I was packing up my 80-year-old mother-in-law’s kitchen to move her into her new home across the street from us. That’s a whole other story, my friends. I came across her copy of Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. Maybe this was new fifty-five years ago judging by the pictures and yellow pages. I’m pretty sure my mother-in-law rarely used this cookbook from the stories I’ve heard about her cooking. I couldn’t throw it in the Goodwill box. I was strangely drawn to it.
Here is what I’ve learned from this cookbook:
1. I’m a horrible mother and wife for not making my family breakfast every morning and sitting them down at an “attractive as possible” breakfast table.” Clearly, the fend- for- yourself breakfast is a no-no. “Try to serve each member of your family the foods he particularly likes.” What? Who has time for that non-sense? You get cereal! And you get cereal! “You won’t have to force your family to eat if you set out a breakfast that smells, looks, and tastes good.” Force my family to eat? Eat what I cook or go make your own damn meal.
2. If I didn’t already feel like a failure at breakfast, I might as well jump in front of a train as punishment for the dinners I prepare. “Plan each dinner with as much thought and care as a company meal.” Right. Plan. My planning involves stopping at the grocery store after work and wandering the aisles trying to figure out what I can throw together quickly because I’m tired as hell from working all day. Even worse, I don’t serve coffee and dessert after dinner. Fail.
3. “Plan meals the easy way.” I’m directed to choose items from six columns: meat, starchy food, vegetable, salad, dessert, and “nice to serve.” Six fricking columns! On a really good day, my family gets three columns worth of food. The meat column is a choice of beef in all its glorious forms (steak, ribs, loaf, and corned) and one chicken option – chicken fried steak. The starchy food column is every single way you could possibly serve a potato. Just about every thing is buttered in the vegetable section. Way to go butter! If you struggle to eat a salad, this column will not help you. I would rather eat a bowl of snot than a molded vegetable salad. Come to think of it, maybe those are the same thing. Pear and cream cheese salad? Pass. If I were to serve dessert, it would be whatever pre-made thing I grab from the bakery section of Safeway. Homemade desserts. As if. I could probably pull off the “nice to serve” column. Here’s your dill pickles and grape juice. Enjoy.
4. If you really want to torture someone and make sure they never eat again, serve something from the “meals built around a variety of meats” section. Maybe I’m wrong. Someone must be into liver loaf, scrambled brains (from what, I don’t know), and stuffed veal hearts.
5. Another reason I suck as a wife and mother. No one gets a packed lunch. “A good general rule for planning lunch-box meals is: pack something hearty, something sweet, something good to drink, and something for a surprise.” The surprise would be if I actually packed a lunch. Here’s your lunch money. Try to buy something resembling food.
6. Just in case you didn’t know, “meat is money—take care of it.”
7. I tell you what, if I’m at a party that serves hors d’oeuvres consisting of codfish balls, anchovy puffs, and liver pinwheel canapes, I’m out.
8. Here’s the intro to the casserole section: “Park dinner in the oven to look after itself while you greet guests, catch up on your mending, or just relax a little.” Mending? Who do they think I am? We have learned to live with holes in our socks.
9. Anyone in the mood for a baked prune whip?
10. Table settings? “Have a sufficient variety of everyday dinnerware, too, so your family won’t tire of the same setting meal after meal, day in and day out.” Listen, I’m not moving the table into the living room. We’re just fine eating off our mix-matched, chipped, dinnerware in front of the T.V. And by the way, the kids wouldn’t notice our dinnerware if it was on fire.
I haven’t used an actual cookbook in quite a while. I have a smart phone and Pinterest. Maybe that’s why I love these old books.
Bon appétit!
Forever Sassy 