Kitchen Tales

My kitchen sink

Last night Jordan found an old cookbook on my shelves. “Did you write in this?” she asked, the moment she opened it. The pages were covered with notes, recipes on index cards were stapled in at various places, and hand-written recipes covered the endsheets. Jordan, who’s been trained not to write in books, was astounded. I told it was a first edition of Helen Corbitt’s first cookbook that had belonged to Linda’s mother, Billie, and Linda (one of my closest friends) loaned it to me, knowing that I was fond of Billie and at the time studying Helen Corbitt. “Linda can’t have this back,” she said as she leafed through it. (Be forewarned next time you visit, Linda!)

So I thought Jordan might enjoy the cookbook my mom had helped put together in the fifties for the auxiliary of the osteopathic hospital where Dad worked. Mom was sort of the force behind that book, but reluctant to  have her name appear too often, she signed some recipes with the pseudonym Penelope Jones. Helpful cooking hints were contributed by the anonymous “Gourmet Grace”—guess who. And then some recipes carried the names of my far-away aunts. It was one of those projects where the recipes are reproduced in the donor’s handwriting—and there it was, in roundish, childish handwriting: my first published recipe, for hot cheese dip.

Jordan was surprised by the amounts or lack of. “It says one roll of garlic cheese—how do you know how big?” I explained that back then garlic cheese came, from Kraft I believe, in a standard size. It’s no longer on the market that way. Another surprise for her brought forth, “You can’t buy lobster in a can!” I assured her you could, probably still can today. She looked it up and it is available, at quite a price. Several more oddities struck her, and we had lots of fun talking about the difference in recipes. It was especially fun since she, my youngest, had been her grandmother’s special baby because soon after she came along my mom moved down the street from us.

Ruth Reichl’s Substack column today struck home with me. It reprinted a column she’d written several years ago from an ultra-modern, ultra-efficient, swank leased kitchen in LA. The kind where you can do everything with a push of a button. The dream kitchen of thr 1950s. Reichl hated it. It was cold and sterile, and she longed for her home kitchen with the stove that didn’t work right. She then reviewed various kitchens in homes where she’d lived, with the thought in mind that the kitchen should be a happy place (Helen Corbitt would have loved this woman!)

Of course it got me to thinking about kitchens I’ve known, from the remodel in the fifties that Mom was so proud of to the remodel in what I call my doctor’s-wife kitchen. That remodel, I swear, began the dissolution of the marriage. And then of course I came to my tiny kitchen today. One of the points Reichl made was that she had cooked for years in kitchens without dishwashers, which gave her a new appreciation for that appliance. I cook without one now—no room for it. And as most of you know I cook on an induction hot plate and a toaster oven—no stove, no microwave.

I’ve been saying that if I thought I would cook and live for another twenty years or so, I’d hire one of those expensive kitchen designers to gut my kitchen and redesign it. Our contractor, who is a minor god in my book, did a good job, building on knowledge from his wife’s kitchen. Mine is functional, but I am sure there is a better way to design it for more storage, more efficient use of space, and better accommodation for a person in a wheelchair. I don’t do it because one never knows in the mid-eighties how long this good run is going to last, and it would not be an investment in the future—I can’t imagine anyone caring that much about a 4x6 kitchen in what will probably be rental property one day. Meantime, taking Reichl’s advice, I’m going to focus on my kitchen as a joyful place—it mostly is, for me.

I resurrected a bit of the past today when Teddy and Sue came for wine. I Jezebel sauce. There are hundreds of recipes out there, but I’ve never found the first one I ever made, so I was delighted to find this four-ingredient one: 1 18 oz. jar apricot preserves, 2 tsp. Dijon mustard, 2-3 Tbsp. horseradish, cracked pepper to taste. Pour it over a block of cream cheese and serve with Ritz crackers. It was a hit, though I halved the recipe and still had about half of what I made left over.

I had one more kitchen tale to tell—a disastrous delivery from Central Market—but it’s late, and I’ll save it for another day.