Saturday in 1961: The Joys of the I Hate to Cook Book

It's been cloudy, windy, uninviting, but at times sunny, today.

Last week I picked the I Hate to Cook Book, published in the US in the early 1960s, out of our pantry bookshelf. It was a present from aunt L. when we lived in Canada, and I already enjoyed it and read it repeatedly then. Satirically written, with easy recipes and a few shockingly ready-made ingredients, it holds up quite well nowadays but also works well as an inverted chronicle of the time it was published — it pricks the bubble of stereotypical mid-20th-century female domesticity.

Heading to the supermarket instead of a street market or a little grocery shop, I picked up two TV dinners as well as ingredients for a 'Cheese and Wine Bake' of cheese and other ingredients on toast, 'Oven Carrots' that are julienned and baked with green onion and butter and seasoning, and an 'Orange and Carrot Salad' of jello with grated carrots.

We postponed the TV dinners to tomorrow, but the cheese and wine bake, and the oven carrots, were well received. We ate them for lunch with Riesling wine and a salad of lettuce, mustardy leaves, violet pansies and other greens that I travelled forward in time for (as surely organic food stores were a rarity or nonentity in 1961).

Mama declined with thanks to eat any of the orange and carrot salad. But a few of us did try it and found it a little underwhelming (it does just taste like jello that happens to have carrot in it for some reason), if anything — not thrillingly terrible.

In terms of hairstyle and clothes, I didn't try exciting experiments in the end. A preparatory attempt at a high ponytail and headband hairstyle, which I performed yesterday evening while uncharacteristically giggling like a schoolgirl instead of an adult woman, ended up looking like a dystopian cross between a punk manqué and a nun who had eccentrically vowed never to pick up a hairbrush again.

In the afternoon I went to the library. Fewer than 15 minutes after I settled in with a book — Aus Menschen werden Leute, aus Mädchen werden Bräute, published by the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag — the library closed, so I wasn't able to find out much. The book was just detailing the destroyed state of housing and infrastructure in the immediate postwar years. Women were caring for elderly dependents and children while their husbands were kept in prisoner-of-war camps (or dead). In cities, there were especially great challenges: 20% of housing was destroyed, and the gas and water systems often weren't working. The author argues that this role of women wasn't just inspiring woman-power, but also a grim coercion of circumstance.

The descriptions of German cities then, reminded me of western Ukraine nowadays, aside of course from the context that Ukraine isn't a recently fascist state that invaded other countries. Hopefully Ukrainian cities* will be rebuilt sooner; I know that for example the German government has promised to send developmental aid.

*In areas from which the Russian military has withdrawn; of course I remember reading that parts of Luhansk and Donetsk are being actively bombed and repair is temporarily impossible.

Lastly I washed dishes by hand. Aside from that, a little sock-darning, a little embroidery, a load of laundry, and the cooking, and watering my plants, housewifely duties were greatly neglected. Next week I'm hoping to go to a street market again, maybe also the Turkish grocery store, and dive into more Mediterranean recipes from Elizabeth David's cookbook. And maybe I'll dust a few shelves and read Catch-22, The Art of French Cooking, or another book first published in the 60s.

Saturday in 1960: Flowers, Strawberries, Books and Housework

Yesterday afternoon I picked up the pair of trousers that had been mended by the tailor, and looking at the patches later I was delighted by how much better her fix was than mine would have been. She reported with discontent that the wool skirt lining had not been replaced yet; she was preparing commissioned clothing and this was time-intensive. She was sewing at her oft-gouged, blond wooden table with a hanging lamp overhead, listening to a podcast on her smartphone, stacks of clothing in the open cupboards to the right.

Today was equally analogue. Despite the general dearth of rainwater, it's been interestingly stormy lately: strong alternations of sunshine and rain, heavy grey clouds and gaps, lovely fragrances of roses and other blossoms (amongst them the first elderflowers), a single bolt of lightning and roll of thunder yesterday afternoon. But despite the cloud cover I was out of doors a lot.

After going to the bank, I went to the post office to buy stamps and two cartons — the lady at the desk seemed pleased that I was buying them in analogue fashion instead of from the Automated Teller Machine-like machines in the lobby. Then I walked to the library and had a confabulation with one of the staff about where to begin when reading about daily life in the 1960s. She found a fashion retrospective, a German book about gender roles in the 1950s and 1960s, and a psychological work about the way in which the Nazi era was worked through in the 1960s.

The fashion book was very illuminating. (The book about gender roles I want to revisit with a fresh mind.) But there are different paths I could go down when I dress next Saturday for 1961, and I'm not sure whether to choose, as a distant inspiration, teen-style fashion like Jean Seberg's in À bout de souffle with Jean-Paul Belmondo, diva flair like Anita Ekberg's of La dolce vita by Federico Fellini, or minimal elegance like Audrey Hepburn's in Breakfast at Tiffanys. If it's the latter, I might try purchasing and wearing gloves, my prediction being that they will be a pain in the neck.

Afterward I bought a bottle of English dry gin and of sparkling water at a drinks supermarket, then a pot of mint, a terra cotta pot, and potting soil at a florist's.

Then I walked off again to the street market, which was as busy as ever. There I bought strawberries, cucumbers, walnuts, and lemons. Early peaches and cherries were already for sale; punnets of strawberries produced in Germany; lettuces frisée and flat; watermelons; and a ton of apricots — alongside the usual bell peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, etc. I took time, too, to gaze at other things, like börek (filled Turkish savoury pastry), sesame breads, candy, olives, and rolls of fabric.

On the way back from the market, I bought flowers from another florist: white and pink chrysanthemums, pink peonies, one violet anemone.

Finally I went to a train station to ask at the Ukrainian refugee welcome centre what they needed, then popped into a grocery store and returned with their recommendations. There were around three ladies there, sitting at the tables or tentatively looking to see what they'd like to eat or speaking with the volunteers — one of them invited me to go ahead of her to speak to the volunteers behind long trestle(?) tables with plastic bins of food and drinks. And there were three volunteers.

At home, I read Frieda Weekley's introduction to D.H. Lawrence's first version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. It was first published posthumously in 1944 and then reprinted by Penguin in the 1970s. The pertinence to the historical experiment is that, in 1960, the obscenity trial that was investigating whether to allow an unexpurgated edition to be printed in the United Kingdom, ended in a landmark decision to permit publication.

Weekley's main argument appeared to be that she and her husband led far more courageous, clever and worthwhile lives than 90% of humanity (and she kind of damned her husband with faint praise by saying that it would 'be simplifying things too much to call him a socialist or a Fascist'). I did want to rinse my brain after she remarked how happy she was that D.H. Lawrence was born a "commoner", with his family's healthy miner vigour, as if she were the Queen of England, the monarch of all she surveyed. It was surprising that the introduction did not entirely feel unreadable.

I only made it through a few pages of the actual story of The First Lady Chatterley's Lover before deciding that pretty much everyone was a heinous and psychologically inconsistent character.

[In fairness, the British curator and television presenter Lucy Worsley makes the novel sound a lot better in the mini-series A Very British Romance.]

Afterward I showed the healthy impulses of the archetypal female caretaker, crossing the boundaries of social class to fulfill the needs to the nation did housework: wiping down the dishwasher and the laundry machine, mopping the kitchen floor, dusting in the hallway, and washing a large blanket in the laundry. Fortunately both machines are no longer anachronistic. A sock that I've been darning over multiple weeks has three holes in it, two of them darned and one of them un-darned, and I am beginning to doubt my life choices. But then I started embroidering a do-it-yourself tablecloth with a helpfully marked pattern from a crafting set we bought maybe even two decades ago; the petals of one flower are done, and the centre of another flower is almost done.

For light entertainment, I read two or three fashion magazine pages about menopause and old age for women — a stressful subject the way it was laid out — plus medical advice that looked scientifically adventurous to my layperson's eyes. (Eating two teaspoons of flaxseed per day to reduce the risk of breast cancer ... not sure how much to believe that one.) It still amazes me that a fashion magazine in the 2020s does not seem to accept the fact that men who are interested in [stereotypical] women's fashion exist, and that transgender or gender non-binary people who are interested in women's fashion exist. It's all geared toward people who identify as women, and as I turn the pages I always picture the editorial board as a group of lithe diplodocuses (or some other species of dinosaur) in stilettos.

The last task was to cheer up after last week at work, which did have its ups, however. Mama and I met in the kitchen to eat a bowl of ice cream, and my two youngest brothers and I later had a gin and soda each, with strawberries.

Five Years After

It's the 5th anniversary of the death of my father today, although if I hadn't been reminded of it I likely wouldn't have remembered myself.

Almost every day of the year the loss of him has been weighing on me, and I'm kind of wondering where my trust and belief in life after death and happy resting places have gone. — I think not entirely disappeared, but temporarily crowded out by the feeling that life is a bit worse every day because he is not there.

On the other hand, in the past few days I've been thinking more of the joy I've found talking with him and not holding back my thoughts or feelings, the pride I took in e.g. dropping slang at home until he used the phrase 'Too Much Information' despite his generally proper diction, the fun of trying to wiggle more information out of him about things when he was usually quite reticent, and in general how nice it is to have had a father whom one can miss so badly.

Saturday in 1959: Library Adventures and the Mediterranean

It must be somewhat obvious that I've not been performing my weekly Saturday historical experiments that enthusiastically for a while. For one thing, I've unexpectedly grown to find the 1950s a little bit repugnant. For example, with regard to gender roles: it didn't so much reflect the old-fashioned way of the previous decades so much, I'm tending to agree with the benefit of having 'lived' through these previous decades, as forge a further artificial distinction that seems to still be messing things up today. The Cold War in general, also not great; McCarthyism, not great; the looming presence of atomic war, alongside a plethora of happy little accidents with nuclear warheads etc. (e.g., admittedly in the 1960s, the Palomares Incident) that I think haven't sufficiently been highlighted in history books and that make me facepalm now, also not great.

For another, it still feels difficult to research the UK in the 1950s due to online copyright restrictions on contemporary newspapers and cookbooks, although I recently went to the trouble to purchase a Berlin public library card in order to help. (One cookbook by wartime British personality Marguerite Patten is listed online as being in the stacks of the American-sponsored building of the Gedenkbibliothek, the cookbook's presence apparently being a legacy of the British Council's former Berlin-based library. But it appears to be missing, a mystery that greatly perplexed the librarian with whom I spoke. She gave me an email address with follow-up instructions, which I'd like to take care of soon.)

Thirdly, when there's a contemporary war going on, the appetite for make-believe is a little weaker. I just read in the local news yesterday that over 200,000 Ukrainian refugees are believed to have arrived in Berlin.

That said, today I did 'do' 1959 reasonably well. Inspired by a photograph of the computer scientist Grace Hopper that is part of the lesson material for an Open University introduction to an online computer science course, I put on a flared skirt and a three-quarter sleeved button-up shirt that I even ironed, wore my hair pinned up as usual, and briefly stalked around on the pump shoes that I'd bought 'in the 1920s.' Quoting from the Grimm version of "Cinderella," my mother remarked, 'Rucke di guck, Blut ist im Schuck' when she spotted them. 

Then I went to a market hall in Kreuzberg, Elizabeth David's period cookbook A Book of Mediterranean Food in hand, buying Mediterranean vegetables as well as a bottle of white wine. (If you're wondering, the temptation to wear period costume when shopping for Saturdays is not very strong; this morning I went shopping in jeans and running shoes.) It wasn't that busy indoors, and I felt smug for going before noon. Then I went to an organic grocery store and bought lemons, sheep's cheese, a watermelon, and seltzer water.

Lunch was a salad of fennel, radicchio, cherry tomatoes, and cucumber that was improvised; and the white wine. In addition I made David's recipes for "Carottes au blanc," "Salad of sweet peppers," and "Courgettes aux tomates." Serving the sheep's cheese with the meal made it less overwhelmingly vegetable-y, and trickling olive oil around the sheep's cheese and topping it with freshly ground black pepper and pieces of basil made it look festive.

Later I went to a local tailor's shop, where the doyenne was cleaning the wooden plank floor the old-fashioned way, scrubbing with a rag by hand. A trouser had a hole, a summer wool skirt's lining was becoming tattered; she promised to try to repair both by Friday evening.

Going to a secondhand bookstore in search of 1950s sewing or crafts manuals, or British cookbooks from the 1950s, was less successful. In the end I bought a pocket Turkish dictionary.

Back at home, I attempted to repair a winter sock. It was badly worn through at the heel and sole, and rather than waste good leather by attempting to make it over into a hapless slipper, I resolved to sew parts of an even worse-looking sock over the holes. The outcome, of course, was a Frankenstein's monster of a sock. I will only test it next winter, so the suspense has plenty of time to build.

Another housewifely task was cleaning up my desk a bit. I've amassed old grocery store receipts in a paper bag, waiting for the winter too. It will presumably be an adventurous winter, in the possible absence of traditional sources of heating for 'geopolitical reasons'; but let it not be said that I don't have enough fuel for 1 to 2 minutes of zero-degree weather.

Besides I played music. Chopin mazurkas, excerpts of Chopin's ballades, another counterpoint piece from Bach's Art of Fugue, ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin (since these were 're-discovered' in the 1970s, playing these was doubtless inauthentic), a Scarlatti sonata or two, the beginning of the Bach-Busoni chaconne, a "Seguidilla" by Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados's "Orientale," and so on and so forth.

Let's see what the 1960s will offer!

A Headache Holiday, of Sorts

Yesterday I had a migraine headache after spending the morning volunteering in a clothing donation sorting hall. I spent most of the afternoon crouched over the desk still doing work, massaging my forehead with my fingertips, and eating something despite the nausea.

This morning I awoke earlier than usual, feeling topsy-turvy in the middle too, and decided to take a whole sick day from work.

So on the whole I've been very carefully doing only undemanding things that don't make me feel ill, and it's been sort of nice. Lots of reading, staring at my plants and making sure they are watered; a long nap that might not be a miracle cure but still ...; hanging out with one of my brothers a little bit; watching the British archaeological TV series, eating ice cream; and playing a bit of Scott Joplin, and German dances from Beethoven, on the piano.

In the morning I even read half or so of a Chekhov short story, which has generally felt too grown-up and brooding for my mood. I've also managed to read more of a journalist's account of the 2011 uprising in Syria, No Turning Back. I'd usually read it in smaller rations because I've always felt that reading sad books when I already feel sad is not what I need except as a character-building thing. But in the context of Ukraine and the Palestinian Territories it made me reflect on how quickly the lives of civilians can be devalued in the eyes of the outside world if it's felt that 'war is always going on in those places.' For example I think even Ukraine might be an example: if I understand correctly, much concern and attention have been expended on Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv and its surrounding villages, Lviv and Odesa — when other areas in Luhansk and Donetsk, maybe even Crimea, which have seen conflict since 2014 if I remember correctly, have surely suffered too in the past months.

It has been too dry this spring, and even today the mixture of sun and dark thunderclouds didn't bring forth much rain. But the oak leaves outdoors are growing greenly, my new nasturtium seedling indoors seems to be rising in height an inch per day, and whenever I have gone out it's been lovely to see the columbines and early roses and many, many other flowers at the roadsides and in the plant beds.