Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America

Front Cover
Viking, 2004 - Cooking - 306 pages
In this delightfully surprising history, Laura Shapiro—author of the classic Perfection Salad—recounts the prepackaged dreams that bombarded American kitchens during the fifties. Faced with convincing homemakers that foxhole food could make it in the dining room, the food industry put forth the marketing notion that cooking was hard; opening cans, on the other hand, wasn’t. But women weren’t so easily convinced by the canned and plastic-wrapped concoctions and a battle for both the kitchen and the true definition of homemaker ensued. Beautifully written and full of wry observation, this is a fun, illuminating, and definitely easy-to-digest look back at a crossroads in American cooking.

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Contents

Something from the Oven
41
Dont Check Your Brains at the Kitchen Door
85
Now and Forever
211
Copyright

3 other sections not shown

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About the author (2004)

Laura Shapiro was an award-winning writer at Newsweekfor more than fifteen years. The author of Perfection Salad, she has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Granta, and Gourmet.

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