RIP Peg Bracken

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nitrah55
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RIP Peg Bracken

#1 Post by nitrah55 » Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:28 am

Portions of the NY Times obit follow:

Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. 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.
— Recipe for “Skid Road Stroganoff,” from “The I Hate to Cook Book” (Harcourt, Brace, 1960), by Peg Bracken.

Peg Bracken, an advertising copywriter who nearly half a century ago parlayed her irreverent wit — and her passionate dislike of a traditional womanly duty — into a subversive best seller, “The I Hate to Cook Book,” died on Saturday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 89.

Long before the microwave became a fixture of every home, “The I Hate to Cook Book” was creating a quiet revolution in millions of kitchens in the United States and abroad. Three years before Betty Friedan touched off the modern women’s movement with “The Feminine Mystique,” Ms. Bracken offered at least a taste of liberation — from the oven, the broiler and the stove.

“Some women, it is said, like to cook,” Ms. Bracken’s book began. “This book is not for them."

First published in 1960, “The I Hate to Cook Book” was the perfect accompaniment to the Rice-A-Roni era, ushered in two years earlier. The inventor of Rice-A-Roni, Vincent M. DeDomenico Sr., died on Thursday.

“The I Hate to Cook Book” emphasized speed, and if speed happened at the expense of the rubbing and rolling and stuffing and tying and long, sensuous, self-congratulatory simmering that James Beard was just then making de rigueur, then, Ms. Bracken strongly suggested, so much the better.

In Ms. Bracken’s culinary canon, ingredients should be cheap, common and above all convenient, ideally frozen or tinned. Canned soups loomed large in her recipes. So did crushed cornflakes, powdered onion soup mix and Spam of the pre-electronic type. So did alcohol, though in many cases her instructions called for it to bypass the cooking process entirely and proceed straight down the cook’s throat.

Ms. Bracken’s book made her a celebrity. She appeared often on television and radio, and in the 1960s and afterward was a spokeswoman for Birds Eye frozen foods.

Ms. Bracken’s first marriage, to Mike Smith, ended in divorce, as did her second, to Roderick Lull, to whom she was married when she wrote “The I Hate to Cook Book.” (When Ms. Bracken showed Mr. Lull the manuscript, he responded, “It stinks,” and that was more or less the beginning of the end, their daughter, Johanna, said by telephone yesterday.) Ms. Bracken’s third marriage, to Parker Edwards, ended with his death in 1987.

Today, “The I Hate to Cook Book” is out of print, doubtless a casualty of the Age of Arugula.

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minimetoo26
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Re: RIP Peg Bracken

#2 Post by minimetoo26 » Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:34 am

nitrah55 wrote: Today, “The I Hate to Cook Book” is out of print, doubtless a casualty of the Age of Arugula.
Well, darn it. My sister would appreciate it....

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earendel
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Re: RIP Peg Bracken

#3 Post by earendel » Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:39 am

nitrah55 wrote:First published in 1960, “The I Hate to Cook Book” was the perfect accompaniment to the Rice-A-Roni era, ushered in two years earlier. The inventor of Rice-A-Roni, Vincent M. DeDomenico Sr., died on Thursday.

“The I Hate to Cook Book” emphasized speed, and if speed happened at the expense of the rubbing and rolling and stuffing and tying and long, sensuous, self-congratulatory simmering that James Beard was just then making de rigueur, then, Ms. Bracken strongly suggested, so much the better.
My mother had a copy of this in her kitchen when I was growing up. As a single mother working long hours it was a godsend to her and the food she prepared using those recipes was pretty darn good, IMO.
nitrah55 wrote:So did alcohol, though in many cases her instructions called for it to bypass the cooking process entirely and proceed straight down the cook’s throat.
Sounds much like Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. :D
"Elen sila lumenn omentielvo...A star shines on the hour of our meeting."

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gsabc
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Re: RIP Peg Bracken

#4 Post by gsabc » Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:42 am

earendel wrote:
nitrah55 wrote:So did alcohol, though in many cases her instructions called for it to bypass the cooking process entirely and proceed straight down the cook’s throat.
Sounds much like Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. :D
Also Julia Child, IIRC. "One for the chicken, one for the cook."
I just ordered chicken and an egg from Amazon. I'll let you know.

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eyégor
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Re: RIP Peg Bracken

#5 Post by eyégor » Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:59 am

minimetoo26 wrote:
Well, darn it. My sister would appreciate it....
For your sister-

http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cf ... 48&qsort=r

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mellytu74
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#6 Post by mellytu74 » Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:20 pm

My cousin has a copy somewhere.

I'll see what's she's willing to sell it for. :wink:

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