She can really cook, IYKWIM
By Never teh BrideIn this, the modern age, we pretty much all have to cook unless we have plenty of disposable income for takeout. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a dude or a lady, kitchen skills are mostly indispensable nowadays, even if you can only make a few simple dishes. Most of the folks I know are youngish and single. All of them can cook something and most of them can cook rather well.
Which is why I’m stymied by the Betty Crocker Bridal Edition cookbook. Not that I don’t love Betty. I am particularly fond of her saucy 1986 visage. But to me a bridal cookbook conjures up images of very young brides who are leaving the sanctuary of their parents’ homes to enter into marriage with a man equally young and inexperienced. It just strikes me as odd and anachronistic. If someone gave me this book as a shower gift, it would join the ranks of the many culinary tomes The Beard and I reference when cooking.
Of course, its name does not change the fact that it has more than one thousand tried and tested Betty Crocker recipes and entire sections devoted to kitchen organization and cooking for guests. You can’t beat that!
That said, I thought I’d share an oldie but goodie by an unknown author entitled “A New Brides Cooking Diary.” Oh, how times have changed.
Monday: It’s fun to cook for Bob. Today I made angel food cake. The recipe said beat 12 eggs separately. The neighbors were nice enough to loan me some extra bowls.
Tuesday: Bob wanted fruit salad for supper. The recipe said serve without dressing. So I didn’t dress. What a surprise when Bob brought a friend home for supper.
Wednesday: A good day for rice. The recipe said wash thoroughly before steaming the rice. It seemed kinda silly but I took a bath. I can’t say it improved the rice any.
Thursday: Today Bob asked for salad again. I tried a new recipe. It said prepare ingredients, then toss on a bed of lettuce an hour before serving. Which is what led up to Bob asking me why I was rolling around in the garden.
Friday: I found an easy recipe for cookies. It said put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat it. There must have been something wrong with this recipe. When I got back, everything was the same as when I left.
Saturday: Bob did the shopping today and brought home a chicken. He asked me to dress it for Sunday (oh boy). For some reason Bob keeps counting to ten.
Sunday: Bob’s folks came to dinner. I wanted to serve roast. All I could find was hamburger. Suddenly I had a flash of genius. I put hamburger in the oven and set the controls to roast. It still came out hamburger, much to my disappointment.
Poor Bob…
February 9th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Could it be that the recipes are for two? I’m always looking for good books with smaller recipes, otherwise, I agree. While some new brides and grooms may need a beginning cookbook, so do some college students and young professionals. Why limit the audience by specifying that the book is a Bridal Edition?
February 9th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
LNLisa, I don’t think it specifies serving size. But The Beard and I could certainly use something like that. Between the two of us, I think we eat enough for four because of the way most recipes are structured. Many don’t halve well. At least he’s got a metabolism to die for and I love to exercise
February 9th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Funny, funny. Kidding aside, though, I have a recipe that calls for egg whites beaten stiff. But not all egg whites will do that, I’ve found. I’ve started beating one egg white at a time and then collecting them in a larger bowl so that a bad one doesn’t ruin the whole batch.
February 9th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Good tip, Lori! When I need to beat egg whites, I separate each egg in a bowl before adding it to my bowl of egg whites. I always worried about yokes ruining the whites, but never considered that a white could be defective! But they say an older egg won’t beat as stiffly, so it’s definitely a concern.
February 9th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
I worked in bookstores long enough to know that there are ’speciality’ cookbooks for almost any variation of humanity you could imagine. In most cases, the things that made them ‘perfect’ for the bride/student/man/terrified fast-food junkie who isn’t sure precisely how to boil water is that there are few ingrediants, most of which are relatively inexpensive, simple techniques, and a lot of condescending hand-holding on the part of the authors. Most of them are about a step to a step and a half more difficult than the My First Cookbook my parents got me when I was seven.
Really, the point of these cookbooks isn’t as much the cook as the person who might give said person a gift. Most of them seem to be purchased for bridal showers, graduations, recent divorcees, and such.
In ten years, I never had a new bride pick out a cookbook written specifically for new brides, but I gift-wrapped a hell of a lot of them for people to give at showers and weddings!
February 9th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
My mother said that the first time she cooked rice after her marriage, she put on a pot of uncooked rice and sprinkled it with water.
And she criticizes MY domestic skills!
At least I know how to cook rice, if not anything else. I can also boil water. And yes, any man I marry had better know how to cook or be able to afford permanent takeout.
February 9th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
I have no objections to permanent takeout, even though The Beard is an excellent cook. Food delivered gives me that much more time to fondle my pink violin*.
*Not a euphamism
February 9th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
I don’t mind cooking as long as someone else does the dishes!
Twistie, I worked in a bookstore too, and you’re probably right. I just looked at the description for the book on Amazon, and apparently it is only an another book with a different cover, so really I don’t see the point of this book at all! But then of course, there are many books that have no point.
February 10th, 2006 at 1:40 am
I’m sort of wondering where all these brides are who’ve lived on their own and had a career before getting married. I’ve been to 10 weddings in the last three years, and will attend 3 more this year, and only one out of the total 13 featured a couple older than 25. (And none of them are Mormon, in case you’re wondering.) Maybe this cookbook is for those brides?
Though, admittedly, I owned about 5 cookbooks by the time I was 21, and will definitely not need a special bride cookbook when I get married.
February 10th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Really, JaneC? Whereabouts are you located? It may be a regional difference. I’m in the northeast and everyone I know who is married has had a career and lived on their own first. But I also have a lot of friends who moved out of their parents’ houses during college or immediately after - I know a lot of folks stay at home for a while first. Maybe my peeps are the anomoly? I need to make a poll
February 12th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I’m in the northwest, and I’m a college student, so those of my friends who are going to get married later haven’t gotten around to it yet. I also specified that none of them are Mormon; almost all of them are Catholic, so there may still be a religious element skewing the statistics. Websites with statistics on average marriage age show brides anywhere from 24-30.
The 24 estimate is not far from what I’m familiar with; most of the brides I’ve known were 22, and I’m will probably be 23 at my own wedding (we’re not officially engaged yet, but a girl can plan). It’s possible things are different in the northeast: this site http://gothamist.com/archives/licking_the_windows/index.php?page=2
has stats from the wedding announcements in the NY Times for a few weeks last year, and the average ages of brides there is over 30.
February 13th, 2006 at 7:43 am
Just to say something about egg whites:it’s all abouth them being at room temperature before you crack the eggs, and the eggs being fresh, of course.
February 13th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Wow, JaneC, the youngest bride was 26…I guess marrying later is “in!” I’m glad I’m so hip and with it!
February 14th, 2006 at 11:33 am
My dear mother was not allowed in the kitchen when she was a girl, on the grounds that she “would bother the cook.” (No, she didn’t grow up fantastically rich, alas; it was the Depression, when a cook was affordable if you had a wage earner in the family making a modestly decent income.) Her first attempt at making rice apparently resulted in enough to feed most of Szechuan. She also learned the hard way that no, you cannot - or should not - iron a rubber girdle.
She therefore taught each of us, three boys and two girls, how to cook as soon as we were tall enough to reach the back of the stove safely. None of us has turned out to be gourmet chefs, but boy, are we competent. I can walk into a (stereotypical) bachelor’s house and make a dinner for three on oddments in his cupboards, when we’re stranded there by snow (and have done so). My mother regarded it as a survival skill, and she was right.
February 14th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Methinks your mother a truly wise woman, La BellaDonna!
February 26th, 2006 at 2:55 am
Yes, your mother does sound so very wise indeed!