100 Books I Keep Keeping... 33 The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book
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The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken (1986)
This is an expanded reprint of a book that was originally written in 1961 - a time, sad to say, when all women were expected to love, be brilliant at, and totally feel the joy and satisfaction of cooking, and there was something biologically wrong with her if she didn't.
All these years later, and how things have changed!
Now, it seems to these jaundiced eyes and ears and brain... everybloodyone is expected to love, be brilliant at, and totally feel the joy and satisfaction of cooking. And popular media (TV, books, magazines... hell, even social media) seems to think there's still something wrong with you if you don't. It's still hard on those of us who see cheese on toast as the height of culinary expertise (well, as high a height as I want to try for), and would see no problem with salad/sandwiches/hell, call it crudites for dinner on a permanent basis if one had to fend for oneself...
So. I do remember buying a paperback reprint of the original 1960s I Hate to Cook Book, when I was still a teenager, in a second-hand shop in Sydney, drawn by the title (which even then I knew was going to be me, and I was right :) and the Hilary Knight picture on the cover (he also did the internal illustrations, which were adorable). I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere.
Years later, I also bought this, the expanded version, with recipes and notes and ideas and breezy, snarky asides from her other books on domesticity (she also Hates To Housekeep, but Tries to Behave Herself, and I have both books where she does: period pieces, but wonderfully funny and readable ones). It's cheerfully irreverent, full of wit and pragmatism, and often (sometimes in actual instructions for the recipes) very funny.
Please note, I have never and would never want to actually cook anything out of it, and am pretty sure I would not want to eat most of them either. The recipes are totally 60s with masses of tinned ingredients and odd combinations and premade mixes and... you get it, to be honest mostly rather unappetising to modern tastes (not surprisingly, the cakes, cookies and things to do with bough ice cream sound best).
It's just a fun read for the comedy, the writing is breezy and full of fellow-feeling jokes, and even some of the recipes names are fun, Bisque Quick, Lift Lady Spice Cookies, Stayabed Stew ("for those days when you're en negligee, en bed, with a murder story and a box of bonbons, or possibly a good case of flu"), I Hate To Cookies, Kids vs Carrots, Joan's Contribution ("this includes - as you will see - five vegetables, and it's good anyway") Hashkabobs, Atsa My Turkey, Gung Ho, Can Can Casserole (three guesses where most of the ingredients come from), Poor Lonely Man’s Poivrade. And the chapter titles... very 60s and nicely snarky ("The Leftover, Or Every Family Needs A Dog", "Company's Coming, or Your Back's to the Wall" and "Cakes, Cookies etc... Or People Are Too Fat Anyway") with illustrations that are still adorable.
I suspect that, even then, the recipes were not the point: it was more a hands across the pantry feeling, as Peg puts it, a book to help women of that era to stop feeling like failures if they didn't like to Tote That Homemade Barge and Lift That Gourmet Bale.
Well, and to make them all laugh even if they had to...