Peg Bracken, 'I Hate to Cook Book' Author, Dies at 89

The New York Times wrote: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....

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

Despite her heavy reliance on canned soups and other time-saving convenience foods, Bracken was smart and funny and many of the recipes she compiled were actually very good. I have made this one many times:

Cockeyed Cake

This is a famous recipe, I believe, but I haven't the faintest idea who invented it. I saw it in a newspaper years ago, meant to cut it out, didn't, and finally bumped into the cake itself in the home of a friend of mine It was dark, rich, moist, and chocolatey, and she said it took no more than 5 minutes to mix it up. So I tried it, and, oddly enough, mine, too, was dark, rich, moist, and chocolatey. My own timing was 5 1/2 minutes, but that includes hunting for the vinegar.

1-1/2 cups sifted flour
3 Tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons cooking oil
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup cold water

Put your sifted flour back in the sifter, add to it the cocoa, soda, sugar, and salt, and sift this right into a greased square cake pan, about 9 x 9 x 2 inches. Now you make 3 grooves, or holes, in this dry mixture. Into one, pour the oil; into the next, the vinegar; into the next, the vanilla. Now pour the cold water over it all. You'll feel like you're making mud pies now, but beat it with a spoon until it's nearly smooth and you can't see the flour. Bake it at 350 degrees for half an hour.

NPR replayed snippets of an interview with her yesterday. You gotta love a woman who openly advocates that sometimes a woman would rather be sipping a martini than cooking dinner!

This is from The New York Sun's obit:

Two recipes were her favorites: "Aggression Cookies" and "Mayonnaise Lamb Stew." Another was "Stayabed Stew," which included the instruction, "Mix all ingredients in a casserole, cover tightly and place in a 275-degree oven. Now go back to bed." For "Skid Row Stroganoff": "let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink."

It's a kind of existentialist mise-en-place: onion soup mix and roast in pan, cigarette perched on edge of lip, eyes fixed on stainless steel drain. . .

And frankly, if you've had a couple of cigarettes and a martini or two, you'll mind the casserole a lot less

Her stance was extraordinary considering the times. The idea that a woman might have better things to do than cook all day for hubby and the kids was still pretty radical. In 1960, nobody had ever heard of Gloria Steinem.

"I Hate to Cook Book," 1960
"Mastering the Art of French Cooking," 1961
"The Feminine Mystique," 1963
Ms. magazine, 1972

LAZ wrote:Her stance was extraordinary considering the times. The idea that a woman might have better things to do than cook all day for hubby and the kids was still pretty radical. In 1960, nobody had ever heard of Gloria Steinem.

"I Hate to Cook Book," 1960
"Mastering the Art of French Cooking," 1961
"The Feminine Mystique," 1963
Ms. magazine, 1972

True; it does seem as if it paved the way for other feminist works. On NPR, it was said that her "cookbook" was passed on by every (male) publisher until a female publisher agreed to take it on thinking it was groundbreaking. Thank goodness that female publisher survived the odds and thrived in that male-dominated business because if she didn't exist that cookbook probably would have never seen the light of day.

I had never heard of this woman before. Sounds hilarious, and truly ahead of her time.

She was big, partly because she appeared (as a result of her book fame) in a series of TV commercials for some General Foods product or other, as I recall. Jello Pudding? Maxwell House Coffee? Something like that. She came off very well in these. (Her written-word fame, clever a writer as she was, could take her only so far--being an engaging, genuine-seeming TV presence with a sardonic yet appealing delivery that matched the wit of her prose was what took her to the next level. I never knew she'd been a copywriter before she was a cookbook author and progenitor of Women's Lib, but that makes all the sense in the world.)

I only knew her from those commercials. In fact, I think I may have really only known her from a stand-up comedian (Robert Klein, perhaps) who did a bit which parodied her in those commercials.....and the only thing I remember about that was he did her with a scratchy, irritating voice.

She was the pitchwoman for Birds Eye in the late 1960s. Here's one of hers to look at:

http://www.roadode.com/eat_1.shtml

My mom loved Peg Bracken and "The I Hate to Cook Book." I wish I had her well-worn copy of it here. Guess I'll have to hunt one up on the internet.

Just discovered my MIL's almost-complete stash of this series, and am laughing myself silly over "I Hate to Cook." Comedy aside, I'm finding it terribly interesting. Some of the interest is that, looking over the recipes, the book is not for new cooks; there's baking from scratch and quite a bit of technical expertise in the book.

I'm also amazed about the ingredients she uses, unheard of in the '70s and '80s in Ohio (I know, because my Mother used them and regularly horrified my friends) avocados, artichokes, clams, smoked oysters, fresh chervil, watercress - nowadays new, exotic ingredients but clearly staples in her pantry.

I remember reading this for the first time and having to look up what caponata was, and being amazed to find out that you could buy it in cans.

I went to the library and got as much of the complete collection as possible, and have been annoying my family by laughing out loud and quoting her every five minutes.

Some of the recipes are excellent, meaning worthy of epicurious and not what you'd think would be in a book of that name - there is a non-thanksgiving unstuffed turkey recipe in the Appendix to the I Hate to Cook Book that I really liked...