Post #56 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
This is the summer of somewhat unusual reviews on our Women’s Memoirs website. We have some fascinating books that we’ll be reviewing in the coming months that are well within the tradition of memoir. But I hope you’ll let me venture off a bit to share with you Robin Burnside’s new cookbook, The Homesteader’s Kitchen: Recipes from Farm to Table.
Summer brings us the riches of fresh fruits and vegetables at our grocery stores. Some of us have neighbors who grow more than they can eat and offer to share. I’m lucky to have several such neighbors. Just last week, my next door neighbor invited me to see her Depression garden. When I looked a bit puzzled, she said that when she read my memoir, Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story, she learned about the many families who made it through The Depression because they kept a small garden that helped feed them. This inspired her to plant her own. She gave me a handful of peas and a couple of cucumbers just off the vine. Today, my lunch was grilled corn on the cob, picked a few minutes earlier at another neighbor’s garden. And some of us have our own vegetable patches. I’m beginning to harvest the first of my heirloom tomatoes from plants purchased from a friend who grows hundreds from seed and sells them to benefit the local garden club.
Many of Robin Burnside’s recipes begin with a brief memoir vignette. For example, her Citrus Cooler description includes: “When we have a gathering on our mountain, we collect fruit from all the neighborhood citrus trees and making a wonderfully refreshing cooler…” Since I’m a fellow Californian, my interest was immediately sparked and I started thinking how I could incorporate her recipe into a regular summer treat in my home.
Oatmeal is on our regular rotation so I normally wouldn’t have given a recipe for it a second glance. But Burnside’s brief vignette begins: “When I first began to cook breakfast at Esalen, a long-time supervisor on the maintenance crew, who ate a bowl of oatmeal every day, came into the kitchen one morning and told me that the oatmeal was perfect.” She then goes on to describe how to replicate this perfection in our own kitchens. She even provides a suggestion for a savory topping (imagine butter, tamari, nutritional yeast and pumpkin seeds).
Burnside’s approach is on the fresh and healthy side. Don’t be surprised when she replaces sugar with agave syrup and white flour with whole wheat. Since I’m a vegetarian, I appreciated that one chapter is devoted to entrees I can eat. But there’s much here to tempt all palates including unique Beverages; Morning Meals; Soups, Sauces (I can hardly wait to try her Mint and Raisin Sauce using fresh mint from my garden), and Gravies; Salads and Salad Dressings; Fish, Poultry, and Meat Entrees; Embellishments; Breads; and Desserts.
Between the recipes and the luscious photographs, my mouth was watering.
The book is light on memoir vignettes but can’t be faulted since that wasn’t the intent. However, as you turn the pages I hope you’ll be inspired to write some of your treasured family recipes and complement them with your personal life stories. They will become a valued keepsake by your children and friends.
