With a Dash of Love
Reading, Writing and Learning to Cook
Welcome to the Art of Growing Food newsletter. Each week, you’ll find artful growing tips and ideas for fresh eating from your kitchen garden. You are receiving this newsletter because you are a free or paid subscriber. Thank you!
Post note: I’ve been working on a new video class series, How to Write a Cookbook, and would be delighted to have you sign up. This week I am delving into the memories of when I first learned to cook, with the recipe that lead to my passion for cooking and food writing. I’d love to hear about your first recipe, and what led you into the kitchen.
Hello Everyone.
I was sixteen when my mother placed the Better Homes and Gardens bread cookbook on the counter and opened it to a recipe for Anadama bread. She instructed me to “cook!”. I read through the directions, gathered the ingredients; flour, yeast, molasses, and cornmeal, and read the instructions another time. It was my first time making bread and softening the yeast In warm water confused me.
Back then, I did everything by the book. I found a thermometer to test the water temperature, sprinkled in the yeast, then watched in amazement as the bubbles surfaced to the top. I waited exactly five minutes before adding the sifted flour and then kneaded the dough into a soft pliable ball for exactly ten minutes. I remember watching the clock, and thinking how it felt like clay from the art room at school.
Finding a warm place for the dough to rise was a challenge in our cold New England house until my mother suggested the furnace room. It was winter, and I set up a makeshift platform just above the firebox. The dough covered with a moistened tea towel magically doubled in size.
When it came time to bake, I set the oven timer and sat at the kitchen table, waiting and again watching the clock. As the room filled with a delicious aroma, the rest of the family began to gather. Three hours from start to finish, and when I proudly handed everyone a warm slice, it was clear that my mother’s intentions – to engage her surly teenage daughter with a useful task --- had worked. I’ve been cooking and writing about food ever since.
It is only recently that I think back on that time with another bit of insight. Back in 1930, my grandfather Rex Stark designed the first spiral-bound cookbook for Better Homes and Gardens and the red and white plaid cover that appears in 1941. The purpose of this design was to spur magazine sales by asking readers to enter a recipe, then each issue of the magazine offered the prize winning recipe already hole punched to add to the spiral bound cookbook.
It became the longest-running recipe contest ever, and with each issue, the cookbook grew. The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook has become a best-seller, and sales now exceed the bible. I like to claim that knowing how to cook is not just something I learned, yet firmly in my hereditary genes.
I share both these stories because writing a cookbook is more than documenting the recipes. It reflects who we are as cooks, how we learned to cook, and what we hope to share with others. I am reminded of my humble beginnings as a new cook, and the moment I was jolted out of complacency and into action. It was pure magic with a bit of alchemy to know that anything I imagined, I could make from a recipe. If we only cook from the internet, we lose the passion behind the purpose.
There is so much that I don’t know about food, yet when I see photos of the mycelium growing underground on the forest floors, and the networks they create and support, I can’t help but think about all the cooks that have taught me in person and through cookbooks. How the language of food is universal, yet each of us brings something to the table that is passed along from others. All recipes are built on other recipes, and it is how we preserve traditions and give them a new twist that truly matters.
If you want to go deeper and write about your recipes, consider joining my upcoming cookbook writing class. It starts on October 14th, and this week I am offering a special discount for friends and family who want to cook and write together.
Go to: www.cookbookclass.com
At the checkout, type in the coupon code: FRIENDS for a 20% discount. (You will each have to register separately.) Good through October 4th.
As always, wishing you good times in the kitchen and around the table.
Best,
Ellen O.
Ellen Ecker Ogden is a food writer and cookbook author, and artful kitchen gardener. Follow the year-round progress of her Vermont garden on Instagram or sign up for a writing or design workshop on her website