By Paige Smith Orloff
MOSTLY, I EAT summer corn with as little adornment as possible. I grill it, I boil it, add a bit of butter or extra virgin olive oil and flakey, crunchy sea salt, and–that’s it. I’m done. But there is this one exception…and it’s my contribution to Week 2 of the big cross-blog recipe swamp called Summer Fest. Hint: It’s a breakfast food that’s good anytime.
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cooking and recipes
From 'The Betty Betz Teenage Cookbook', 1953
By Paige Smith Orloff
MY FIRST PICNIC of the season is breathing down my neck: it’s the capper to the kids’ last day of school. Sounds lovely, right? Well, maybe for someone less spent than I am at the moment. With none of my own cooking creativity left to mine, I decided to delve into the archives here at TSP to see what past picnic resources I might unearth. Are you in need of outdoor eating support? Read on.
OUR SISTER PAIGE CAN’T BELIEVE it’s been a year since she first started, like Alice down her rabbit hole, exploring the crazy culinary world of the Ladies Auxiliaries….those crazy cookbooks created by church groups and charities and social clubs. If you’ve missed out, now’s your chance to see just what’s lurking out there. Join her, won’t you?
T HE DAY AFTER Christmas, Paige found herself hosting an accidental dinner party. In truth, she was cooked out, and even (briefly) entertained the idea of serving take-out pizza. But then she remembered a dinner served by a friend, a simple meal so delicious that everyone had seconds…get the soul-saving recipe.
CAN YOU BELIEVE that Thanksgiving is next week? Sister Paige can’t, not least because if Thanksgiving is next week, Christmas is less than six weeks away, and that’s terrifying. But rather than panic, she is going to drown her sorrows in cookbooks––specifically, those old standbys, the Ladies’ Auxiliary collection that seems to be breeding like rabbits (or maybe turkeys) on her bookshelves. This week, in preparation for, uh, next week, it’s time to consider the cranberry.
THE SISTERS DIDN’T SO MUCH AS DROP THEIR WHISKS when TSP’s Marion reached them while they are out on book tour. It seems they can type with kitchen utensils in their mouths, she says, while packing and running off to the next interview, making her adore them even more than she already did after reading about their new cookbook entitled Bite Me. Meet the Bite Me girls.
ARE YOU GRIEVING FOR ‘GOURMET’ magazine? Our Sister Paige was, but the new cookbook she scored is helping soothe the wound. Read over her shoulder.
TWO SISTERS PLUS ONE BOOK equals two soups. This is the sisterly cooking math Marion and Margaret did when their friend and agent Kris Dahl sent them both a new book, and two households went on a pretty much liquid diet. But oh, what liquid! Get the yummy details.
SISTER PAIGE HAD TO BREAK the news to her mother last night. A huge player in their shared history was gone. Mom’s face went white, and she looked like she might cry. As they sat down to dinner, she looked down. “I just can’t believe it’s gone.” She was talking, of course, about Gourmet magazine, a joint belief system between the two women, and millions of others. Read her story.
AS A WAY TO BRING the happiness back into her family’s world of pie, TSP Sister Paige suggested that she and her mother do a joint project: enter a local pie-baking contest, assuming Mom would beat her and the world of pie would be returned to its axis after a rough start this summer. So much for best-laid plans…read Paige’s not-so-sweet story.
WHEN IN DOUBT, DESSERT. It might be Sister Marion’s new motto. It would make a good T-shirt, wouldn’t it? Hmmm. Anyway, it certainly is a motto she’s using for her friend John, of Teaching John to Cook, the subject of an occasional series here on TSP on how to sister a guy-pal into the kitchen. Marion’s sweet latest installment is here.
"Mom! These are definitely potatoes."
IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT, Sister Paige figures, make soup. And that’s what she and her little “sister” the Rock, as she calls her youngest, are doing, the best tomato soup ever (with carrots as the secret ingredient). Will summer, and school vacation, ever end? Help the girls stir the pot.
Joe Forte's artwork about sums Paige up.
YOU REAP WHAT YOU WRITE, TSP Sister Paige learned lately, when a “food story” about her mother turned out to be a recipe for some tricky, and revealing, conversations. Get the delicious details.
First time here? Here's the idea: TSP is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in-friendship or in-feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: 
As the suffix of its name suggests, 
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men. 
