33. Peg Bracken — The I Hate to Cook Book with Helene Siegel

KIM: Do you enjoy reading cookbooks, Amy?

AMY: Well, I don’t actually really enjoy cooking, ergo I generally do not enjoy reading cookbooks, no. 

KIM: Okay, so I do enjoy cooking, but only recipes that have fewer than maybe five ingredients and even fewer steps. And I have a gazillion cookbooks that, to be honest, I actually enjoy reading more from than actually cooking … I have a couple of cookbooks by Mimi Thorsson, they have these pictures of her chateau in France… and I own just about everything by Nigella Lawson, to my husband’s consternation. But the truth is they are mostly aspirational and remain so. And I’m totally okay with that. But, Amy, what if there were a cookbook that could make you laugh? A cookbook that, in fact, was once described as a “mashup of Martha Stewart and Amy Sedaris.”

AMY: That’s a weird combo, first off, but I would say you’re definitely starting to get my attention. 

KIM: Good because the book we’re discussing today is called The I Hate to Cook Book. It was written by Peg Bracken in 1960. As we know, that was a time when women were starting to rebel against these traditional gender stereotypes. The book was revolutionary in some ways in that it gave women permission to say: “Cooking just isn’t my jam.” (And literally, in this case — Bracken wouldn’t be caught dead making her own homemade preserves.) Anyway, Bracken’s book offered shortcuts and cheats so that women could still manage to provide arguably tasty sustenance for their families without being in the kitchen all day. As Bracken’s daughter, Jo, wrote in the introduction to the 2010 reissued version of her mother’s classic, “The I Hate to Cook Book was born from a group of professional women who would have been much happier sipping martinis with their husbands than spending the cocktail hour in the kitchen slaving away over a hot stove.”

AMY: Now that definitely sounds more my speed. So welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit everyone, the podcast dedicated to dusting off books (even cookbooks) by forgotten women writers. I’m Amy Helmes…

KIM: And I’m Kim Askew. Three years before Betty Friedan wrote the seminal feminist work The Feminine Mystique, quirky cookbook writer Peg Bracken gave desperate housewives permission to throw in the towel rather than attempt to emulate Julia Child. She was recommended to us by today’s guest, a woman who definitely knows her way around a kitchen far better than you or I, Amy. We can’t wait to introduce her — and talk about Peg Bracken — so let’s raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music]

INTERVIEW PORTION

KIM: Los Angeles food writer Helene Siegel is the author of the bestselling series Totally Cookbooks for 10 Speed Press. She co-authored four cookbooks with celebrity chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, the Too Hot Tamales of early Food Network fame, and a lavish coffee table book, Pure Chocolate, with Seattle chocolatier Fran Bigelow. As a solo author she wrote the Ethnic Kitchen series for HarperCollins and the Barbie Party Cookbook for Mattel. 

Helene has written for the LA Times’ food, book, and travel sections, as well as Bon Appetit and Gourmet. Helene is a dear friend, and over the years, she has shared many a hilarious story about working in the cookbook publishing and food industres as a woman and as a feminist. So really, there’s no one more perfect to be our guest on this episode. And don’t worry, we plan to get her to share some of those amazing tales on today’s show! 

Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, Helene! We’re so happy to have you!

HELENE: Thanks, Amy and Kim! I’m excited to be here!

AMY: All right, so I think, Helene, the best way to introduce the I Hate to Cook Book is to just read the first few lines of it. So I will do the honors there:

   Some women, it is said, like to cook. This book is not for them. This book is for those of us who have to, who have learned, through hard experience, that some activities become no less painful through repetition: childbearing, paying taxes, cooking. This book is for those of us who want to fold our big dishwater hands around a dry Martini instead of a wet flounder, come the end of a long day. 

   When you have to cook, life is full of jolts: for instance, those ubiquitous full-color double-page spreads picturing what to serve on those little evenings when you want to take it easy. You’re flabbergasted. You wouldn’t cook that much food for a combination Thanksgiving and Irish wake. …. And you’re flattened by articles that begin: “Of course you know that basil and tomatoes are soulmates, but did you know…”. They can stop right there, because the fact is, you didn’t know any such thing.

KIM: Okay, so we can establish right away she’s hilarious. And though Bracken tells women right off the bat, “If you love to cook this book isn’t for you,” that’s clearly not true, because Helene, you love to cook. When did you discover this book, and what did you enjoy about it?

HELENE: Well, I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties in the Bronx in New York, so I had very little personal experience with the book. It wasn’t on my working mother’s bookshelf (way too suburban for her), but it was a cultural phenomenon that was just in the air at the time, sort of like The [Official] Preppy Handbook in the Seventies. It made a big impression on me as a little girl. It did go on to sell 3 million copies, by the way, and, like James Beard, she became a professional spokesperson for Birdseye frozen food, which made perfect sense. Peg was a regular TV guest. She wrote articles in women’s service magazines like Family Circle and McCall’s. Just the book’s title was so daring in those days when women were supposed to be happy being “indentured servants” as she said. I love that she was thumbing her nose at being a good housewife. I think this one line captures her snark: 

   What should you do, ladies when the onions are frying? Smoke some cigarettes and stare at the sink. 

KIM: I love it.

AMY: I love her ennui.

HELENE: Yeah.

AMY: Okay, so there’s actually a really interesting anecdote about the collaborative origins of Bracken’s cookbook. Helene, can you fill our listeners in on where the idea for the book (and also some of those recipes) sprang from?

HELENE: Well, Bracken wrote in the introduction that a group of friends who were gathered over lunch just started talking about how bored they were with cooking. That sounds familiar, right? They decided to save time by pooling their recipes and gathering about 200, which, by the way, is a lot. In a sly dig at The Home Economist, she wrote in the book’s intro, These recipes have not been tested by experts … Experts in their sunny spotless test kitchens can make anything taste good. As for where the recipes originated, she assumed, she said, that they were created long ago by a good cook who liked to cook. And she says to those bizarre women who like to cook: Invite me over often, please. And stay away from my husband.  So remember, those were the “Mad Men” days. 

AMY: Oh yeah.

KIM: I can picture it completely. And it’s interesting when you read a little bit of those excerpts, because she actually started out as an advertising copywriter along with Homer Groening, father of Matt Groening of “The Simpsons.” And she and Groening also made a comic strip, Phoebe, Get Your Man, together, which sounds pretty fun considering how entertaining Bracken is in this book. I tried to find pictures of that comic and I couldn’t, but it sounds really interesting. And she truly was busy at this time, raising a daughter and doing all of this other stuff, so the book wasn’t just a gimmick.  

AMY: No. And with all due respect to my mom, this book really reminded me a lot of her approach to cooking when I was growing up, and I think it was either maybe a Midwestern thing, or a 1960s, 1970s thing, but I personally grew up in the era where cooking meant just opening up various cans and jars and tossing them all together. So in my childhood, many a casserole was built around a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup. And all the women in my family were way into Jello salads (and they were tasty, I don’t care what you say… in fact there was one Jello salad we often ate that had pretzels mixed in and that sounds super gross, but I’m sorry, it’s TO DIE FOR. Don’t knock it till you try it!) And I even remember a certain recipe for crockpot meatballs that involved dumping in a jar of grape jelly. So this book actually really spoke to me.

KIM: Oh my gosh, Amy, I’m right there with you. In fact, I don’t think it’s just a Midwest thing because I grew up in Texas, Germany, California… all over, and I can hardly remember a meal that didn’t involve canned vegetables or canned soup. I don’t think I knew what a regular vegetable was. And both our moms worked, so I’m not going to blame them at all. Who could blame them?  But Helene, I know you recently cooked a meal that actually took four hours to prepare, and it sounds like you liked it; but you were a working mom, too, when your kids were growing up. How is this ringing bells as far as your own mom?

HELENE: Well, my 1950s mom did not embrace all these shortcuts and conveniences. While she worked (and she was always short on time), she still used fresh ingredients. She was kind of old-school. Except, of course, for canned veggies and fruit cocktail in syrup, we ate fresh foods. Maybe that’s why when I left home and went to college in the West, I could never get used to food in cafeterias or anything smothered in condensed, canned soups. I didn’t even know what a tuna casserole was. But on a few very special occasions, like the Academy Awards night, my mom did treat us to individual TV dinners. 

KIM: Oh my gosh, I love picturing you with the TV dinners watching the awards. How wonderful.

AMY: The irony.

KIM: Yes.

HELENE: Years later when I was a working mom, I had a deep desire to cook for my family. So a cookbook editor once told me when I was starting out, “You’ll get tired of that one day, and you’ll just stop cooking.” And she was right in that I took a nice long break after the kids were gone. But back in the day, it was like I was running a marathon. I would make this mad dash at the end of every work day. After driving at least an hour in L.A. traffic, I would blitz through the door, get out of my work clothes, throw on an apron and get ready to make dinner every night. And when I look back, I think I was crazy. 

KIM: So some of the recipes titles in this book are just priceless: There’s “Stayabed Stew” and “Skid Row Stroganoff”... “Hurry Curry,” “Idiot Onions” and “Hootenholler Whiskey Cake.”

AMY: She’s also got the classic cheese ball in there… you know, the kind you roll in crushed nuts. That’s always been a staple at family functions where I’m from. And her dessert titles are pretty funny, too. Actually, her whole Chapter 9 is called “Desserts: Or People are Too Fat Anyway.” And then her chapter on vegetables and side dishes is subtitled “This Side of Beriberi.”

KIM: Doesn’t that make you think a lot of Marjorie Hillis, who we dedicated  an episode to back in February?

AMY: Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean that was about 30 years prior to when this book was written, but you can still see some vestiges. Lots of tinned things. At least she had moved away from aspics, but some of it’s definitely questionable. I think we can agree that tastes have come a long way since this book was written. And yet, Bracken, early on in the book, she sort of issues a caveat about some of the bizarre ingredient combos you’ll find in her book. So she kind of owns it a little bit. In her recipe for Beef a la King, she says, “Don’t recoil from the odd-sounding combination of ingredients here, because it’s actually very good. Just shut your eyes and go on opening those cans.” In other words, she’s basically like, “I know it sounds gross, but it tastes like the bomb, so just trust me.” And some of the ingredients for that dish were: the condensed chicken noodle soup condensed cream of mushroom soup, of course — you have to have that; then there were two sliced hard-boiled eggs, ¼ lb chipped beef… (there is so much chipped beef in this book); green pepper, pimento, cheese and a small can of mushrooms. So toss that all together and… wow. I mean that sounds a little bit like prison food, but what do you think, Helene?

HELENE: Well, first of all I want to ask the question, “Where’s the beef?”

AMY: Totally true!

HELENE: It’s a tiny amount in this cream-heavy swamp of condensed things. So one of my favorite footnotes on one of her recipe lists was: If you don’t like this, leave it out. It reminds me of the time a cookbook editor of mine on a Mexican cookbook I was writing, told me, “I hate cilantro, take it all out.”

KIM: [laughing]

AMY: That’s a challenge! Oh my gosh. 

KIM: Oh, that is so funny.

AMY: So, well, getting back to chipped beef, though, I remember that was an ingredient we always had in our house. I remember that was a thing. I don’t think that’s a thing at the store anymore, though, is it? Can you even find that anymore?

HELENE: Do you know what it is, Amy?

AMY: We used to call it “dried beef.” It was like really thinly sliced… kind of like prosciutto, but beef. 

KIM: So dried and sliced?

AMY: Dried and sliced. Sometimes it would come in a jar, even. But it was slices, and my mom would make this thing… the chipped beef, or dried beef (I don’t know, I think it’s the same thing). She would make it in a cream sauce and then put it over toast. My grandpa would always say that you’re making “shit on a shingle.” That was a World War II recipe.

KIM: Yes! My dad used to say that, too.

HELENE: We had that also, in my house.

KIM: Yeah, I think they must have said it in Vietnam, also.

AMY: I liked it. I actually liked it!

KIM: Did you guys have Spam? The cans of Spam? We would have Spam on toast. 

HELENE: Maybe because you were in the military.

KIM: Yeah, maybe. I mean, you could get it at the store, but maybe that’s why they got the idea for it, it was something that they served in the military. But, like, UGGH. But anyway.

AMY: Maybe we should be careful about being too critical of these recipes, because when Peg Bracken, herself, showed her second husband the manuscript for this cookbook, he apparently answered, “It stinks,” according to their daughter, Johanna, and that couple got divorced not long after. So don’t tell Peg that these are bad recipes. 

KIM: Yeah, I like to think she made the decision to end that based on his response to the manuscript. [laughing]. So, suffice to say, this book is more readable today for her witty chapter introductions and sardonic asides. But to honor the spirit of Peg Bracken, Amy actually tried out a recipe for her family and I will let her take it from there.

AMY: I selected, actually, a couple of recipes from this book. One was the very first recipe in the book. It’s called “Sweep Steak,” and that one appealed to me because it really only required two ingredients: pot roast and a packet of French onion dip mix. I mean, how can you mess that up?

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: The second recipe was a rice casserole dish called “Hellzapoppin Cheesy Rice.” That was basically just rice baked with cheese and eggs and butter and Worcester sauce. So, I thought maybe that could be okay? Well, the pot roast literally took me less than three minutes to prepare. I guess it’s called “Sweep Steak” — there’s no steak in it, but.... I was pretty pleased about how quickly I managed to get this in the oven, but then I proceeded to overcook it to a criminal degree. And later when I sampled the cheesy rice after taking it out of the oven, it tasted a little bland, so I decided to add more salt, which was a huge mistake. So…

KIM: Were you drinking a martini while you were cooking? I hope so. I hope so.

AMY: I probably had a glass of wine.

KIM: It was her anniversary dinner. [laughing]. It was her anniversary dinner! 

HELENE: Oh my god, that was risky! But I do want to say, that recipe, I have had in people’s homes. People still make it, they love it.

AMY: The rice dish or the pot roast?

HELENE: No, the pot roast. And whenever this friend of mine brings it to the table, she’s like, “Oh la la, I made zee special pot roast!” And I’m always like, “Oh my god, don’t make me eat it.”

KIM: Here’s the other thing: I was going to cook something, but um...it was really hard to find anything vegetarian.

HELENE: Yeah, she was not vegetarian. Not a healthy person.

AMY: Anyway, my whole meal was a total fail. I don’t know that it was Peg’s fault, fully. My family were good sports about it, and let’s roll a little audio clip of that.

[Clip begins]

JACK: So far I had the pot roast, and I’d say it’s pretty good. 

AMY: Pretty good?

JACK: Yeah.

AMY: The pot roast?

JACK: Mm-hmm.

AMY: Okay. You like the flavor?

JACK: Mm-hmm.

AMY: Okay. You can be honest, too.

JACK: It’s a little chewy though.

JULIA: The cheesy rice wasn’t my favorite.

MIKE: So I would say this takes me back to my childhood. It feels like a meal my mom would have made. I would say that the meat’s definitely on the well-done side and the cheesy rice is on the super salty side…

JACK: I think the rice is VERY salty.

MIKE: But I can get where I would appreciate the rice. I do like the rice a little.

AMY: How do you feel about this being the meal for our wedding anniversary?

MIKE: It’s always nice to keep things fresh and new. This meal certainly does that.

JACK: I don’t really like it that much. 

AMY: No? Not for you? Even with the cheesy, “Hellsapoppin” title? Maybe a miss.

[end clip]

KIM: That was hilarious, and honestly, it was sweet how supportive they tried to be in the face of all that salt and overcooked meat. Props to you, Amy, for giving it a try! Okay, with all respect to Peg Bracken, I think I'll stick with some of your recipes, Helene, like your latke recipe, that, unlike Bracken’s recipes, basically made me a hero with my husband at Hanukkah.

AMY: I think I’ve had those latkes, Kim… at your house. I think I’ve been over there for those.

KIM: Latke party, yeah. Pre-pandemic latke party. We’ll be having them again.

AMY: Yeah. Helene, do you think there was any sort of stigma in the 1960s for women who didn’t cook?

HELENE: Well, it’s interesting. I think at that moment, women were beginning to publicly question their subservient role in society — especially in marriage. The idea of a married woman not cooking, not doing the laundry or, in general, not making her husband’s life easier, was subversive. My mother-in-law once told me that she ironed her husband’s underwear.

KIM: Hell, no!

AMY: Jeesh! Too much!

HELENE: Yes, well, at the same time as Peg Bracken’s book came out, you had Julia child’s breakthrough French cookbook and her TV show, with six-page recipes for Beef Wellington and menus for elaborate, multi-course dinner parties. As Julia would say, “for the servantless American woman.”

AMY: Thanks for clarifying, Julia.

HELENE: Her audience was affluent, educated, and no doubt, competitive. They were professionalizing, in a way, the home dinner party. One other interesting thing that’s happening at pretty much exactly the same time is the arrival of smart-alec women standup comics like Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers on TV. They were breaking barriers, poking fun at men in general, especially their hubbies, “Fang,” and Edgar. And if cooking ever came up in their jet-fuelled tirades, it was self-deprecating, for sure.

AMY: That's a really interesting insight, because it does make a lot of sense that they were giving women permission to A) laugh at the situation. (Like how ridiculous is this that we’re ironing our husband’s underwear? This is stupid!) and at the same time, sort of saying, “I don’t want to do this crap.”

HELENE: I think they were really subversive, and as a little girl I adored them both, so I probably had a bunch of rage myself. 

AMY: So, Helene, as somebody who enjoys cooking, you’re almost stuck in the middle, because you’re a feminist, but you enjoy being in the kitchen.

HELENE: First of all, I go through a lot of phases with the cooking. I did not start cooking until I was pretty much until I had my first child, although I dabbled a little bit in college. I was a college student, and I recognized that I liked to cook and what I cooked tasted better than what was in the cafeteria. So I just cooked. And even when I had the smallest apartment, you know, my starting-out apartment in New York City, I did always invite people over for dinner parties. But the great thing was that I wasn’t obligated to cook. I was cooking out of choice.

AMY: That’s the key.

KIM: Mmm-hmm, exactly.

HELENE: And I do love food, in general, so that helps.

AMY: We made a crack about Julia Child earlier in this segment, but Helene, is it true you actually met her? 

HELENE: Yes, I did! And I’ll never forget it. I have a picture, actually, of it. So I was writing cookbooks (I guess this was during the Eighties) and I used to be a member of professional culinary associations. And we had annual conferences where Julia always showed up. But anyway, we gathered all to eat and drink A LOT, but she was always the grande dame at these conferences. I mean, there were crowds around her everywhere she went. Everybody just adored her. What everyone would always say about her is, when you meet her, she’s Julia, exactly as you see her on TV. Totally authentic… doesn’t put on any airs… she just is who she is. So she was a big, cheery, mountain of a woman. She did not cut corners (as she famously said) when it came to butter and cream. But she was so kind to everyone along the way, and I think that’s why she was so well-loved.

AMY: She sounds like a real character.

HELENE: She knew how to have a good time.

KIM: Speaking of people who know how to have a good time, Helene, you recently started an amazing project that I want to tell our listeners about. It’s a blog called the Pastry Sessions. It is so great and so timely. Let’s tell everyone more about it and maybe give a little bit of information about how you came about starting it. What prompted you to start it?

HELENE: Well, a few months into the pandemic, I started baking on Zoom with my 8-year-old granddaughter in Texas. (Her name is Piper). I just missed her so much, and of course, I couldn’t visit her. So baking was a natural thing to do, since it’s an activity that we’ve been doing together since she was about four, in person. Anyway, I started The Pastry Sessions to keep a record of what we were doing and to share my stories so she can know more about me later.

AMY: That’s so sweet! It has been really hard on grandparents this whole past year, and I love that you have turned it into a… is it a weekly thing? How often do you do it?

HELENE: It’ bi-weekly. She would do weekly, but I need a little break in between, you know, because it’s work.

AMY: I get that.

KIM: I love it because you really get to tell all these stories, so every blog post has some information about what you cooked with Piper, and sort of what the experience was like for her, but usually you bring up some story or anecdote from your past, or some sort of insight on cultural history or something, to really bring it to life, and I love that, so I’m enjoying it. I can’t wait to see your new updates every week.

AMY: Tell me about these magic brownies that you are known for. The ones that you got an interesting reaction with when you took it to a dinner party once.

HELENE: Oh, yes! The notorious brownie story! These brownies were my go-to for holiday buffets and parties. Once, when I brought them to a swanky Hollywood gathering, the host whisked me and my brownies into the kitchen and closed the door.

AMY: Oooh! Wait a second! Helene, is this going to be appropriate for our podcast?

HELENE: PG-13? [laughing] He said to me, “These are going here.” He stashed them high up in a pantry. He said, “These are for later.” In other words, he was hiding them from his friends so he could nibble them in solitude at his leisure after the guests were gone. As Bracken said of women who like to cook, “Stay away from my husband, ladies!” That’s the power of good baked goods.

KIM: Oh, yes it is! Yes it is!

AMY: All I know is, being somebody that doesn’t necessarily enjoy baking or cooking, I really can appreciate someone that does enjoy it. And I’m so thankful, because I like eating it all.

KIM: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.

AMY: Whether you’re totally gung-ho about cooking or if it’s not your thing at all, it’s all okay. Do what you love.

KIM: Yeah, it’s your choice and your life. Yep. I can just keep reading all my beautiful cookbooks and never cooking anything in them, and Eric will just have to live with all the cookbooks!

AMY: So, Helene, it’s been a blast getting to talk with you today about food  and all your stories, and I think with this Sunday being Mother’s Day, Peg Bracken is probably the perfect person to remind us of how hard mothers everywhere (in every generation) work for their families, whether they’re dishing out homemade delicacies or their own best rendition of Hamburger Helper. 

KIM: Bottom line, they were all serving it up with love, as are we. Thank you, Helene. This has been a real delight getting to share your funny stories. Thank you so much for joining us! 

HELENE: Well thank you! And I do want to tell the listeners that I hope you’ll visit my blog. It’s called ThePastrySessions.com. And I do want to tell you that all of the recipes are tested.

KIM: Yes. And we will be sharing all of it in our show notes and on our social media. Thank you, Helene.

AMY: So that’s all for today’s episode. If you like what you’ve heard, consider giving us a rating and review where you listen to this podcast to help us grow our audience and help other book-minded people find us. 

KIM: Visit LostLadiesofLit.com for a link to Helene’s Pastry Sessions blog and subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss a single episode. Tune in again next week to help us turn “I’ve never heard of her,” into one of YOUR new favorite authors.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. “Lost Ladies of Lit” is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.