For my seventh birthday, I got the best gift I could imagine: my first very own cookbook, Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls. I remember quickly starting to cook my way through the spiral-bound book, although “cooking through” wasn’t a term anyone used in 1959—at least not in Denver.
From Bunny Salad (lettuce leaves on a plate, chilled pear half upside down, two blanched almond ears, raisins for eyes, cinnamon candy nose and a cottage-cheese-ball tail) to Eggs in a Frame (toast cooked in a pan, with the center cut out for a sunny-side up egg), I learned that good food could also look fun to eat. I’m still grateful for the pages of information that taught me how to set the table properly, how to make celery curls and how “A Good Cook Measures Exactly.”
Of course, there were recipes for cakes using Betty Crocker mixes. I mostly ignored these, and produced favorites like gingerbread and molasses crinkle cookies. My sister and two brothers were willing consumers, and my parents more than happy to have me provide treats for the family.
I found I didn’t really need the recipes for dishes like Italian spaghetti, meatloaf or coleslaw. By the time I turned seven, I had been cooking in some form for as long as I could remember. I already had the basics down on those dishes and more. As a young child, I never really thought about cooking; it just seemed natural. Whatever my mother cooked, I watched. Then I helped. By seven, I was proudly making a few things on my own. The memory of me at that age occasionally using our electric stove with the aid of a stepstool, but without any close adult supervision, still surprises me today.
Our family food wasn’t fancy, just tasty and healthy by mid-20th century standards. Sure, we had our share of Jell-O, and we ate beef nearly every night because that’s what my father liked, but other than Friday nights, my mother did not live by a repetitive weekly cycle of dishes like some of my friends’ moms did. Her unwritten formula for our meals was a protein, vegetable, starch and, every night, a fresh salad of iceberg lettuce (all there was in the stores at the time), tomatoes and cucumbers with homemade dressing, soon one of my specialties.
In our house, homemade was best… and also what we could afford. There was no falling back on take-out, or even tv dinners after a long day of work and school. Of course, in keeping with the way things were at the time, it was my mother’s job to make sure there was always enough food in the house for six, including two growing boys. To keep up our supplies meant at least one big trip to the grocery stores every week, usually on Saturday and always with as many coupons as we could clip. I say “stores” in the plural because my mother shopped grocery sales religiously, sometimes stopping at three or four different stores in a weekend to get the best deals.
