After the Jello disaster, I feel the need to emphasize that most of what I made in my exploration of 60s food was actually pretty good. Take, for example, this green bean side dish.
Continue reading “Seven Days of 60s Food: Spanish Green Beans”
Author: Emma
Emma Barry is a teacher, novelist, recovering academic, and former political staffer. She lives with her high school sweetheart and a menagerie of pets and children in Virginia, and she occasionally finds time to read and write.
Seven Days of 60s Food: Orange Moss
“So what kind of Jello salad are you making?”
As soon as I announced this project, this was the question everyone asked. The dish people most closely associate with the 1960s seems to be Jello, preferably with lots of strange stuff in it.
The only problem was, well, I wasn’t finding many Jello recipes in the cookbooks. This leads me to a few hypotheses: one, I may have had too small a sample size and needed to do more research; two, Jello salad might have been a regional or folk thing where people developed and circulated their own recipes apart from the cookbook industry; and/or three, our historical memory about this might be off. I definitely didn’t put any Jello in Star Dust.
Regardless, the Internet filled in some blanks. If you’re interested in molding Jello, I would recommend that you read Elisabeth Lane’s post about a peach Jello mold, which was inspired by this recipe at The Kitchn, or dive into the deep end by reading the archives of The Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn. You’ll also need to peruse your local thrift store for some molds.
I ended up making two Jello recipes: a very weird one that did not work and a more modern one that did. You get the weird failure today.
Seven Days of 60s Food: Beef Carbonnades
Probably the most famous cookbook published in the 1960s is Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. First published in 1961, it’s been intimidating home cooks for more than half a century. I’m confident that Anne-Marie would have owned a copy. And as soon as I took this project on, I knew I had to make something out of it.
I called my grandmother and asked about her memories Mastering the Art of French Cooking. What recipes had she actually used? She immediately began talking about Carbonnades a la Flamande, or beef carbonnades. So that’s what I picked.
Seven Days of 60s Food: Hot Cream Cheese Canapes
Sometimes, I get crazy ideas. This post–and the ones that will follow–are one such.
When Gen and I were writing Star Dust, I fell pretty hard for the world of the novel: the cocktails, the parties, the music, and the clothes. Writing the book taught me that my love for mid-century American culture is deep and long-held, so much so that it even extends to the food.
Sixties food has a truly terrible reputation for relying on processed ingredients and fat, carbohydrates, and other deliciousness that we avoid in 2015. However, while researching the book, I obtained some sixties cookbooks to add to what I already owned. In reading them, I came to feel that our view of 60s food is somewhat unfair. I can’t tell you precisely what the average family was eating for dinner on a representative night in 1962, but the story painted by cookbooks is more complicated than the stereotype.
There’s a drift toward processed foods, yes, but also meal plans that include multiple courses and several vegetables. Additionally, the way cookbook writers of the period approach recipes presupposes that readers possess varied and sophisticated cooking knowledge.
Continue reading “Seven Days of 60s Food: Hot Cream Cheese Canapes”
A Fine Romance Friday: The Apartment
Next up in our 60s set/60s produced romance series is Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960). A delightful, and surprisingly dark and risque romance, featuring Jack Lemon in one of cinema’s great beta hero roles and a luminous Shirley MacLaine as the object of his adoration. This one comes with a content warning for its representation of mental illness and suicide.
The basic–and quite adult–set-up is that Lemon is a much put-up peon at a drug company. A group of managers there including the odious Fred MacMurray, promise him promotion and upward mobility…if he lets them use his apartment for their affairs. He’s unhappy with the situation, but can’t see a way out of it. All the while, he’s nursing a crush on the woman who runs the office building’s elevators (MacLaine), who is also being pursued by MacMurray. She eventually falls for MacMurray’s lies and when the affair end badly, she attempts suicide at the apartment, unaware that it’s Lemon’s. Lemon revives her and then cares for her as she recovers. But when she’s back on her feet, will she remember that MacMurray is an ass? And will Lemon ever work up the gumption to quit his job?
My advice is to watch The Apartment immediately after Pillow Talk (1959), a film only one year older but which feels like it’s from a different generation. To watch The Apartment is to watch modern life come to mainstream American movies. You can practically see the studio system crumble on screen. From the way the black and white cinematography looks, to the banter, to the treatment of mental illness and suicide (though these are imperfect from a modern point of view), to the characterization of MacLaine, to the frank engagement with extra and pre-marital sex, and most of all, Lemon as the atypical romantic hero.
It’s a movie that has some darkness, but it’s a wholly different glimpse into mid-century life and courtship rituals. Watch it and play gin rummy tonight.
A Fine Romance Friday: That Thing You Do!
We haven’t had one of these in a while, have we? In the lead up to the release of Star Dust, I want to spotlight romantic movies set in the 1960s or produced in the 60s. First up is Tom Hanks’s (yes, that guy) music rom-com That Thing You Do! (1996).
I’ve had a soft-spot in my heart for this movie since I went on my first-ever dates to it. But a recent article at UPROXX reminded me how stinking charming it is. Our basic story: the drummer of a small-time band in 1964 Erie, PA, breaks his arm. A new guy (Tom Everett Scott) steps in, convinces them to make their big song more up-tempo, and the next thing they know, they’re in possession of a hit record and a recording contract. The band’s handsome front man (Johnathan Scheach) treats his girlfriend (Liv Tyler) like crap, so when the band inevitably falls apart weeks later, we cheer when his girlfriend and the new drummer ride off into the sunset together.
It’s an insubstantial confection of a movie, but it works because of the pitch-perfect recreation of the 60s. The sets, the costumes, and above all the music, are perfection. There is the catchy as hell title track, but I also like the slow-dance B-side “All My Only Dreams.” The entire soundtrack (which I own) is a 60s sound-alike wonder. The movie also gets the sheer fantasticalness of success right. The scene in which the band plays a fictional version of The Ed Sullivan Show is just joyful. We know it can’t last; we don’t really want it to. But gosh, it’s a fun ride.
In terms of the romance, Liv Tyler has never been lovelier on screen than she is here. And Tom Everett Scott is delightful and kind; the absolute best version of a beta hero. When they finally confess their feelings (and share one hell of a kiss) it has more of a jolt than you’d expect from something this frothy.
That Thing You Do! is an amuse bouche for your ears and a lovely invocation of the 60s. I commend it to you tonight.
Odds and Ends
On Wednesday, I chatted with up-and-coming author Cobie Daniels for her romance writing podcast. The episode is out now and you can listen to it here. I sort of hate how my voice sounds on tape so I haven’t been able to get myself to listen to it; can someone tell me if I said anything mortifying? You should definitely listen to episode 4, which is a fascinating conversation with Zoe York. And I’ll be tuning in from here on out to hear about Cobie’s editing/publishing journey.
Also, Star Dust received its first review earlier this week (and I love those astronaut wives and boozy bridge parties, let me tell you). I cannot wait for this book to be out!
Toward a Definition of Historical Fiction
If you follow me on social media, or read this blog, or have been within half a mile of me recently, I probably mentioned to you that I have a book coming out in October that I wrote with Genevieve Turner: Star Dust. It’s primarily set in 1962 during a fictional version of the space race. But is it a historical romance?
In the category definitions for the annual RITA Awards, the Romance Writers of America (RWA) limits the designation of historical romance to those set before 1950. Wikipedia offers the following paragraph in a discussion of definitions in historical fiction:
Definitions vary as to what constitutes an historical novel. On the one hand The Historical Novel Society defines the genre as works “written at least fifty years after the events described”,[2] whilst on the other hand critic Sarah Johnson delineates such novels as “set before the middle of the last [20th] century […] in which the author is writing from research rather than personal experience.”[3] Then again Lynda Adamson, in her preface to the bibliographic reference work World Historical Fiction, states that while a “generally accepted definition” for the historical novel is a novel “about a time period at least 25 years before it was written”, she also suggests that some people read novels written in the past, like those of Jane Austen (1775–1817), as if they were historical novels.[4]
While writers’ organizations and scholars disagree, then, the rule seems to be that historical fiction is removed significantly from the present (perhaps 25 to 50 years at minimum) and from the writer’s personal experience. So “historical” requires temporal and experiential distance. But how much distance is necessary? And what does that distance get you?
I’ve been wondering about this while watching and rewatching Mad Men (1960 – 1970), The Americans (early to mid-1980s), Narcos (late 1970s through, presumably, the early 1990s), and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (1920s with some earlier flashbacks). RWA and The Historical Novel Society would call only Miss Fisher’s historical; the rest would be contemporary.
Except the approach in all of these shows doesn’t feel contemporary to me. The temporal remove is so important that these stories could not be told without material alteration if they were set in another place or time. So I would argue that a historical novel is one in which the settings calls attention to itself through emphasis on the differences between our contemporary world and the world of the narrative’s fashion, social mores, technology, legal or economic structure, etc. In a historical novel, the temporal remove itself is one of the subjects.
Now I’ll grant that some distance is necessary for this to be true. Have you ever had the experience of looking at a picture and realizing how “of the moment” you look in it, even when (at the time the photo was taken) you couldn’t see how the cut of those pants or the pattern on that shirt or the style of those glasses reflected trends? Give it a few years and poof, you can see style in a way that was invisible.
I’m suggesting that a writer could successfully meet my standard in a novel set in the 1990s or even the early 2000s and even when s/he is writing out of lived experience. To wit, I’m excited about this collection and Rainbow Rowell’s popular YA romance Eleanor & Park was broadly considered historical despite (or perhaps because of) its 1980s setting.
In the last analysis, historical writing seems to be defined by its thick setting and orientation toward that setting more than by its use of dates and research.
Now I’m not arguing that RWA should adopt this definition. It would clearly be unworkable for something like the RITA. But when I label Star Dust historical, that’s what I mean.
What do you think? How would you define historical fiction?
Star Dust: Opening Chapter
So you’ve seen the cover for Star Dust. It’s gorgeous and it’s about astronauts and so far so good–but what does a space-race romance really look like? Well, I’ve got the prologue and part of the opening chapter for you.
Be advised that there are a couple of adult words, a Soviet satellite, and a dangerous level of chemistry between a pair of unlikely neighbors.
Cover Reveal: Star Dust
As promised, here is the cover for Star Dust.
The cover designer was none other than my amazing critique partner and co-writer Genevieve Turner (did I mention that she’s amazing?). But maybe it’s even better with a blurb:
Houston, 1962
Anne-Marie Smith wanted normal: a loving husband, two beautiful kids, and a well-kept house. But when she catches her husband cheating, she decides that normal isn’t worth it. Now in a new city with a new job, she’s trying to find her new normal—but she knows it doesn’t include the sexy playboy astronaut next door.Commander Kit Campbell has a taste for fast: fast cars, fast planes, and even faster women. But no ride he’s ever taken will be as fast as the one he’s taking into orbit. He’s willing to put up with the prying adoration of an entire country if it will get him into space.
But Anne-Marie and Kit’s inconvenient attraction threatens both normal and fast. As the space race heats up, his ambitions and their connection collide and combustion threatens their plans… and their hearts.
The book is available for preorder at Amazon, iBooks, and Kobo (more links coming soon!). You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves, join the mailing list for the Fly Me to the Moon series, or check out the book’s Pinterest board.
I’ll put up an excerpt later today (ETA: you can now read the prologue/first chapter), but in the meantime, I can’t tell you how excited I am for the book’s release in October!
Emma Barry 