The I Hate To Cook Book has been re-released! Peg Bracken was an innovator back in 1960 when she published a book as revolutionary as The Feminine Mystique, which came three years later.
“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.”
The Times piece notes that:
She shopped the manuscript around to six male publishers, saw them each reject it and then found a female editor at Harcourt, Brace who loved it.
And then this very telling revelations, from a publishing executive (emphasis mine):
“In certain parts of the country, the sustainable food movement books are very popular,” said Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble. “In reality,” she added, “we are selling a number of cookbooks that indicate that people are not eating that way universally.”
INTERESTING.
Of course this doesn’t mean we hate cooking. Nor did Peg Bracken. But the idea that it’s a surefire path to self-fulfillment, especially for women, is a notion we will always challenge.
Wait – this cookbook is basically what Sandra Lee does now, right?
I’m not pro-processed foods at all, mainly because I’m suspicious of the cancer-link (among a gazillion other health problems) & well, because I can’t eat ’em, but hot damn if people wanna eat it, fine. Who am I to judge, I usually drink dinner anyway. 🙂
Cancer link? What are you talking about?
I live on packaged foods. If it wasn’t for canned beans, Amy’s, and ramen, I’d be dead. Or reeeeeallllly sick of lentils.
Preservatives! And I have a food allergy to nitrites and now this!
http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/OtherCancers/21476
Also, canned goods are raging high in sodium. And no, not Amy’s or modern canned goods – I’m talking about what’s in this new/old cookbook, like “cream soup” or what have you. It’s terrible for you.
This really doesn’t matter though, because I like to cook. I do want to frame that cover, though.
Well processed meats are disgusting but there’s lots of packaged food that is preservative free and not necessarily high in sodium is all I’m saying. DON’T YUCK MY YUM.
One of the first things I learned to cook was from this book — there’s a chicken baked with sherry, mushrooms and artichoke hearts that I remember as absolutely delicious. Plus, the prose is hilarious. My mother had a copy, wonder if she still does?