Who Cooked This Stuff?

The other night, I woke up feeling like hell, with a bad sinus headache.  It wasn't going to get any better lying in bed so I got up, made myself some toast and hot water, sat in the kitchen,  and read a cookbook that my mother-in-law gave me years ago.

The book was published in the mid-seventies by the auxiliary of the San Diego County Medical Society.  All the contributors are women, and all are Mrs. Husband's Name with the wife's first name in parentheses (Mary), like it's an afterthought.  This was my mother's generation.



Don't tell anyone

As I flipped through the pages, I kept thinking that these ladies must have been in a hurry all the time, because they deal majorly in cans of cream of mushroom soup, packages of something called "French's Chili-O, the odd tablespoon of Sherry to jazz it all up.  Also, "Accent" and "Beau Monde."  I don't think I ever made many recipes out of the "Main Dish" section, although there are some stained pages.

In "Sweets," there are cakes made with Jello, packaged cake mixes, and boxes of instant pudding; sometimes all three.  If there aren't packages to toss in, then there are weird ingredients.  "Mayonnaise Date Nut Cake," for example.  "Gravy Train Cake," has no gravy, thank God,  but  features a can of cherry pie filling, butter, a box of Jiffy white or yellow cake mix, and sugar; that's the entire recipe. 

 Then there's "Coca Cola Cake," which includes Coke and marshmallows.

I think I tried a few recipes in that cookbook, but not one my mother-in-law favored, "Easy-Party Casserole Chicken," which features Kraft's Creamy French Dressing, a can of whole-berry cranberries, and a package of French Onion Soup."  You mix it up, pour it over "10 pieces of tender chicken" and bake the hell out of it (1-1/2 hours at 325 degrees). There's your dinner party.

Sometimes Jerry and I talk about our mothers and how in the 1940's and '50's they produced a cooked-from-scratch dinner every.single.night.  I remember my mother's friend excusing themselves at 3:30 in the afternoon to "go start dinner."  No wonder they looked for recipes that were fast and easy!  No one knew those cans and packages were full of salt and scary chemicals.

By the sixties and seventies, lots of mothers were cooking with cans and packages, and they were delighted to brag about it, to pass on the recipes as something delicious and quick.  These days, in Berkeley, anyway, you'd have to sneak around with your processed food ingredients. You'd never, ever brag about it.

My mother-in-law, Jerry's stepmother, meant well giving this book to me.  It was as though I were joining a beleaguered sisterhood of women who didn't like to cook but were expected to produce something, alone in the kitchen, every single night.  It's enough to give me another headache.