I have my mother's copies of both books. I am sure my sister will claim them as hers, but possession is 9/10th of the law, right?
Peg Bracken, an advertising copywriter who nearly half a century ago parlayed her irreverent wit — and her passionate dislike of a traditional womanly duty — into a subversive best seller, “The I Hate to Cook Book,” died on Saturday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 89.
The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, her daughter, Johanna Bracken, said.
Long before the microwave became a fixture of every home, “The I Hate to Cook Book” was creating a quiet revolution in millions of kitchens in the United States and abroad. Three years before Betty Friedan touched off the modern women’s movement with “The Feminine Mystique,” Ms. Bracken offered at least a taste of liberation — from the oven, the broiler and the stove.
“Some women, it is said, like to cook,” Ms. Bracken’s book began. “This book is not for them."
First published in 1960, “The I Hate to Cook Book” was the perfect accompaniment to the Rice-A-Roni era, ushered in two years earlier. The inventor of Rice-A-Roni, Vincent M. DeDomenico Sr., died on Thursday.
Ms. Bracken’s cookbook, with illustrations by Hilary Knight, quickly became a staple of suburban homes. Published in various editions over the years, it sold more than three million copies. Every baby boomer’s mother, or so it seemed, had one on the kitchen shelf, its pages stained with the makings of Stayabed Stew, Sole Survivor and Spinach Surprise.
“The I Hate to Cook Book” emphasized speed, and if speed happened at the expense of the rubbing and rolling and stuffing and tying and long, sensuous, self-congratulatory simmering that James Beard was just then making de rigueur, then, Ms. Bracken strongly suggested, so much the better.
In Ms. Bracken’s culinary canon, ingredients should be cheap, common and above all convenient, ideally frozen or tinned. Canned soups loomed large in her recipes. So did crushed cornflakes, powdered onion soup mix and Spam of the pre-electronic type. So did alcohol, though in many cases her instructions called for it to bypass the cooking process entirely and proceed straight down the cook’s throat.
Ms. Bracken’s book made her a celebrity. She appeared often on television and radio, and in the 1960s and afterward was a spokeswoman for Birds Eye frozen foods.
Ruth Eleanor Bracken was born on Feb. 25, 1918, in Filer, Idaho, and reared in Clayton, Mo. (She adopted the nickname Peg as a young woman.) She earned a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College in 1940 and later worked as a freelance advertising copywriter.
Ms. Bracken’s first marriage, to Mike Smith, ended in divorce, as did her second, to Roderick Lull, to whom she was married when she wrote “The I Hate to Cook Book.” (When Ms. Bracken showed Mr. Lull the manuscript, he responded, “It stinks,” and that was more or less the beginning of the end, their daughter, Johanna, said by telephone yesterday.) Ms. Bracken’s third marriage, to Parker Edwards, ended with his death in 1987.
Besides her daughter, of Long Beach, Calif., Ms. Bracken is survived by her fourth husband, John Ohman, whom she married in 1991; three stepchildren, Ann Fragale of Great Falls, Va.; Jack Ohman of Portland; and Jim Ohman of Farmingville, N.Y.; and 11 grandchildren.
Her other books include “The I Hate to Housekeep Book” (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962); an etiquette book, “I Try to Behave Myself” (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964); and a memoir, “A Window Over the Sink” (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1981).
Today, “The I Hate to Cook Book” is out of print, doubtless a casualty of the Age of Arugula.
And then if that were not enough, the inventor of Rice-a-Roni died as well. Vincent DeDomenico died at 92.
coincidence? I think not.
