OP: The I Hate to Cook Book

$75 · Offered by Kitchen Arts & Letters · No longer available

Harcourt, Brace World, Inc., 1960. Hardcover. Near Fine in Very Good jacket. Later printing. Frequently we encounter that desperate person who knows exactly what book they want but can’t remember the name of the author or the title of the book. They say that the cover was green—or maybe yellow—and it had a good recipe for chicken in it. And we’ll try—we really will—to find that book, to discover some hint at what it might be. But when the person says the book is peppered with comments like,“—let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink,” we know it can only be Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book (1960). Though born in Missouri, Ruth Eleanor "Peg" Bracken (1918–2007) spent a good deal of her freelance copywriting career in Portland, Oregon, the birthplace of her near-contemporary James Beard, who once called her “the enemy camp.” Bracken was a woman truly of her time, rejecting any notion that she ought to be laboring over an elaborate meal rather than enjoying a strong drink or, truly, anything else. The I Hate to Cook Boo k was published three years before The Feminine Mystique , after all, and had sold 3 million copies by the time of Bracken’s death. The recipes, gathered from a luncheon group of women known as The Hags, rarely contain more than six ingredients and emphasize easy preparation and any corner-cutting that facilitates a minimum of time spent in the kitchen. You’ll find such gems as idiot onions, afterthought cookies, hushkab

• Printing: later
• Binding: Hardcover

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