Peg Bracken

I'm "I Hate to Cook"ing tonight. The I Hate to Cook Book, by Peg Bracken, is a classic of my youth. With illustrations by Hilary Knight, of Eloise fame, no less. My copy was purchased at, I think, Small World Books in Venice CA one afternoon when I was hosting a dinner party that evening and just had to have the recipe for Crazy Cake. OK, she calls it "Cockeyed Cake" but somehow it got crazy in our family early on and that's the name that stuck. It's the chocolate cake made with both oil and vinegar, no butter, no eggs...and it is weirdly good. It even turned up in this Moosewood cookbook some years back, somewhat gussied up but effectively the same thing.

The thing about The I Hate to Cook Book is that it's almost a little time capsule. Published in 1960, it assumes moms stay home and dads go to work--and that this drives moms crazy, so they need to occupy themselves with almost anything but child care or cooking. Most of the recipes involve something out of a can, or something in a package, but the cookie recipes are pretty good and crazy cake, while not the best chocolate cake you'll ever eat, is the first one I ever made. And the first one Mariah did. And that's worth something.

I think Peg Bracken is a lot like Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr, those mom-humorists of the sixties who are almost forgotten now. The cookbook isn't so great for the recipes--and the humor is, as I'm suggesting, dated--but it is still fun to open up and browse through every now and then.

So here's a tidbit:

"It is a lucky thing that little children can't just decide, bang, they're going to have a party, the way grownups do, and then have it. This is one area where what Mama says still goes. What little kids have is birthday parties, and that's it. And actually they're not quite so horrible close up as they are at a distance. The only thing to fear is fear itself."

She then goes on to recommend that all kid parties be tied to a holiday, so as not to tax Mom with coming up with a theme (summer parties where there is no holiday can be, in a most un-PC naming, "hobo parties"). Later she suggests freezing maraschino cherries in ice cubes for the lemonade, noting that "If there are some left over, they're good in Old Fashioneds, too." What kills me is that this turns up as a tip for people who hate to cook, who are assumed to be out of their kitchen as much as possible, whereas today it would turn up in a Martha Stewart mag of some sort, right? Same tip, different audience. Why?

Anyway. She also wrote The I Hate to Housekeep Book, a copy of which used to live in my parents' house but apparently does so no longer. This one I have to find, because--unlike cooking--I truly do hate housekeeping.

By the way I'm making "Elevator Lady Spice Cookies" and "Chewy Fudge-Cake Cookies" tonight, in the hopes that they will be good enough to take to a holiday open house tomorrow.