The Beginning of an Era

The Foundation:

Here we sit. Day one. It's a Monday, but that's kind of irrelevant, because it's my Saturday. Jeremy and I went shopping today to begin an adventure in cooking. One I've been interested in for awhile. You see, I, Don, grew up in Southern Wisconsin during the 70's and 80's. Jeremy grew up west of Madison, WI (Dodgeville) in the 80's and 90's.

Somehow, the two of us reached our respective ages, 27 and 38 without ever really having had to cook. So, we thought we'd begin to learn at the very beginning. Not with Martha Stewart or even Julia Childs as our guide, although Julie & Julia was a bit of inspiration for us. No. We've found a much more important guide to take us down the road toward cooking for ourselves. In the dusty corner of St. Vincent DePaul's Thrift Store (1309 Williamson St., Madison, WI) we found the tome that will be our guide. What is it you ask? It's a cookbook put together by National Mutual Benefit to celebrate it's 75th Anniversary in 1977. The cookbook was so successful that, unlike most "submit-your-own-recipe" cookbooks, my copy is the third printing of the book. A runaway bestseller in the community cookbook world.

From the opening recipe, a fish fry recipe that dates back to at least 1957, which underlines the importance of regional cooking, this cookbook promised to show us our culinary heritage. Do you know anyone that even cares about a fish fry recipe? I didn't think so. Through the recipes in this book we will get to know the Midwest and the recipes that were so good that families praised them, neighbor's begged for them, and they made Mary Gutsch someone you would want to invite to a party.

The Plan:

We'd like to say that we will make a recipe every day. That's not going to happen. I'm a restaurant manager and he's an interior designer. We aren't always going to be home to make dinner let alone "Allen's Hot Dish". So, we promise to make at least three recipes a week from the NMB (It's our bible, and it will be abbreviated.). The revolution will also be televised. We will be including the recipes here, along with pictures and/or our commentary on the dish.

Our long-term hope is to put together our own cookbook. One that catalogues the recipes of our own childhoods and that reflects the region in which we live. I like to bake and Jeremy likes to cook, so I think you'll see some preferences through what we actually prepare, however, we will focus on being more balanced. We must warn you though, the book is heavily slanted toward desserts, and rightfully so. Who would want to miss the recipe for "Fruit Cocktail Cake", which is in the oven as I type this.

We hope to actually receive submissions, and we'll do our best to try them out. I doubt we'll limit the blog to items that we've actually made, but we're very open to any changes in format that might be necessary.

About The Name:

American "Chow Mein" is one of the recipes in the book. It looks interesting enough, but the title really sums it all up. First and foremost this cookbook is American through and through. The fact that someone has created an American version of Chow Mein (chinese for stir-fried noodles) shows at once the fascination that Americans in the late 70's had with chinese food. It was generally not very good chinese food, but it was somehow close enough that the consumer and the chef felt that they were being multi-cultural and indeed cultured by eating it.

Secondly, the title of the dish most appropriately uses the scare quotes which I'm very fond of. See Cake Wrecks for some of the best uses of scare quotes ever! Including the first discussion of them:http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-they-say-customer-service-is-dead.html.