Fruit From Washington - Country Cooking

Sarah Field Splint in The Art of Cooking and Serving (Procter & Gamble, 1927) points out the bright side of the drudgery of cooking "Three meals a day, seven days a week--on and on, year after year!...Look at your children's rosy cheeks and happy dispositions; your husband's good health, the general feeling of content and happiness that pervades your home. All these are a result of your thought and planning, and surely they are worth all the energy they cost."

No one in my house has the time or inclination actually to cook "three meals a day, seven days a week--on and on, year after year."

Time-warp seventy plus years...I look at the microwave oven cookbook on my shelf and compare it to those books on cooking and serving from an age when housewives of middle to upper means coped with such difficulties as keeping up appearances in "The Servantless House". No one in my house has the time or inclination actually to cook "three meals a day, seven days a week--on and on, year after year." So often we zap food and eat on the go with the hope that there won't be permanent damage to a child's "rosy cheeks" or "happy disposition" or a "husband's good health" or "feeling of content".

The efforts of thought and planning as described in 1927's The Art of Cooking and Serving, to do it all single-handedly, seem anachronistic at best and at worse repressive drudgery that makes an irony of any discussion about the "servantless house." But I digress. Now we have microwaves and instant meals, but don't worry, life is not all hurry-up-and-go. The set table and the sit-down meal have not been sacrificed to the rush of busy days. You can find the whole family pitching in to help with the chores of fixing the meal, setting the table and cleaning up afterwards. I know that I am right about that. Right, kids?

Happy country cooking to you and yours from the Eberhart Family and all of us at FruitFromWashington.com!

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