Theophano - Eat my words : reading womens lives through the cookbooks they wrote

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For my family

Jeff, Damien, Julia, and Omi

and

in loving memory of

Colin Gilmore, Ralph Ginsberg,

and David M. Smith

I savor each simple gesture in this kitchen, filling the tea kettle, lighting the stove, click of the cup in the saucer. Theyve all been here, are here, the family of women, nursing one another with teasde canela, hierbabuena, gordolobo. Straight and erect in their good health or bent with age and arthritis, sacramental acts for another woman, or a husband, father, or child, steeping an old cure that began underground. It is strange to be so many women, as Adrienne Rich says.

Pat Mora, House of Houses (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997)

During the years I have worked on this project the support, encouragement, and general goodwill of many friends and strangers have exhilarated me.

I owe a debt to Michael Ryan and Daniel Traister of the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, for inviting me to curate the Esther B. Aresty Collection of Rare Books on the Culinary Arts. Nancy Shawcross, Lynne Farrington, and John Pollack of the Annenberg Library graciously guided me through mounting my first exhibition. They and Margaret Kruesi have continued to be an ever-present source of helpfulness, intelligence, and bibliographical advice. Jerry Drew, Jennifer Lindner, Dana Plansky, Rebecca Smith, and Karoline Wallace provided much appreciated research support and the benefit of their own perspectives on the material. Patricia Smith, then of the University of Pennsylvania Press, encouraged me to write this book.

I wish to thank Sherrie Inness for her support and editorial advice as I wrote chapter 7, a version of which first appeared in her edited volume, Kitchen Culture in America, published by University of Pennsylvania Press. I thank the Press for allowing me to reprint it here. The excerpt from House of Houses is reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.

I took several leaves from the College of General Studies at Penn to complete the research and writing. I am deeply grateful to Richard Hendrix, director, and to my colleagues for their patience during my absences. In particular, I would like to thank Susan Gill, Denise Miller, and Kristine Rabberman who tended to student affairs while I was away.

A research grant from the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation enabled me to travel to England to the archives in Lincoln and London. Staff at the Lincolnshire Archives, Deborah Thornton especially, and the Public Records Offices in London answered a myriad of questions and helped to guide my searches.

Librarians and archivists at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe helped me locate documents. Stephen Tabor at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, was especially helpful, as was Ian Argall of the Huntingdonshire Family History Society, England.