As you can see I love the Author as well as the lady (or gentleman) who owned the book.
"HERB IN THE KITCHEN"
by Irma Goodrich Mazza
This book I dedicate to the two persons without whom it could not have been written: my Mother, who gave me a life to live; and my husband, who has helped me to learn how to live it.
How This Book Came To Be Written
Once there was a girl who had lived all the years of her life in a real American home, with its many attendant blessings. She took food and it's taste for granted, thinking it a subject of little scope which she would master someday, when she had use of the knowledge.
Then she married. Her husband was a Latin. At mealtimes he upset her terribly with his notions about what to eat.
He ate lettuce by the bowlful, with French dressing. He refused boiled vegetables "seasoned" with butter, salt and pepper, saying they were flat. He adored onions and averred that garlic was a part of the equipment of all fine cooks.
He clamored for the flavor of herbs in his food, and urged his wife to grow them herself, though the family estate was no more than a narrow box outside the kitchen window. He brought home a gallon of olive oil, when the marriage certificate was only a few days old. When his lavishness was questioned he expressed an opinion that olive oil was the lubricant of the Gods.
When she gave him creamed macaroni they had their first quarrel, and he said that presenting him with such a dish was practically equivalent to trying to poison him.
What was a girl to do? Of course it was hard on her having her complacent notions about food knocked in the head by a husband who yearned after Chicken Hunter Style and Spaghetti alla Marinaria, but she wasn't too old or too stubborn to learn.
She turned over a new leaf. But her husband also made concessions. While she admitted the utter loveliness of onions, garlic, olive oil and herb seasonings he conceded that one does not have to eat elaborately to eat well. He even granted that butter has a place in cookery, and that all food should not always be highly seasoned.
Really, the new leaf was theirs, not just hers.
She experimented with food, with flavor, and with simplicity, strong in the belief that the wages of rich eating is indigestion. To make her cooking interesting yet keep it healthful was her aim
Fourteen years of feeding husband and friends, as well as self, have brought no complaints or damage suits; no ruined dispositions, which doctors say are the signs of internal strife.
Somewhere along in those years she began to notice the strange behavior of friends. While no one actually fainted on the doorstep and waited to be carried in, people did drop around suspiciously near eating hours. Invited guests never suggested coming after dinner, but always asked without hesitancy, "What time do you eat?"
Every dinner turned out to be a cooking school, with the feminine contingent in the kitchen, and the male guests leaning in through the door. They watched. They asked questions, just as she had done fourteen years before.
"How do you use garlic? Isn't it heavy on the breath? What are the best ways of using olive oil? Won't salad oil do just well? What on earth are those funny green and dried leaves you are always throwing into food?" These and like queries they flung at her continuously.
Finally she decided that since she apparently would have to go on and on answering those questions for the rest of her life she might as well do something sensible about it.
So she went to work at those questions. She has answered them all. In short, she has taken that new leaf she and her husband turned over, added all the other leaves into which it developed, and bound them into this book.
We hope it answers all your questions, even those you have never voiced. We hope it helps you to bring the products of an herb garden into your kitchen, mix them with your foods, and learn the variety and romance of simple savor.
* CHAPTER l *
A Parade of Herbs
No comments:
Post a Comment