Terrible recipes, great jokes

the book:

The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken

published 1961  chapter 10 Little Kids' Parties

 
 
 
 
 

The Hobo Party


This is the best way out of the summer birthday party situation. You advise the mothers to send the children dressed in old clothes. Then you buy a spotted handkerchief for each little guest, put his lunch in it, and tie it to the end of a stick. His lunch could be: three different sandwich triangles, wrapped separately, an apple or a banana, a small chocolate bar, a sealed container of milk, and two straws. You then lead the little horrors, each carrying his bundle, to the park or the zoo for a picnic. (If there’s no park or zoo handy, or no car to ferry them in, let them parade around the block with their bundles and some noisemakers, then have the picnic in the back yard or on the porch.) Bring them into the house last, for the ice cream and cake.


observations: Peg Bracken would never have been decorating cupcakes. She was a great believer in women working, having fun, and living their lives out in the world.  That did not encompass much in the way of cooking, or spending time on housekeeping, and she wrote various books passing on her tips to other women in the 1960s. It would be lovely to report that the recipes in this book are delicious and of great use to modern women, but sadly most of them sound truly revolting. One recipe contains 1 tin of evaporated milk, 2 tins of corn and a tin of tuna, but it has the decency to be called Cancan casserole, and the good thing about the book is that you can read and enjoy it without ever wanting to make most of the food. She is full of good jokes, encouragement, and funny comments.

And, this book contains my favourite line from any recipe or cookbook ever. It comes from the instructions for Skid Road Stroganoff, talking of hobos. Yes it is just as disgusting as it sounds, and yes the ingredients include 2 tins of mushrooms, a tin of chicken soup, and mince. But consider this:

Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.


You could forgive the woman anything for that.

 
Links up with: Dressing for a children’s party is important

here, picnicking features here and here.

The
picture is from George Eastman House, a source of wonderful photos which they kindly have made freely available. It’s an advert for Cream of Wheat.

 

Comments

  1. I have a cookbook - that you gave me, Moira - called Darling, You Shouldn't Have Gone To So Much Trouble. It contains the lines 'If the cook believes her food is good...her confidence will... reassure [her guests]. This is particularly true if on arrival they have been given strong cocktails...' Those were the days!

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  2. How does this compare and contrast with the children's party book from Pippa Middleton, that I see being promoted over here in the US?! Love that line about smoking at the sink. Those were the days...

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  3. Moira, thanks for linking this in to my new feature. Hope you are having a good week.

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  4. I grew up with this cookbooks and its sequel on the shelf in our kitchen. My mother never once succumbed to any recipe that began with "take a can of soup" but there was something fresh and admirable in the attitude.
    I like this quote that turned up when I was searching for her obit: “We don’t get our creative kicks from adding an egg, we get them from painting pictures or bathrooms, or potting geraniums or babies, or writing stories or amendments, or, possibly, engaging in some interesting type of psycho-neurochemical research like seeing if, perhaps, we can replace colloids with sulphates. And we simply love ready-mixes.”
    I grew up not to love ready-mxes but also not to have much ego invested in my ability to make a meal and in recipes tend to favour the shortest distance between two points. Actually, if you want to know who can write a beautiful recipe it is Marina Endicott. Somehow, I expect, you will not be surprised.

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    1. No indeed, very ready to believe that Marina gives good recipe! I love Peg Bracken and her attitudes, and I love that quote you found. She was a good feminist, and I can forgive her the recipes because she is such fun. She wrote an etiquette book too, which is hilarious, but also gives really sound advice, and lovely tips on teaching your children manners - I found it very useful, and have used many of her strategies - and I speak as someone who had an etiquette book published myself.

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  5. I grew up with this cookbook, and still remember fondly some of my early adventures in the kitchen guided by it. At the time (a child of about 6 to 10), I found everything I cooked from it delicious!

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    1. I think I'm probably being a bit unfair above, there were a few things I made that were OK, and they were EASY, which was excellent. Would love to know which ones you cooked....

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  6. Once again, an author I love! As you say, it's not for the recipes, it's for her writing. She's just so much fun to read. I own all her books and still reread them while I'm eating for the entertainment value, but also for the practical advice. "Last Minute Suppers" is a great chapter because, as she points out, the Emergency shelf is often the shelf with the fun food, so of course it vanishes before an emergency hits. Therefore, anything on that shelf needs to be boring but useful. Also, never feel guilty about a last-minute supper, because your family will spend a lot less time eating the average meal than you did cooking it.

    Her Appendix to The I Hate To Cook Book is another favorite, and she has a whole chapter on Eating While Alone which I found quite helpful when I started living on my own. It made me feel OK about sticking to a small range of foods in the beginning until I was more used to shopping for myself, and not being one of those gourmet chefs who whips up an incredibly fancy dinner every night and dines by candlelight with dinner music playing. Now, I can do this sometimes when I want to, but I don't feel compelled to put on the dog every evening.

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    1. I love Peg Bracken, and am always sorry she isn't better known: I too have many of her books. And she talked extreme good sense about a lot of aspects of cooking, eating and entertaining.
      One thing about cooking for a family is that, in the nature of things, sometimes they will hate it or decide it's not what I wanted or they're just in a bad mood or not hungry. Well the truth is, if you've spent a long time getting it ready, then that is devastating and dismaying. If it was something simple or largely bought-in, it's just not all so disastrous, you can be faintly annoyed but get on with life and herding them on to the next thing. This struck me repeatedly when I was cooking for the children, but have never heard anyone else mention it.

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    2. She was very no-guilt in the kitchen, which I think is partly why she was so popular in her day. I still recommend her books to people who are looking for absolution about not spending three hours cooking dinner after making homemade bread and churning their own butter.

      Her entertainment chapters are particularly fun to read because she's focused on making it easy for the cook. So many books on entertaining end up feeling like a slog , and that if you're not obsessing over every favor for a kid's party you're Doing It Wrong. The Hobo Party is probably not something you could do quite in that form, but the general idea is still sound- don't get carried away. The kids will have just as much fun doing something simple that doesn't involve bouncy houses and $100 in favors that will break in five minutes.

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    3. I absolutely agree with you. And her etiquette book matches beautifully with her recipe book: entertaining is all about having a good time and making your guests comfortable - not about spending every second in the kitchen and getting completely stressed out. And she has really rules about obscure but somehow important things - I like it in the etiquette book when she says sometimes if rich people are having less fortunate people round, they think they should 'dress down' and have less fancy food. Big mistake, says Peg. Give them the very best and dress up to the nines. And of course she is right, and I have followed her advice as I have moved from quite poor to not-very-rich!

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