ida bailey allen like roses, squirrel and pie

28 Aug 2010 3 Comments

by radicalmuffin in narrative Tags: home cooking, ida bailey allen, mad men, radio

after breakfast and replanting squirrel savaged rosemary in our fire escape garden, late morning sun blankets the k pidds napping in the window sill, kitten head on post-it notes, and we people settle behind respective laptops & coffee mugs.

the preacher-eater is reviewing a new book, Radical Homemakers [link forthcoming]. Over the past few weeks, flipping through it in moments between homemaking and working, its refrains resonated: transform families from “units of consumption to units of production;” reroute social programming that drives people into numbing stuff, debt, work cycles; reclaim the value of home-scale cultivation, cooking and caretaking. This morning, its narrative of pre-Industrial pastoral bliss and redemption evoked only my impatience—perhaps aggravated by the release of that film about the worn out but wealthy discovering their souls, handmade pasta and universal interdependence then getting laid— turning me to the much dustier pages of Ida Bailey Allen’s Money-Saving Cook Book (1940).

like a fashionable auntie sitting cozy at your table, Ida Bailey Allen came into tens of thousands of kitchens via radio from 1928 – 35 on her show the National Radio Home-Maker’s Club. Social media frontrunner, the Nation’s Homemaker, Ms. Ida built a virtual community to preach the new science of home economics and old faiths of frugality and day-to-day deliciousness.

her prolific career as domestic guru began in print, generating 22 years of syndicated newspaper columns, more than 50 cookbooks, and uncounted leaflets, booklets and adverts. Radio was magic to Ida Bailey Allen, connecting her to her widest audience and most intimate sense of community. In her forward to 104 Prize Radio Recipes (1926), she writes:

Many of you have done it–and have written me letters of appreciation that make me want to help you more and more. Little groups of you are meeting in central homes to “listen in” while you sew and are having Radio Luncheons afterward. . .The recipes in this Little Book belong especially to the National Radio Home-Maker’s Club because each one was written by a member of this organization.

ida bailey allen

her influence in home practices and the emerging market of home purchases granted her not only a lasting if unattributed legacy but also commercial viability. Auntie Ida was not above shilling product. Imagine an older Ida Bailey Allen arriving at the Mad Men offices, linking arms with Joan or Peggy and declaring aside to her:

I came back to New York with no broadcasting ambitions. Some two or three years later, I was asked to speak again—on a Christmas program; and I remember suggesting that, in the holiday season, children would adore to have their mothers dressed in gay frocks, and I declared that every woman who could, should have a red Christmas dress. The letters poured in from everywhere, and red dresses bloomed like roses.

Ida Bailey Allen’s Modern Cookbook 2500 Recipes (1935)

in store displays claimed the nation’s “perfect hostess” served Coca Cola to grand success at her gatherings and you can too! She contributed recipes that sold Pillsbury Flour and Royal Crown gelatin. I adore her anyway. Imagine her, red dressed, empathizing with struggling dieters:

if you are on a reducing diet (and therefore perpetually hungry), I cannot urge you too strongly to cut out a hundred calories a day of the meat, fish or eggs of which you are probably eating too freely and substitute a cereal.

or gamely offering recipes for squirrel stew, roast woodchuck, hasenpfeffer, muskrat and pheasant with oysters stuffed with wild rice and cream. She resisted writing on expensive/wasteful game meat for her Money-Saving Cook Book (1940) until:

the publisher looked retrospective. ‘It’s not expensive if you shoot it yourself,’ he said.  To which there was nothing further to say.

her books fold together the wisdom of her up-bringing and cutting edges of her era. She recommends, for body and budget, a diet that relies on bean and grain combinations and dairy products de-emphasizing meat; the discovery of vitamins backs up her command to eat more fruits and veggies. She’s enthusiastic about standardized measures: “the National Bureau of Standards of the United States Department of Home Economics has worked out correct specifications…Given accurate measuring equipment and by observing level measurements, many cooking failures can be avoided.” Fans of “Cook’s Illustrated,” please feel free to swoon. There’s comfort in being able to culinarily converse with precision, yet cooking measured off our own selves (a handful of pine nuts) and beloved if haphazard items (a cracked teacup of sugar) retains an unmatched romance smacking of lustfully concocted midnight feasts. I doubt Ms. Ida went in for that.

But she did go in for pie.