Your art for depicting and respecting nostalgia is a gift. You are quite a bit younger than those of us who did flour and Crisco up a new Betty Crocker Cookbook.
I miss those days and would give anything for this generation to experience that level of simplicity.
Back in the old West, women had a low incidence of depression because they sat in a circle and talked while making quilts. Just talked and stitched from leftover fabric, creating beautiful, functional art. Now, it's an Amazon order.
Great piece, Jenna! Like I have said before, you make this old girl think, and I will never look at that Betty Crocker Cookbook the same again. ❤️
“Now, by the time I was old enough to join her in the kitchen I never once saw her open a recipe book or dive into her box stuffed with index cards on which were written in that cursive — the type that every adult of a certain generation seemed to have carbon copy — a recipe from one of her girlfriends or a sister-in-law.”
Jenna, to plagiarize a line from a well known movie — you had me at “her box stuffed with index cards.” Our hand-me-down recipes are in a little white metal index card box decorated with a blue & yellow Pennsylvania Dutch folk art border. Among the cursive written recipes is one from my mother-in-law’s blueberry steam pudding baked in a previously used Maxwell House coffee can. There’s also another recipe from my mother for her Jewish apple cake. If I’m lucky, my wife will make one for my birthday. Sometimes life gets in the way & I get a supermarket-bought Jewish apple cake. I usually say, in a sorta gracious, understanding way, it’s ok, “I remember what they look like, I have pictures.”
Thanks. Since we women can prevail in the kitchen while writing, giving birth, translating ancient cookbooks and refining ancient recipes into meals there’s little we cannot do. It is all in the transformation. The Dalai Lama of Tibet stated that Western Women would save the world. Who knows? Make great soup.
Your art for depicting and respecting nostalgia is a gift. You are quite a bit younger than those of us who did flour and Crisco up a new Betty Crocker Cookbook.
I miss those days and would give anything for this generation to experience that level of simplicity.
Back in the old West, women had a low incidence of depression because they sat in a circle and talked while making quilts. Just talked and stitched from leftover fabric, creating beautiful, functional art. Now, it's an Amazon order.
Great piece, Jenna! Like I have said before, you make this old girl think, and I will never look at that Betty Crocker Cookbook the same again. ❤️
“Now, by the time I was old enough to join her in the kitchen I never once saw her open a recipe book or dive into her box stuffed with index cards on which were written in that cursive — the type that every adult of a certain generation seemed to have carbon copy — a recipe from one of her girlfriends or a sister-in-law.”
Jenna, to plagiarize a line from a well known movie — you had me at “her box stuffed with index cards.” Our hand-me-down recipes are in a little white metal index card box decorated with a blue & yellow Pennsylvania Dutch folk art border. Among the cursive written recipes is one from my mother-in-law’s blueberry steam pudding baked in a previously used Maxwell House coffee can. There’s also another recipe from my mother for her Jewish apple cake. If I’m lucky, my wife will make one for my birthday. Sometimes life gets in the way & I get a supermarket-bought Jewish apple cake. I usually say, in a sorta gracious, understanding way, it’s ok, “I remember what they look like, I have pictures.”
That was fun and educational. Thank you.
I still use an inherited BC cookbook regularly!
Thanks for posting this... It brought back memories of my mom in the kitchen in the 1950s and 60s. She had a Betty Croker cookbook as well!
Thanks. Since we women can prevail in the kitchen while writing, giving birth, translating ancient cookbooks and refining ancient recipes into meals there’s little we cannot do. It is all in the transformation. The Dalai Lama of Tibet stated that Western Women would save the world. Who knows? Make great soup.