Erma Bombeck Writing Competition - Winners
2007
Erma Bombeck Writing Competition
Honorable Mention
Human Interest - Global
Rosie Sorenson
Richmond, California
"The Joy of Cooking"
| I'd forgotten how much I liked to beat egg whites until I decided to bake a fat-free chocolate angel food cake for my friend, Grant, who recently had a heart attack. I didn't think his children would appreciate it if I were to kill their father with an artery-clogging confection so soon after his cardiologist had cleaned out the sludge and installed a stent. I went to my storage closet and found my 1964 copy of The Joy of Cooking. My then husband-to-be gave it to me along with seven other cookbooks he chose as a gift for joining the Book-of-the-Month Club. After we married in 1968, I attempted to shoehorn myself into the role of the "good wife" that I witnessed during our Lutheran church potlucks. What I remember most from that awkward time was how much I liked baking, especially if it required the beating of eggs--carefully wielding the electric mixer so the whites would transform from viscous blobs into festive froth, eventually becoming stiff satiny peaks. But, in 1970, after reading The Feminine Mystique, I slammed shut the Joy of Cooking. I associated that book with all the forces keeping women in their places, their minds withering as they stirred pots and cleaned up after others. After I heard about Grant's heart attack, I sat alongside the family at his bedside, held his hand and prayed for his recovery. It's funny now, looking back, but all I could think of then was how much I wanted to bake him a cake--from scratch--even though it had been a long time since I'd fancied myself as a domestic goddess. Shortly after his discharge, I flipped through my copy of The Joy of Cooking, its pages yellowed from thirty years of neglect. Tucked inside was a recipe in my long-since-dead mother's handwriting for Viennese Jelly Bars, along with a 1979 Western Union Mailgram from a former boyfriend named Luke. Like a family Bible, my cookbook had become a repository for memories both culinary and otherwise, and I was surprised to find that by opening it again I reconnected with that undeniable joy of making something wonderful for someone you care about. As Grant's friends and family sang "Happy Birthday," I carried in his chocolate angel food cake ablaze with 70 candles. "You made that with your own two hands?" he exclaimed. "All that work? You really did that for me?" "Yes," I said smiling, "Piece of cake." |