04 Feb 2013, Posted by admin in COOK, 0 Comments
Among the shoe boxes behind my desk filled with thousands of Prudence Penny recipes, the “celebrity” section is curiously rather slim. The recipes are not from the earlier days of Ms. Penny’s nationwide cooking advice column, but almost entirely from the late 1940s and early 1950s. And they’re as entertaining as the actors who provided them (a “crazy mixed up stew” from Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis; “My favorite Dagwood sandwich” from Penny Singleton, a.k.a. Blondie; check back from the recipes).
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21 Jul 2011, Posted by admin in EAT, 0 Comments
The Prudence Penny Recipe Series continues with candied jujubes circa 1929. Where might you find the fresh jujubes these days? Apparently, you can mainly find them in the early fall. If you know of any summer sources, do share. In the meantime, here’s the crazy easy, original recipe that I now want to make simply for this line: “Prick jujubes with a fork, or anything sharp.” All sorts of fun kitchen potential there, as well as in her pronunciation sidenote.
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26 May 2011, Posted by admin in EAT, 0 Comments
This week’s edible flashback from the Prudence Penny recipe series, just in time for summer: Fruit “paste” [a.k.a. fruit leather] using leftover fruit pulp. The recipe was published in September of 1929, literally weeks before Black Tuesday. Fruit forward? Perhaps, though Ms. Penny was always pennywise. She begins by telling us, dear reader, that “If you have suffered a pain in the pocketbook at the loss of so much pulp in making jelly, here is a suggestion: Instead of letting the pulp go to waste, make it go to paste.” Ah, the circa 1929 pun. Turn the page for more.
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28 Apr 2011, Posted by admin in MEET, 2 Comments
A few years ago, an editor took me to the home of Kit Snedaker, the former editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Now in her 90s, Kit is determined not to let the fiery Prudence Penny (aka Prudent and Pennywise, the culinary “Dear Abby” of the day) be forgotten. Before Kit retired in the 1980s, she found boxes and boxes of recipe clippings along with drafts that never made it to print (dating to 1917!) shoved beside a dumpster awaiting their fate. Kit saved those Prudence Penny recipes, but never got around to doing anything with them. So, she handed them over to me. Which means that occasionally, I am going to share recipes from the Prudence days, or simply fun anecdotes (sparring with Emily Post over when a salad course should be served is among my favorites).
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03 Jan 2011, Posted by admin in EAT, 0 Comments
It seems as good a year as any to make a resolution to make (and eat) more hamburger buns. Why? Because people used to do that sort of thing at home, back before Pepperidge Farm and Sara Lee and friends got together for a factory-induced, fluffy white, mediocrity mouth feel moment. And because homemade hamburger buns really do make whatever you pile onto them — medium rare, oops-overdone, even meatless mystery items — taste so much better. Plus, they’re fun to make. Or at least once you get over that Platonian hangup that a circle must be perfect. This is a hamburger bun recipe, not a Geometry pop quiz question. Turn the page for more, including a recipe.
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