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Marion Cunningham Books & Reviews


MatthewB

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Never heard of her before.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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No. Who is she? Apparently around for a while.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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No. Who is she? Apparently around for a while.

Yup.

She's well-known in the Bay Area.

Edited the "new" edition of the Fannie Farmer cookbook.

I like to give her "Cooking with Children" book as a gift.

Check out her articles in the SF Chronicle. Her recent series is a preview of "Lost Recipes." I've found it interesting.

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I found a bio here.

Not really the kind of cuisine I'm interested in.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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I found a bio here.

Not really the kind of cuisine I'm interested in.

I never found the Fannie Farmer cookbook to be interesting. I've leafed through it several times & never purchased it.

However, the "Lost Recipes" stuff has been interesting.

And the "Cooking w/ Children" has always been received well (& used).

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Um, I have to admit, I'd never heard of her either until this thread. Jinmyo and I are way to similar. :blink:

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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boy, i have to admit i'm shocked. cunningham was james beard's assistant for the last decade or so. she didn't just edit the last fannie farmer, she edited all of them since the mid-80s (i dont have the editions in front of me to check). she was in the first group in the cook's hall of fame, i believe, back when that was going on. and her "baking" and "breakfast" books are classics. i guess she has always staked her territory as being "classic American home cooking," so if you're only interested in restaurant stuff or "ethnic" cuisines, i suppose she could have slid by you.

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I have know idea how I missed this. Most of my cooking would be classified as home cooking. I'm certainly not up to Jin's mastery! But I really didn't know who she was :blush:

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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Americana, Russ. No impact in Canada or Europe. Even James Beard is a nobody outside the U.S.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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  • 5 months later...

Marion Cunningham didn't just edit the Fanny Farmer Cookbook and the Fanny Farmer Baking Book. She wrote those books! Well, she actually revised the old Fanny Farmer Cookbook, but the newest edition is VERY different from the old book and it really has taken on her voice. She's also written The Breakfast Book, The Supper Book and lots of others and was a major contributor to the Bakers Dozen Cookbook.

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Fannie Merrit Farmer's book (originally The Boston Cooking School Book) revolutionized the way cookery books were written. I believe in the late 1800-1900s it was actually translated into several other languages, due to popular demand. If you read the old Joy of Cooking book you'll see how much they borrowed from Fannie Farmer. The modern FF book is a nice resource. I'll admit I use it more for the baking stuff like cookies and cakes, but her gravlax recipe is fantastic, the yeasted waffles are the best tasting waffles I've ever had and I love the conversion charts and information about American things I don't know how to cook because I don't cook them very often, like steaks. Sure, if I cooked them every month I'd know by now how long a steak of a certain thickness takes to reach med-rare, but since I do it once a year it's nice to have it right there in a cookbook. Read what Marion writes about her here.

regards,

trillium

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Lost Recipes is a pretty fascinating book.

In what will probably be her last book, Cunningham is trying to get people back into the kitchen, cooking from scratch, & eating together.

Whether or not she succeeds is another question.

But at least she's *doing* something, something more than deriding Rick Bayless.

Edited by MatthewB (log)
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  • 2 years later...

I've just gotten a secondhand copy of Marion Cunningham's Good Eating, which is a combilation of her two books, The Breakfast Book and The Supper Book. I've borrowed the breakfast one from the library a few times in the past and enjoyed it -- her Knothole Eggs are well-loved in my household and by my cooking class students.

This summer I'll be using her Cooking with Children: 15 Lessons for children Ages 7 & up who really want to learn to cook in my children's cooking classes. This will be the second of three summer classes using the book as the text. I've taught kids' cooking classes for years, but am currently using her book because I'm impressed with Cunningham's excellent ability to give simple directions to beginners.

What I like most about her books isn't really even her recipes. They are fine, by and large, although I often like "mine" better. It is her tone that I love, warm and welcoming, beckoning me into the kitchen to cook something yummy and satisfying, assuring me I can do it very well if I'll only try. I appreciate the personal way in which she shares her feelings about a particular dish, especially how she describes the sensations preparing and eating it gives her. For example:

"Sometimes eating supper alone feels private, quiet, and blessedly liberating. You may eat anything you want; you needn't be conventional. I like a baked potato with olive oil and coarse salt and pepper followed by vanilla ice cream, which proves to me that money doesn't buy a good meal. One night not long ago I had freshly baked cookies and milk, and found that uplifting.

If my spirit is less than cheerful, it helps me to fix something restorative when eating alone. Split Pea Soup is easy to make -- it takes only a few minutes to get started and is ready in 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Kitchen preparations, the busyness of chopping, stirring, and watching a bubbling pot, can help dispel any gloom, at least for me.

I like to fix supper on a try and carry it back to the desk in my bedroom. I have a fireplace there and I can sit and eat while listening to music or watching the news on TV. Eating in bed will always seem like the height of luxury to me, but spilling one's soup on the bed destroys the mood, so only food that doesn't slosh is recommended."

--Marion Cunningham, The Supper Book

Unpretentious, lovable, like an older neighbor or friend who stands to the side, sharing stories and offering a bit of guidance with the knife now and then while one gets familiar with how to pare and dice the carrots for the soup.

~ Lori in PA

My blog: http://inmykitcheninmylife.blogspot.com/

My egullet blog: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=89647&hl=

"Cooking is not a chore, it is a joy."

- Julia Child

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For example:"Sometimes eating supper alone feels private, quiet, and blessedly liberating.  You may eat anything you want; you needn't be conventional.  I like a baked potato with olive oil and coarse salt and pepper followed by vanilla ice cream, which proves to me that money doesn't buy a good meal.  One night not long ago I had freshly baked cookies and milk, and found that uplifting.

If my spirit is less than cheerful, it helps me to fix something restorative when eating alone.  Split Pea Soup is easy to make -- it takes only a few minutes to get started and is ready in 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Kitchen preparations, the busyness of chopping, stirring, and watching a bubbling pot, can help dispel any gloom, at least for me.

I like to fix supper on a try and carry it back to the desk in my bedroom.  I have a fireplace there and I can sit and eat while listening to music or watching the news on TV.  Eating in bed will always seem like the height of luxury to me, but spilling one's soup on the bed destroys the mood, so only food that doesn't slosh is recommended."

--Marion Cunningham, The Supper Book

I'm not complaining, mind you, but that is certainly remniscient of Fisher's piece on eating alone in An Alphabet for Gourmets. She makes consomme double with an egg, I believe, and savors it slowly on a tray in her room. There might even have been a fireplace!

Kind of explains why Cunningham brought Fisher to mind as mentioned upthread.

My fantasy? Easy -- the Simpsons versus the Flanders on Hell's Kitchen.

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I'm not complaining, mind you, but that is certainly remniscient of Fisher's piece on eating alone in An Alphabet for Gourmets.  She makes consomme double with an egg, I believe, and savors it slowly on a tray in her room.  There might even have been a fireplace!

Kind of explains why Cunningham brought Fisher to mind as mentioned upthread.

That's an interesting observation.

While Marion and MFK didn't (always) write about the same subjects, and had diffirent styles, they do seem to have shared a philosophy.

SB (at least about food) :biggrin:

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