Helpful Cooking Hints for HouseHusbands of Uppity Women: A Cookbook

The cause of this book is Judy McDonald, former Mayor of Nacogdoches, Texas. When she won the seat someone else had to do the cooking at home, and who better to turn to than the HouseHusband?

This is a cookbook for all husbands enlisted to cooking duty, and it assumes no prior cooking knowledge beyond knowing how to measure and how to turn on the stove. As Archie McDonald irreverently observes, “Uppity Women” are entering the workforce and not necessarily cooking all the meals anymore, so his aim is to “help you learn to feed your kids, yourself, and even your Uppity Woman if you feel charitable.”

McDonald first provides a glossary of cooking terms for the neophyte kitchen inductee (chopping, for example, is “rendering a defenseless pepper or not-so-defenseless onion into a lot of little slivers or chunks”). He then discusses how to equip the kitchen with proper cooking implements and ingredients (a meat mallet is used to “beat the tar out of round steak”). This is followed by more than one hundred easy-to-follow recipes for beef, chicken, pork, and seafood main courses; vegetables; salads; breads; and desserts. No one new to the kitchen should be without this primer, whether a HouseHusband or an Uppity Woman, or something in between. It makes the perfect gift for newlyweds!

Archie P. McDonald is Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and also Executive Director and Editor for the East Texas Historical Association.