“All Those Leftovers Are Hard on the Family’s Morale”: Rebellion in Peg Bracken’s The I Hate to Cook Book

Abstract

Reflecting on domestic life in the 1950s and early 1960s, one is likely to conjure up an image that is more than a little colored by Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and similar family-oriented shows. One imagines a time when the whole family would gather around the dinner table every evening, savoring Mom’s newest creation— Spam meatloaf or Velveeta Surprise—and engage in a lively discussion about the day’s events. But this era was not as domestically blissful as television depicted It, Peg Bracken reveals a different image of home life in her cookbook, Appendix to The I Hate to Cook Book (1966): “Cooking in real life is much different than in cooking literature: The fact is, the family’s evening meal isn’t always the lightsome, stimulating occasion it is in the picture books. With Dick and jane happily describing their school field trip through the glass factory, and Mother and Father acting motherly and fatherly Families are sometimes cross, as a result of too much togetherness …” (170). Bracken shattered an icon: the family dinner. American society has had an enduring stereotype of the family dinner as a joyful occasion of togetherness, a meal shared by everyone. More than any other meal, the family dinner has been depicted In U.S. culture as crucial to forming and building family ties.² Bracken suggested that was a myth, one that shared little in common with “real” families’ lives.

Bracken 32.