Part Two: Even More on MaryJane Butters
Some of MaryJane’s book is genuinely helpful, if you’re someone who needs help learning how to sew. (I would be, if I wanted to learn how to sew.) I thought some of these household-running sections were interesting in a sort of theoretical way, but couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind really taking on these sorts of projects. Does the world need me to make a special embroidered bag for my clothespins? Most people don’t use clothespins. Most people use a dryer. Now, I’m someone who does use clothespins in the summer – I do hang out my laundry, which I’m sure the neighbors resent, but who knows, maybe they like looking at my tablecloths, too – but it wouldn’t occur to me to dress up the bag I keep my clothespins in. It hangs on the side of the house; it gets battered in rain and bangs against the ugly aluminum siding. Why should I put effort into something that’s gonna take that kind of beating? Makes no sense to me. (Am I supposed to bring my clothespin bag inside? If so, I never got the memo.)
I love embroidered dishtowels and pillowcases, and heartily applaud MaryJane’s compulsive need to decorate almost everything in her house – I’d be happy to buy some of her dishtowels, if she wants to get rid of ones that didn’t turn out so well – but I’ll be DAMNED if I know why I should make a little dress, with embroidery and rickrack trim, for my BROOM. This is taking things too far.
Her “BakeOver” and “ChillOver” recipes are terrifying to me. MaryJane correctly points out that gelatin dishes are unacceptable by snooty Yankee foodie standards (you can say that again, dollface), but there’s just no reason to inflict this kind of crap on innocent hardworking people. MaryJane describes my attitude about gelatin as “anti-gourmet,” but that’s not really it, though it’s true; I mostly think of gelatin as being pap. It’s what one gives to the ill, to those who can’t chew proper food; it’s something that can be good if not forced to accept interlopers, if you eat it on its own terms. (I like lime gelatin as much as the next person on a hot summer day.) But why muck it up with chicken and grapes and onions? I liked one of the recipes –- it was for a fizzy grapefruit gelatin dessert, made with grapefruit soda. I thought, “Now, that sounds actually kind of nice – that’d be good in July.” But other recipes made me gag. There’s one called Apple Of My Eye that, I swear to god, looks like watery snot that’s been congealed in a mold. There’s just no call for this.
And, as with the BakeOvers, what I really felt, when push came to shove, was that this was all a big advertisement for MaryJane Butters stuff. We’re all supposed to buy her ChillOver powder, and her BakeOver mixes, and god knows what all else (her website, I see, sells linens, too – you could practically furnish your home off her website). It’s Martha Stewart but with a hearty, organic cinnamon stick in a hand-thrown, home-fired, hand-painted mug replacing Martha’s Bennington pottery mug with a Williams-Sonomak peppermint straw…
Do you know what I mean?
I am not pleased, and I am returning this book to the library tomorrow. It will be shipped back to the Harwinton, CT public library. Harwinton, by the way, is in the Northwestern corner of Connecticut – Litchfield County. It’s a rural part of the state, but quite wealthy. There are actual farmers up there, and a lot of rich New Yorkers have their summer places in Litchfield County. I suppose the Harwinton Public Library would actually have a significant base of readers who’d want this thing – and, I see, ten people besides me have taken out this book. Ok. Well: Harwinton: you can have it.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Homesteading, with MaryJane Butters... maybe.
A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece about this Nitty Gritty Foodbook, with which I fell in love, on a whim. Ok, maybe it wasn’t love, but I definitely developed a strong crush on Herdt’s book. In my earlier essay (titled “Homesteading?” and posted on 7 February 2007), I mentioned MaryJane Butters’ book as -- I imagined -- a sort of contemporary version of Herdt’s work. I realized that I would have to spend some time with the MaryJane Butters book before I’d be satisfied on this subject.
So I went to the handy-dandy online library catalogue for my local public library. I discovered that they did not own this thing, so I ordered it through inter-library loan (I love ILL) and within a few days I had the book in my hands.
This thing – a fat quarto volume with many, many, many color photos – is called MaryJane’s Ideabook – Cookbook – Lifebook: For the Farmgirl in All of Us. Published in 2005 by Clarkson Potter, it’s really a piece of work. I admire it in many ways, but I wish it didn’t leave me gnashing my teeth.
MaryJane has some good ideas, all predicated on the wacky concepts that people should live closer to the land and more tightly within their communities. (I can deal with the community thing, but have no interest in the land part.) She wants us all to eat organic, grow our own food as much as possible, and basically try to pretend that we’re living in Kansas circa 1947, but plus the internet. I dunno. I’m not sure I’m so hip to this.
Things that annoyed me about this book (I’m sure I’ll forget several):
n the constant quoting of poetry, especially “inspirational” poetry by women who probably shouldn’t ever have been published in the first place, let alone be quoted in public
n the overwhelming tweeness of the whole damn thing. It starts before the dedication pages (pages! Plural!) but you could start there and already feel bile rising, though I’m sure the women this book is dedicated to are lovely people I’d be happy to have a beer with any day
n MaryJane’s occasionally cockamamie notions, which I really feel are often damned near indefensible. She raised her children, in recent decades, without a toilet – using an outhouse – for no good reason, as far as I can tell. Why? Why? Indoor plumbing is our friend!
n Her idiotic use of quotation marks. She uses them constantly when they’re really not needed. Page 83: “I teach a “fresh” approach that makes it a snap.” Why is ‘fresh’ in quotation marks there? It’s just uncalled for. The book is filled with cutesy, pseudo-homey touches like that and they make me want to scream.
n Her insistence on calling pickled things fermented. Sure, it’s the same thing, but I feel there’s something deceptive here. Especially when you consider that in 1947 Kansas, the good womenfolk would’ve talked about pickling things, not fermenting them. And she tells you to use “super-clean” hands when you’re canning. Do you need to be told this, if you’re the sort of person who’s going to take up canning in the first place? Like you’re gonna scrub the bathtub, floor, and toilet with your bare hands and then, without pausing to wash your hands, say, “Gosh, I gotta get those cukes and green beans into their brine! Whoopsie, there ya go, little fellers!”
I mean, really.
I’ve got to go calm down. Part two will follow.
So I went to the handy-dandy online library catalogue for my local public library. I discovered that they did not own this thing, so I ordered it through inter-library loan (I love ILL) and within a few days I had the book in my hands.
This thing – a fat quarto volume with many, many, many color photos – is called MaryJane’s Ideabook – Cookbook – Lifebook: For the Farmgirl in All of Us. Published in 2005 by Clarkson Potter, it’s really a piece of work. I admire it in many ways, but I wish it didn’t leave me gnashing my teeth.
MaryJane has some good ideas, all predicated on the wacky concepts that people should live closer to the land and more tightly within their communities. (I can deal with the community thing, but have no interest in the land part.) She wants us all to eat organic, grow our own food as much as possible, and basically try to pretend that we’re living in Kansas circa 1947, but plus the internet. I dunno. I’m not sure I’m so hip to this.
Things that annoyed me about this book (I’m sure I’ll forget several):
n the constant quoting of poetry, especially “inspirational” poetry by women who probably shouldn’t ever have been published in the first place, let alone be quoted in public
n the overwhelming tweeness of the whole damn thing. It starts before the dedication pages (pages! Plural!) but you could start there and already feel bile rising, though I’m sure the women this book is dedicated to are lovely people I’d be happy to have a beer with any day
n MaryJane’s occasionally cockamamie notions, which I really feel are often damned near indefensible. She raised her children, in recent decades, without a toilet – using an outhouse – for no good reason, as far as I can tell. Why? Why? Indoor plumbing is our friend!
n Her idiotic use of quotation marks. She uses them constantly when they’re really not needed. Page 83: “I teach a “fresh” approach that makes it a snap.” Why is ‘fresh’ in quotation marks there? It’s just uncalled for. The book is filled with cutesy, pseudo-homey touches like that and they make me want to scream.
n Her insistence on calling pickled things fermented. Sure, it’s the same thing, but I feel there’s something deceptive here. Especially when you consider that in 1947 Kansas, the good womenfolk would’ve talked about pickling things, not fermenting them. And she tells you to use “super-clean” hands when you’re canning. Do you need to be told this, if you’re the sort of person who’s going to take up canning in the first place? Like you’re gonna scrub the bathtub, floor, and toilet with your bare hands and then, without pausing to wash your hands, say, “Gosh, I gotta get those cukes and green beans into their brine! Whoopsie, there ya go, little fellers!”
I mean, really.
I’ve got to go calm down. Part two will follow.
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