Hometown Appetites: The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled How America Ate
Author: Kelly Alexander
The rollicking biography of Clementine Paddleford: "a go- anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of stories. . . . matched as a regional-food pioneer only by James Beard." (R. W. Apple , Jr., The New York Times)
In Hometown Appetites, an award-winning food writer and a leading university archivist come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of. Clementine Paddleford was a Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle America's culinary habits. Her weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s and she earned a salary of $250,000. Yet twenty years after "America's bestknown food editor" passed away, she had been forgotten— until now.
At a time when few women worked outside the home, Paddleford flew her own Piper Cub to meet her readers and find out what was for dinner. Before Paddleford, newspaper food sections were dull primers on home economy. But she changed all of that, composing her own brand of sassy, unerringly authoritative prose designed to celebrate regional home cooking. Her magnum opus, a book called How America Eats, published in 1960, reveals an appetite for life that was insatiable. This book restores Paddleford's name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside those of James Beard and Julia Child. It's a five-star read in the spirit of national bestsellers such as Heat and The United States of Arugula.
The Washington Post - Belle Elving
In her prime, Paddleford had 12 million readers. When she died in 1967, her obituary ran in all of the country's major newspapers. Her reputation has faded ever since, eclipsed now by legions of more sophisticated food writers and celebrity chefs. This biography, by Kelly Alexander, a food writer and editor at Saveur magazine, and Cynthia Harris, an archivist at Kansas State University, is an energetic attempt to rescue Paddleford from obscurity. The story they have unearthed proves as illuminating of the era as it does of the woman herself. It also whets the appetite to go back and read the real thing.
Publishers Weekly
At long last, an enthusiastic, significant rehabilitation of Paddleford's career as food writer from 1936 to 1966 at the New York Herald Tribune. Alexander, whose article on Paddleford for Saveur won the James Beard Journalism Award in 2002, and Harris, the archivist at Kansas State Univ., to which native Paddleford left her papers, happily resurrect Paddleford's work. An indefatigable journalist, Paddleford broke with the staid home-economics primers of the era. With humble Midwest beginnings and a degree in industrial journalism, Paddleford set out for New York City to make a name for herself, and found that her energy and sheer prodigiousness opened doors at popular publications like Farm & Fireside, Christian Herald and This Week, the Tribune 's Sunday magazine. Influenced by the peripatetic culinary adventures of salesman Duncan Hines, Paddleford launched, in 1948, a series of columns in This Week called "How America Eats," spotlighting regional cooks and their down-home specialties. With her trademark florid prose and historic touches, Paddleford became widely known, and her subsequent book, How America Eats(1960), became a bestseller. The authors make an upbeat case for reconsidering Paddleford's achievement in this enjoyable read, and include a slew of her comfort recipes. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Kirkus Reviews
Biography of the Kansas-born journalist who built an ahead-of-the curve career traveling the world to report on food and the people who cooked it. Before Clementine Paddleford (1898-1967), food writing lacked the joy, whimsy and sophistication we now associate with it, contend the authors. Former Saveur editor Alexander and Kansas State University archivist Harris, an authority on the school's Paddleford collection, believe that their subject's primary goal was to address American home cooks' concerns while enlivening the social history of the foods she tasted. To this end, she ventured onto a submarine and into Joan Crawford's apartment, as well as the kitchens of countless homemakers known to her through written correspondence. The authors emulate Paddleford's endeavor to connect cooking to the lives, traditions and personalities of real people. The biography doubles as a cookbook; it's peppered with recipes tested for publication just as they were in Paddleford's day, each tied to a moment in her career the same way she connected each recipe to a story. Alexander and Harris paint an affectionate portrait of the eccentric writer, an ebullient yet imposing individualist and charismatic adventurer. Undergoing a throat-cancer-induced tracheotomy at age 33, Paddleford covered the button she pressed to speak with a signature velvet choker necklace and decided to assume that her jarring voice was memorable rather than off-putting. In an era when far fewer women went to college or aspired to professional careers, the ingredients in her recipe for success were tireless enthusiasm, self-confidence, independence and ambition. She was completely herself with no apologies, rather than muffling herindividuality to become more marketable. The authors cite Julia Child and Rachael Ray as Paddleford's heirs. Rich, flavorful and spirited, like its subject and the cuisines she chronicled. Agent: Michael Psaltis/Regal Literary
What People Are Saying
Barbara Kafka
Finally a wonderful book about the missing great presence in American food, Clementine Paddlefor, the flaky and adventurous original. (Barbara Kafka, author of Vegetable Love and Soup, A Way of Life)
Michael Ruhlman
Alexander and Harris's excellent biography tells the story foremost of a journalist, a writer who travelled tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of first hand accounts of the way we live. Clementine Paddleford was among the first American writers to sense that what and how we ate day to day, whether in Hawaii, Louisiana or Kansas, or New York, provided a clear view of what America was as a nation. Hometown Appetites is fascinating, long overdue account of a seminal figure in America's food revolution. (Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking)
Adam Platt
If the U.S.A. can be said to have a national palate, then it was Ms. Clementine Paddleford, from Manhattan, Kansas, who invented it. This colorful, lively, intricately researched biography brings this forgotten hero of the great American food revolution, vividly to life. (Adam Platt, food and restaurant columnist, New York magazine)
Steven Shaw
The next best thing to a dinner invitation from Clementine Paddleford herself, Hometown Appetites is a riveting three-dimensional portrait of this iconic American food personality. (Steven Shaw, author of Turning the Tables and Asian Dining Rules)
Regina Shrambling
Reading Clementine Paddleford as a kid taught me the value of a bizarre byline. Now she's been rediscovered for a new generation as a character worthy of that singular name.
Table of Contents:
Foreword: Why Clem Matters Colman Andrews Andrews, Colman
Prologue: The Getting-Aroundest Person
Ch. 1 Just Watch My Footprints 1
Ch. 2 My Own Boss Absolutely 37
Ch. 3 Rhapsody on a Kitchen Sink 65
Ch. 4 It's Always Interesting 97
Ch. 5 All the Sights and Smells of the Country 149
Ch. 6 What Men Eat on Submarines 209
Epilogue: A Bundle of Longing Kelly Alexander Alexander, Kelly 259
Our Story and Acknowledgments Kelly Alexander Alexander, Kelly Cynthia Harris Harris, Cynthia 273
A Note on the Recipes Andrea Reusing Reusing, Andrea 287
Notes 297
Index 307
Book review: Ski House Cookbook or Appetite for Life
Tailgating Cookbook: Recipes for the Big Game
Author: Bob Sloan
The only thing that compares with America's obsession with sports is our passion for eating. No wonder tailgating is a national pastime. Whether it's football, baseball, NASCAR, or the kid's soccer game one thing is certain: have parking lot, will cook. Hungry spectators need look no further than The Tailgating Cookbook for sizzling recipes guaranteed to please. Packed with burgers and brats, chili and stew, tasty kabobs, ideal side dishes, desserts, and drinks to go with them, anyone can turn their simple hot-dog-and-beer party into a gastronomical glutton-fest of tasty delights. With expert tips on equipment, prep-ahead, timing, food storage, tailgating etiquette (try not to play Ozzy's Crazy Train too loud), and scoring the perfect spot to hunker down, this part cookbook/part handbook will get the party started, whether it's just two guys chomping hoagies or a multigenerational group of fans with a setup worthy of a professional kitchen. Two, Four, Six, Eight, We Love to Tailgate!
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