morning Glory Muffins and Waffles with Smoked Turkey Sauce and Birchard Soaked Oats. I always imagine a sun-soaked room with lots of wood and the smell of coffee when I read this book.

I also have The Sugar Bush Connection by Beatrice Ross Buszeck (Nimbus Publishing, 1982), a charming hand lettered book of maple sugar/syrup recipes that I picked up on a glorious lobster- and lupine-filled trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada. This is a book for people overwhelmed with syrup. Many recipes would simply cost too much for most people to make, but I love the ingenuity of these cold-country cooks determined to use up something so hard-won. Her recipe for Spring Tonic sounds like it will cure anything that ails you: 

Spring Tonic

¼ c. maple syrup

¼ c. lime juice

1 c. light rum

1 c. ginger ale

Combine and stir well. Pour over crushed ice. Serving size is not indicated, but I am assuming 1-4 depending on you guests' tolerances for grog.

And in late breaking news. I spotted this at my local health food store (go Arbor Farms!): commercial Maple Tree Water. I don't know whether to be appalled or impressed with their entrepreneurial energy. But this is America, and if you can dream it you can sell it.

It's called sap, people

RIP Fat Lady

Food: What We Eat and How We Eat It

By Clarissa Dickson Wright Ebury Press 1999

I was saddened to learn of the death of Clarissa Dickson Wright. As part of the Two Fat Ladies, she and Jennifer Paterson were a hoot to watch riding around the English countryside by motorcycle and sidecar, cooking in improbable locations including boarding schools and army barracks, and quipping bons mots as they basted everything in butter and lard.

Treasure is inside here!

Though they were criticized for their liberal use of fat, I found it historically accurate considering the origins of many of their recipes. They relished the old ways of cooking, of grand dinners, and hunt breakfasts, and the more obscure bits of game cookery. No one cooks like that anymore, though you can see echoes of it in the nose-to-tail trend of today.

It was also refreshing to see two such real, earthy characters on television. This was back in the day when the Food Network was an upstart channel that would throw just about anything on and see if it would stick. A far cry from the slick package we see today--including a show that shows the selecting and packaging of the next food "star." I'm sorry, but I don't think you can manufacture personality.

And Dickson Wright was a personality. Many of the obituaries called her a real English eccentric. And maybe she was, but I think that is reductive. I think she was in on the game and well knew her entertainment value. But she always came across as genuine, intelligent, and witty. I would have loved to have had a meal with her.

Surprisingly, I don't have a Fat Ladies cookbook. But I do have Dickson Wright's anthology Food: What We Eat and How We Eat. It is a collection of favorite food writings in an A-to-Z format (the librarian in me approves). Each entry is introduced by Dickson Wright and you can hear her rich voice by turns informative, amused, vitriolic, and nostalgic.

The cover is pleasant but a bit bland, with no hint of the quirky visual collection inside. The images include standard photos, of course, but also  many period illustrations from advertisements, books, paintings, cartoons, etc.

The entries range over the 20^th century and include the expected: breakfast; junk food; haute cuisine and the unexpected: iguana; pong (as in odors not as in Atari); and ubiquitous. By covering the century, the reader gets a sense of the massive changes that occurred in food and cooking during that time, especially from the upheaval of the World Wars, with its changes to the class structure, the role of women, and the shrinking of the British Empire.

I'll end with this passage from the introduction:

"I have tried to capture here all these rites of passage. Food has become the new rock 'n' roll, and is commemorated in song, humour and wit, if not on the table. When I was young people spoke of food being replaced by a pill--and so far they have got that very wrong."

Thank goodness, Clarissa. And thank you for your writing, cooking, and spirit.