Diane Tye - Baking as Biography: A Life Story in Recipes

BAKING AS BIOGRAPHY

A Life Story in Recipes

DIANE TYE

McGill-Queens University Press 2010

ISBN 978-0-7735-3724d-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-7735-3725-5 (paper)

Legal deposit third quarter 2010
Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been provided by Memorial University of Newfoundland.

McGill-Queens University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Tye, Diane, 1957
Baking as biography : a life story in recipes / Diane Tye.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7735-3724-8 (bound). ISBN 978-0-7735-3725-5 (pbk.)

1. Tye, Laurene, 19311989. 2. Spouses of clergyBiography. 3. Christian womenBiography. 4. Middle class womenCanada Biography. 8. Spouses of clergySocial life and customs. 6. Christian womenSocial life and customs. 7. Middle class womenCanadaSocial life and customs. 8. BakingFolklore. 9. Food habitsFolklore. I. Title.

TX649.T94T94 2010 641.5092 C2010-902073-1

This book was designed and typeset by studio oneonone in Sabon 10/13

For my parents,
Laurene and Henry Tye

FEEDING OUR FAMILY WELL

CHURCH LUNCHES AND LADIES TEAS

BAKING FOR A THIRD PLACE

TASTING THE PAST

Laurene, Diane, and Cathy, 1966 Frontispiece

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

As I neared the end of writing this book, my son Callum marvelled that such a slim volume could take me so long to finish. I share his incredulity. His comment brought to mind the proverb that it takes a whole village to raise a child. How many people per page, I have to ask, did it take to produce this book?

I have been supported by many good friends during my several years of work on this project. In particular, Jane Burns, Linda Cullum, Pauline Greenhill, Ann Marie Powers, and Mary Ellen Wright offered advice when asked and encouragement when needed. I owe a special thanks to Barbara Rieti, who by now must want never to hear another word about recipes or baking.

Students and colleagues in the Department of Folklore at Memorial University have been more than helpful. Faculty and staff members Bev Diamond, Holly Everett, Jillian Gould, Diane Goldstein, Philip Hiscock, Martin Lovelace, Jerry Pocius, Paul Smith, Cory Thorne, Cindy Turpin, Sharon Cochrane, Pauline Cox, Patricia Fulton, Barb Reddy, and Eileen Collins provided valuable suggestions and willingly shared their personal experiences when I once again steered casual conversation to the subject of food.

I presented parts of this work at meetings of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada, the American Folklore Society, the American Anthropological Association, and the First International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. On each occasion I benefited from the comments of audience members and was bolstered by their enthusiasm.

McGill-Queens University Press staff, especially Jonathan Crago, provided wonderful guidance through all stages of the process. I particularly appreciate the thoughtful assessments of the three anonymous readers and the careful editing of Anne Marie Todkill, which helped make this a better book. Publication would not have been possible without the financial assistance of the Aid to Scholarly Publishing Program and Memorial Universitys publication subvention program.

Extended family members and friends kindly consented to be interviewed: Fred Falconer, Geraldine Falconer, Helen Farrow, Annie Goodyear, Anne Green, Sadie Latimer, Peg Miller, and Helen Ward. Their memories are integral to this work.

Families often help shoulder the burden of a writing project. My family not only supported me in the many usual ways, but also allowed me to make their lives my text. Through the preparation of this book I have developed a fuller appreciation of my mothers life and work as well as the many ways in which my father continues to nurture each family member. The trust and unconditional acceptance that he, along with my brother Mark and sister Cathy, showed at every stage of this project is humbling.

Peter and Callum made all things possible. Their dependable good humour and generous spirits made the experience enjoyable.

BAKING AS BIOGRAPHY

I have clear a memory of my mother baking. In truth, it is possible that this is actually several memories conflated into one, because while I was growing up I often watched her bake. The time I think I remember is a Saturday morning. I am eighteen years old. It is my first year of university and I am home for a weekend visit. My mother does not take time to sit down with me, so we follow a familiar pattern: we talk as I sit and watch her work. I am not sure why she does not ask for, or seem to want, my help. Maybe because it would take too much time to show me how. Maybe because the kitchen of our 1970s bungalow is not much more than six feet square. The space is cramped with one person, let alone more. Later in my life, I will reflect on how the design of kitchens with enough room for only one person sentences women to lone service, but at the time I am remembering I give this no thought. I am not troubled by the fact that there is no room for me, or that I am not wanted. In fact, I am content not to be involved and make no offer of assistance. I am happy to sit at the table in the dinette, sampling the finished products and chatting as my mother fills the adjoining kitchen with a blur of activity: mixing batter, spooning cookies onto a cookie sheet, and washing up dishes. In a little more than an hour she produces the bulk of the familys weekly supply of staples: cookies, squares, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and an apple pie. None of this productivity impresses me. It is simply how my mother fills every Saturday morning. Today, as always, she places the baked goods into a series of square Tupperware containers and round metal tins that originally held fancy store-bought cookies or candy. Wiping the flour from her hands, my mother pauses. You know, she says confidentially, I really dont like to bake.

Sometimes our everyday memories are the most telling. This particular memory stuck with me over the years, and at a certain point I became intrigued by the many possible implications of my mothers simple, surprising disclosure that she did not like to bake. What could this mean? How could it be that she spent so much time at an activity that held at least apparently so little importance for her? The more I thought about this, the more I was lured by the idea of telling my mothers life stories through her baking. At first this idea struck me, to say nothing of others in my family, as an unlikely subject in relation to my mothers life: she did not have a wide reputation as a fine cook, nor did she pride herself on culinary accomplishments. If she found some aspects of baking creative or enjoyable, she never said as much. Nor at first glance were the recipes she owned inspiring texts. Her collection shows no signs of being lovingly developed or maintained. Rather, it contains approximately 350 simple recipes for baked goods: cookies, cakes, breads, and squares. Most are recorded on three-by-five cards that she stored in a metal recipe box. Later, after the box was full, recipes spilled over onto scraps of paper and were stuffed into a kitchen drawer. This drawer also held a community cookbook; produced by one of the early womens church groups to which my mother belonged, it was marked by signs of heavy use. These recipes are so strikingly uncomplicated that, when I shared some of my preliminary reflections on the links between my mothers recipes and her life in a paper to the American Folklore Society, another member of the panel was skeptical that such straightforward directions for basic cookies or biscuits could convey very much (Diane Tye, unpublished, 2005). I have discovered, however, that when read closely these recipes reveal hidden messages. And, in part because my mothers baking was obligatory, a response to family and community needs rather than an activity that gave her personal enjoyment, there are subtexts to this collection of recipes that offer insights not only into her life and but also into the realities she shared with other women.