Product Description

The rollicking biography of Clementine Paddleford: “a go- anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of stories. . . . matched as a regional-food pioneer only by James Beard.” (R. W. Apple , Jr., The New York Times)

In Hometown Appetites, an award-winning food writer and a leading university archivist come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of. Clementine Paddleford was a Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle America’s culinary habits. Her weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s and she earned a salary of $250,000. Yet twenty years after “America’s bestknown food editor” passed away, she had been forgotten— until now.

At a time when few women worked outside the home, Paddleford flew her own Piper Cub to meet her readers and find out what was for dinner. Before Paddleford, newspaper food sections were dull primers on home economy. But she changed all of that, composing her own brand of sassy, unerringly authoritative prose designed to celebrate regional home cooking. Her magnum opus, a book called How America Eats, published in 1960, reveals an appetite for life that was insatiable. This book restores Paddleford’s name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside those of James Beard and Julia Child. It’s a five-star read in the spirit of national bestsellers such as Heat and The United States of Arugula.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86107 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
At long last, an enthusiastic, significant rehabilitation of Paddleford's career as food writer from 1936 to 1966 at the New York Herald Tribune. Alexander, whose article on Paddleford for Saveur won the James Beard Journalism Award in 2002, and Harris, the archivist at Kansas State Univ., to which native Paddleford left her papers, happily resurrect Paddleford's work. An indefatigable journalist, Paddleford broke with the staid home-economics primers of the era. With humble Midwest beginnings and a degree in industrial journalism, Paddleford set out for New York City to make a name for herself, and found that her energy and sheer prodigiousness opened doors at popular publications like Farm & Fireside, Christian Herald and This Week, the Tribune's Sunday magazine. Influenced by the peripatetic culinary adventures of salesman Duncan Hines, Paddleford launched, in 1948, a series of columns in This Week called How America Eats, spotlighting regional cooks and their down-home specialties. With her trademark florid prose and historic touches, Paddleford became widely known, and her subsequent book, How America Eats (1960), became a bestseller. The authors make an upbeat case for reconsidering Paddleford's achievement in this enjoyable read, and include a slew of her comfort recipes. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Belle Elving How could we have forgotten a name like Clementine Paddleford? And yet most everyone has. Her newspaper articles and nationally syndicated columns fill hundreds of boxes in the archives of Kansas State University. Her book How America Eats was considered groundbreaking in 1960, but now it's largely unknown and out of print. But not long ago Paddleford was a formidable figure -- arguably the originator of popular food writing in this country. Before magazines racks were devoted to cooking, before newspapers had food sections, before celebrity TV chefs were even imagined, Clementine Paddleford was Julia Child, Rachael Ray, Margaret Mead and the Food Network rolled into one. Over a writing career that spanned nearly five decades, she sought out, sampled and wrote about American regional fare. She even piloted her own single-engine plane to sample pot roast in Pennsylvania, "kornette rolls" on the passenger train that ran from Missouri to Texas, frozen bananas in Hawaii and a "Senate Salad" of lobster, avocado and grapefruit in the U.S. Capitol. Every morsel of this ended up in her writings, along with a portrait of America before television, fast food and microwave convenience united us all. "Tell me where your grandmother came from and I can tell you how many kinds of pie you serve for Thanksgiving," she wrote in How America Eats. "In the Midwest two is the usual, mince and pumpkin. In the South no pie but wine jelly, tender and trembling, topped with whipped cream. Down East it's a threesome, cranberry, mince and pumpkin, a sliver of each, and sometimes, harking back to the old days around Boston, four kinds of pie were traditional for this feast occasion -- mince, cranberry, pumpkin and a kind called Marlborough, a glorification of everyday apple." To be sure, there are some -- mostly food writers and editors -- who remember who Paddleford was and what she accomplished, and these faithful have conferred on her something of a cult status and kept How America Eats among the most requested out-of-print books. One day last month the online bookseller Alibris listed 15 copies, including one signed by the author with "light edge wear . . . pieces missing and soil marks" for $480. Clementine Paddleford (Perhaps her mother was channeling Beatrix Potter? The name is a near twin of Jemima Puddle-Duck.) was born in 1898 in tiny Stockdale, Kan. In her teens, lacking any immediate role models, she fixed on the notion of becoming a journalist, writing gossipy squibs about local worthies for the Daily Chronicle of nearby Manhattan, Kan. She earned a degree in "industrial journalism" from Kansas State Architectural College then lit out for New York, enrolling in the Columbia School of Journalism and taking night classes at New York University. Young, alone and utterly undeterred, she found a room in a boarding house and started writing snippets and bits for the old New York Sun and New York Telegram. Over the next few years she wrote and networked her way into a job as woman's editor for Farm & Fireside, a semi-monthly magazine featuring earnest advice for housewives about cleaning, cooking, beauty and nutrition for "better babies." Her big break came in 1936 when she was hired by the New York Herald-Tribune to be a food editor and writer in what was called the paper's "Home Institute." Four years later she added to her workload and her reputation by creating a weekly column on food for This Week magazine, a syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement. To all this, she eventually added a monthly "Food Flashes" column for Gourmet magazine. She would expand and redefine all these roles over the next 30 years, becoming well known, well paid and widely traveled. She approached her subject with enormous seriousness -- part journalist, part historian, but fundamentally an anthropologist, revealing how Americans lived by chronicling what they ate. In 1946 she covered Winston Churchill's visit to Fulton, Mo., scene of his famous Iron Curtain speech. (The great man was served country ham, fried chicken and twice-baked potatoes.) She covered the coronation feast for Queen Elizabeth in 1953 (a six-course meal that included turtle soup, roast Angus beef and a puff pastry dessert called Maids of Honor). She wangled recipes from famous restaurants (cheesecake from Lindy's delicatessen, Hollandaise sauce from Antoine's in the French Quarter, Caesar salad from the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center), which are reprinted in Hometown Appetites. (A note at the end of the book explains that all printed recipes were tested and some updated for contemporary tastes and ingredients.) Her writing style was a gush of enthusiasm and adjectives, with a tone of earnestness evoking a far less cynical era. Describing, for example, those kornette rolls served in a 1949 railroad dining car, Paddleford writes: "So tiny -- one, two, three are not too many of these dainty corn morsels. 'Kornette boy! This way, please!' Here's something that should be eaten in sets of a dozen." Paddleford's ascent brings home her single-minded ambition at a time when few women put career first. After she left Manhattan, Kan., for that other Manhattan, there was a marriage to an ardent Kansas swain, but Paddleford never stopped writing and traveling long enough to actually live with him, and eventually he gave up on her. By all accounts she was a rather indifferent cook. She took on the role of guardian for the adolescent daughter of a dying friend but had no children of her own. There were, over the years, loyal friends and apparently plenty of lovers (her otherwise exhaustive diaries are discreet on this point). There was also a grim diagnosis of throat cancer, when she was only 33. Remarkably, she survived, but thereafter had a silver tracheotomy tube in her neck, which she disguised with a dark ribbon tied to look like a choker. Honestly though, the black-and-white photos in the book reveal that her dress in general was so outlandish that you might not notice the ribbon. In her prime, Paddleford had 12 million readers. When she died in 1967, her obituary ran in all of the country's major newspapers. Her reputation has faded ever since, eclipsed now by legions of more sophisticated food writers and celebrity chefs. This biography, by Kelly Alexander, a food writer and editor at Saveur magazine, and Cynthia Harris, an archivist at Kansas State University, is an energetic attempt to rescue Paddleford from obscurity. The story they have unearthed proves as illuminating of the era as it does of the woman herself. It also whets the appetite to go back and read the real thing.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“If the U.S.A. can be said to have a national palate, then it was Ms. Clementine Paddleford, from Manhattan, Kansas, who invented it. This colorful, lively, intricately researched biography brings this forgotten hero of the great American food revolution, vividly to life.”
—Adam Platt, food and restaurant columnist, New York magazine

“Finally a wonderful book about the missing great presence in American food, Clementine Paddlefor, the flaky and adventurous original.”
—Barbara Kafka, author of Vegetable Love and Soup, A Way of Life

“The next best thing to a dinner invitation from Clementine Paddleford herself, Hometown Appetites is a riveting three-dimensional portrait of this iconic American food personality.”
—Steven Shaw, author of Turning the Tables and Asian Dining Rules

"Alexander and Harris’s excellent biography tells the story foremost of a journalist, a writer who travelled tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of first hand accounts of the way we live. Clementine Paddleford was among the first American writers to sense that what and how we ate day to day, whether in Hawaii, Louisiana or Kansas, or New York, provided a clear view of what America was as a nation. Hometown Appetites is fascinating, long overdue account of a seminal figure in America's food revolution."
—Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking

“Decades before Anthony Bourdain and The Galloping Gourmet, the indomitable Clementine Paddleford traveled the globe (sometimes piloting the airplane herself!) to deliver stories and recipes to millions of readers of the The New York Herald Tribune. Kelly Alexander's superb, engaging biography of this pioneering food- writer--a Kansas farmer's daughter--is essential reading, not only for today's foodies and feminists, but really for anyone who yearns to know more about American regional cooking.”
—Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

“Reading Clementine Paddleford as a kid taught me the value of a bizarre byline. Now she's been rediscovered for a new generation as a character worthy of that singular name.”
—Regina Shrambling, Gastropoda.com

Customer Reviews

Satisfying and Savory
Clementine Paddleford is not a name you're likely to recognize. But as Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris tell us in this lively and engaging biography, Paddleford, a true original, invented the genre of culinary chronicles, to the enormous delight and edification of millions of readers over a career that spanned nearly a half century.

Paddleford (1898-1967) grew up in Kansas, earned a journalism degree in 1921, and went to New York to begin her career as a writer. When that didn't work out, she moved to Chicago, where she took a number of public relations jobs, eventually writing herself into the position of household editor at Farm & Fireside National Farm Journal. A few years later, she took a similar position at the Christian Herald, and finally, in 1936, became Food Editor at the Herald Tribune, a position she held until 1966.

By the time she went to the Tribune, Paddleford had gained a reputation for a pert and personally-engaging style that stood in lively contrast to the dull, objective food reporting practiced by the home economists who dominated food writing at the time. Her articles about her forays into American kitchens around the country placed the food that people really ate (as opposed to what the food industry was telling them to eat) in the context of regional and family traditions. Every article included at least one recipe, such as "Mrs. Wilkie's Drop Biscuits," offered by the wife of Wendell Wilkie, the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Roosevelt in 1940, or the famous "Lindy's Cheesecake," beloved by patrons of the New York restaurant. "It stands half a foot tall," she wrote in her highly evocative style. "It measures one foot across. Its top is shiny as satin and baked to the gold of the frost-tinged oak... Fluffy, velvet soft, the filling dry but not too dry, an extravaganza in richness." Lavish? Embellished? Yes. But her readers ate it up. At the time of her death, twelve million people a week eagerly devoured her articles and thousands wrote to tell her so.

Paddleford's personal life is as interesting as her professional career. Secretly married to her lover in 1923 and divorced nine years later without ever living with him, she counted as friends the women journalists who were changing American newspapers and magazines. She was adamantly single and married to her work, but she adopted and raised the teenage daughter of a friend. A survivor of laryngeal cancer in a time when few people lived through the disease, she spoke with the aid of a silver tracheotomy tube she regulated with a button on her throat. Writing and research were her cures for depression and loneliness, and she simply wrote her way out of every dark corner.

Paddleford's legacy, her biographers write, is the connection she made between real food, real cooking and the traditions, family histories, and ethnic backgrounds of real people sitting down to home-cooked meals at tables across America. She may have been eclipsed by the glamorous stars who came after her: Craig Claiborne at the New York Times, Julia Child at PBS and more recently, Martha Stewart. But her 1960 book, How America Eats, is the work of a writer who understands the importance of regional American food, whether it's Maine clam chowder, Pennsylvania Dutch sauerbraten, or the humble macaroni and cheese, and pays it the attention it deserves.

And now, happily, comes Hometown Appetites, restoring Paddleford to her place in the pantheon of American food writers. It is the work of two biographers--an award-winning food writer and a university archivist--who know and respect their subject. Their book--which includes a generous helping of Paddleford's comfortable recipes--is as energetic, endearing, and informative as Paddleford herself. Kudos to Alexander and Harris for telling the story of a woman whose writing touched the lives of millions of Americans, helping us all to recognize and appreciate the extraordinary alchemy of the ordinary American kitchen. Highly recommended for women's studies, American culture, and food collections.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Every Cook Needs to Know Their Roots
I grew up with the recipes collected by Clementine Paddleford. Although my mother liked to fiddle with the recipes (for example, Mom added finely minced candied fruitcake mix to the Joe Froggers recipe) I avidly read Ms. Paddleford's columns in the Sunday "This Week" magazine insert to our local newspaper. What I enjoyed most about this biography was the inclusion of recipes along with the story, just like the stories Clementine wrote for This Week. I guess it was training for me to learn how to taste what I was reading.

Now that I have 20/20 hindsight, I see that Clementine captured the food ways and culture from what are now by-gone days, and has given us a window--kitchen window, that is--on the past.

This volume is a valued addition to any cookbook or American history collection. Right up there with MFK Fisher, et.al. And what I meant by "know our roots" is to say that she was one of the driving forces to promote good food and the "culinary enthusiasm" we know and love today (such as the Food Channel).

Congratulations to Cynthia Harris and Kelly Alexander for their hard work in sharing with us the biography of one of the forerunner feminists of America.

Now my greatest hope is that Clementine's book "How America Eats" will be re-printed.

Great biography of a forgotten pioneer
I had never heard of Clementine Paddleford before reading this book. By the end I had come to understand how her influence on food journalism helped shape the modern landscape. Her passion truly helped define what we understand today as American food culture.

Alexander and Harris do a great job of bringing Paddleford's character to life. She lead a fascinating life, overcame personal adversity, and left a tremendous impact, yet her name is virtually unknown to younger generations of foodies. It's great to see this remarkable woman receiving the credit she deserves.

It's also clear that both authors have an understandably tremendous reverence for Ms Paddleford. The end sections about how the authors personally discovered Paddleford's work were as interesting as the main biography.

The detailed recipes sound fantastic and I am looking forward to trying several of them. The fact that they are interspersed in the biography add colorful context to the narrative. They will ensure that this book stays handy rather than finds its way into box in the garage.