![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaOn the grounds that feminist food journalism was less likely to freak my family out than anything else in my to-read list, I finished Laura Shapiro's Something From The Oven on the plane.
The subtitle is somewhat misleading; the book is more about the relationship between American women from just after WWII until the early-mid-'60s and home cooking than it is about the actual preparation of meals, although certainly that happens in the book, too. It also briefly touches on the relationship between said women and eating, although there's less about that than I might like. The Corporate Masters make their appearances, many oppressive, most merely indifferent to their actual impact on the nation's nutrition and the lives of the women who did most of the cooking.
The author occasionally veers into flights of opinion that are surprisingly catty, and I apologize, but I can't think of another word that captures that particular tone. Other than those occasional lapses, and a hint of food-snobbery that trails through the book only to waver uncertainly in the face of Peg Bracken (naturally) and evaporate completely when Julia Child arrives in the final chapter (not that even the worst food snob can really complain about Child), the reporting is interesting and solid while remaining personable and even personal. And I suppose one can be forgiven a few epicurean airs when one's research brings one into such artifacts of the time's kitchens as ketchup meringue, eww, OMFG. (Sorry, food snob moment of my own there.)
The final paragraph of the chapter on Child and Betty Friedan is kind of awesome:
I'm sufficiently impressed that I've ordered the author's other food book, on the "scientific cuisine" movement around the turn of the century (the previous one, not the one just past).
The subtitle is somewhat misleading; the book is more about the relationship between American women from just after WWII until the early-mid-'60s and home cooking than it is about the actual preparation of meals, although certainly that happens in the book, too. It also briefly touches on the relationship between said women and eating, although there's less about that than I might like. The Corporate Masters make their appearances, many oppressive, most merely indifferent to their actual impact on the nation's nutrition and the lives of the women who did most of the cooking.
The author occasionally veers into flights of opinion that are surprisingly catty, and I apologize, but I can't think of another word that captures that particular tone. Other than those occasional lapses, and a hint of food-snobbery that trails through the book only to waver uncertainly in the face of Peg Bracken (naturally) and evaporate completely when Julia Child arrives in the final chapter (not that even the worst food snob can really complain about Child), the reporting is interesting and solid while remaining personable and even personal. And I suppose one can be forgiven a few epicurean airs when one's research brings one into such artifacts of the time's kitchens as ketchup meringue, eww, OMFG. (Sorry, food snob moment of my own there.)
The final paragraph of the chapter on Child and Betty Friedan is kind of awesome:
Women responded instantly to The French Chef , instantly to The Feminine Mystique. The inspiration they drew from these two women was as crucial as the how-to, and it altered the domestic legacy for all the generations that came after. Not every woman who watched Child intently on TV, scribbling the recipe as fast as she could, was a fan of Friedan's; and not every woman who tore excitedly through Friedan's book and found her own life on each page was a dedicated cook. But they were all hearing the same words: You can do this yourself, with your brains and your own two hands. You don't need to get it from a package. You can take charge. You can stand at the center of your own world and create something very good, from scratch.
I'm sufficiently impressed that I've ordered the author's other food book, on the "scientific cuisine" movement around the turn of the century (the previous one, not the one just past).
