Prairie Kitchen Sampler: Sixty-six Years of a Midwestern Farm Kitchen

Fritz, E. Mae

ISBN 10: 1562829149 / ISBN 13: 9781562829148

Published by Hyperion Books, 1988

About this Item

Seller Inventory # EBBV.1562829149.N

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Prairie Kitchen Sampler: Sixty-six Years of a Midwestern Farm Kitchen
• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1562829149
• ISBN 13: 9781562829148
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Describes Midwestern farm life from the 1920s to the present, and shares old-fashioned recipes for breads, soups, salads, meat, poultry, vegetables, side dishes, and desserts

Reviews

Showing the same devotion to detail as her mother, prairie wife Alice Mickish Hendrickson, did when copying her first recipe for "Brown Stone Front Cake" into her notebook on August 7, 1922, daughter Fritz calls to mind her mother's cookstoves, iceboxes and recipes in this thorough but oddly distant memoir of life and times in rural Buffalo County, Neb. The 300 recipes for early-20th-century farm foods (e.g., baked beans) and details of cold-packing beef, for one, make the book a useful historic document. But Fritz's refashioning of her mother's memories into modern, prosaic sentences robs Hendrickson of an authentic voice. She also makes little effort to divine the larger meaning of Hendrickson's life; while full of recollection, the volume is not big on reflection. Whatever artistry Fritz displays comes from her immersion in minutiae--the proportion of flat to upright corn cobs in a basket of corn cob kindling, or the polishing of an enamel stove with waxed bread wrappers. Emotional moments arise not from the writing but from the unexpected recognition of forgotten phrases on the page--"White House Cake," "Never-Fail Chocolate Frosting."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.