Books, Arts & Manners: Eating Their Words

Once more, confronting the vapid cookbooks littering my workroom, I am faced with the futility of so much human effort. However, there are some books about food that are agreeable and informative to read, and nice to cook from, too. Here are a few of them:

Country Kitchens Remembered, by Marilyn Kluger (Dodd, Mead, 296 pp., $17.95), delivers what the book’s subtitle promises, namely A Memoir with Favorite Family Recipes. The author grew up in the Thirties in rural Indiana, but the country kitchens of her mother and grandparents, where she spent so much time, are pure nineteenth-century. The author, who writes very well, tells about Threshing Day Dinners, How to Make Sorghum, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other festive occasions, The Rewards of Strawberry Picking, A Pie Safe in a Winter Kitchen, and so on and so forth. In short, you get an excellent idea of how life was lived in a close-knit, loving rural family half a century ago. The recipes are good old-fashioned ones, the food is honest and straightforward, and the book itself is nostalgic without sentimentality—a wonderful read for people who like to bask in a rosy past. I, who do not care for nostalgia, have nevertheless read it with great pleasure.

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Nika Hazelton

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Once more, confronting the vapid cookbooks littering my workroom, I am faced with the futility of so much human effort. However, there are some books about food that are agreeable and informative to read, and nice to cook from, too. Here are a few of them:

Country Kitchens Remembered, by Marilyn Kluger (Dodd, Mead, 296 pp., $17.95), delivers what the book’s subtitle promises, namely A Memoir with Favorite Family Recipes. The author grew up in the Thirties in rural Indiana, but the country kitchens of her mother and grandparents, where she spent so much time, are pure nineteenth-century. The author, who writes very well, tells about Threshing Day Dinners, How to Make Sorghum, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other festive occasions, The Rewards of Strawberry Picking, A Pie Safe in a Winter Kitchen, and so on and so forth. In short, you get an excellent idea of how life was lived in a close-knit, loving rural family half a century ago. The recipes are good old-fashioned ones, the food is honest and straightforward, and the book itself is nostalgic without sentimentality—a wonderful read for people who like to bask in a rosy past. I, who do not care for nostalgia, have nevertheless read it with great pleasure.