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This year, twenty-four tasters sampled eight turkeys and rated them for "aromat" (flavor), texture, moisture and "overall appeal." The #1 turkey: Rubashkin's Aaron's Best, priced at $1.99 a lb. The Butterball turkey came in at 3rd, and sells for $1.49 a pound. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.
Oh, where's Peg Bracken when I need her?
Peg, the reluctant cook who championed
no-frill meals, passed away this month. She
channeled the anxieties of millions of women across "amerike" in her book, "The
I Hate to Cook Book." It was first published
in 1960, with an advance of $338, and sold
a reported 3 million copies. The book
became a staple for housewives with little
interest in cooking beyond what they could
scrounge from an understocked pantry.
Satirical/social protest cookbooks were unheard of in 1960. Even Bracken's own "man" (husband) was "totally discouraging." When the first royalty check came, he had to eat a huge platter of crow--French-fried or oven-baked, because that is the easiest. (The couple were later divorced and Bracken remarried three more times.)
The cookbook was as long on attitude as it was on onion soup mix. She said, "I think I should have received an award from Lipton."
Bracken also wrote other acerbic books:
"The I Hate to Housekeep Book" (1962),
"I Try to Behave Myself" (l964), and "A Window Over the Sink" (l98l).
A Christian Science piece on Bracken in '81 showed that she was not quite the slugabed (a lazy person who lies late in bed) she affected; she regularly ground her own whole wheat "mel" (flour) for epic bread-baking sessions.
Basically, Peg avoided "di kikh" (the kitchen). When asked what she ate each day, she answered doughnut holes, skim milk, and juice for "frishtik" (breakfast), and boiled eggs and wine for "lontsh." "And for dinner ("mitog"), I just hope that my husband will take me out, which he often does," she replied.
Her recipes: Fake Hollandaise
Ingredients:
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup milk
l teaspoon lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Cook the milk and mayonnaise together in
the top of your double boiler (If you don't
have an official double boiler, fake one with
a bowl on top of a pot) for five minutes,
stiring constantly. Then add the other things and stir just long enough
for one
good chorus of "Gloomy Sunday" and it's
done.
A second recipe was for "Skid Road Strogonoff."
Directions:
Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes
whle you light a cigarette and
stare sullenly at the sink.
Peg warned against condiment overkill.
She wrote, "A lot of people feel that
anything peppered should look as though
it had been fished out of a gravel pit."
She also dispensed tongue-in-cheek advice.
She once told readers that to say "garnish
with crispy bacon curls" made one appear
more knowledgeable (more of a "maven")
in the kitchen than to say "top with bacon."
Peg had two favorite recipes: "Aggression Cookies" and "Mayonnaise Lamb Stew." Another was "Stayabed Stew," which gave these instructions:
"Mix all ingredients in a casserole, cover tightly and place in a 275-degree oven. Now go back to bed."
And so, as you're preparing your Thanksgiving dinner, or having it catered, let's hope that Peg Backen and Julia Child are having a great Thanksgiving at that "groys tish" (big table) in the sky.
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