by Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris
Anyone interested in culinary history should not miss this book. Hometown Appetites is the story of Clementine Paddleford and her career as a traveling food writer. This Kansas farm girl, born in 1898, left her home state and used her journalist skills in a career that spanned 4 decades - from 1920s to the 1960s. How on earth did I not know anything about someone who was so well respected in her field and was instrumental in chronicling region American food? It seems that as Time Magazines – “Best Known Food Editor “of 1953, her fame rivaled Julia Child and James Beard but after her death in 1967, she slipped from view in the food world. Her writing helped elevate how the American housewife thought about food.
Until Paddleford, newspaper columns focused on home economy and getting diner on the table, or even worse yet, were little more than gratuitous advertisements of local food packers promoting their wares. Clementine approached food writing as she would any other kind of journalism, by fully researching her subject, becoming an authority on it. The self-confident writer was a master at establishing contacts along the way to land jobs that showcased her talents as well as to aid her in telling food stories, keeping in touch long after her assignment ended. When you think of how her readership reached more than 12 million people weekly and the fact that she also earned a salary of over $250,000 dollars a year are both quite impressive accomplishments, even by today’s standards.
Her legacy was in the education of the public not only on the regional differences of the foods prepared in homes across the country but also helped to chronicle food traditions. Cooks were inspired to find the freshest seasonal ingredients and broaden their palates and reestablish the art of handing down the oral food traditions where daughters learned at their mother’s elbow. This American food anthropologist wrote primarily for the New York Herald Tribune and This Week magazine but also countless other magazines and newspapers.
Her legacy was in the education of the public not only on the regional differences of the foods prepared in homes across the country but also helped to chronicle food traditions. Cooks were inspired to find the freshest seasonal ingredients and broaden their palates and reestablish the art of handing down the oral food traditions where daughters learned at their mother’s elbow. This American food anthropologist wrote primarily for the New York Herald Tribune and This Week magazine but also countless other magazines and newspapers.
Sometimes described as quirky and vivacious, in addition to her pioneering journalism other facts about Clementine include: she was also a pilot, had an unconventional marriage to Lloyd Zimmerman from 1923 to 1932, she survived throat cancer in her early thirties, published How America Eats: Best recipes of 1949, a compilation of recipes selected and tested by herself and is said to have coined the food term “hero” relating to that long sandwich otherwise known as sub, grinder, hoagie, etc. saying “you’d have to be a hero to finish a gigantic Italian sandwich.”The book contains vintage photographs of Clementine, the woman with Betty Davis eyes, plus many of her family’s recipes and stories relating to them alongside the stories of her extraordinary life capturing how all kinds of people ate in all kinds of places.
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