00:00We put three different women together and asked them to make a meal.
00:03Watch what happens next!
00:05At home with the Pussy Willows.
00:07Today we'll be making the perfect meal for you and your family.
00:10With just a few hours of prep time and a little bit of labor.
00:14Loaded with race and class politics.
00:16And some sweat and a little bit of cursing.
00:19Voila! Dinner is on the table.
00:21I love Ina Gardens, the barefoot Contessa at home.
00:24Her house is so lovely.
00:26She's also one of America's most successful business women.
00:29Her empire alone is worth 40 million dollars.
00:33Whoa.
00:34But back to cooking!
00:36Whoa! Technical difficulties!
00:39But really, cookbooks were produced largely for rich women who wanted to impress guests with lavish displays of food and
00:46wealth during dinner parties.
00:47But the lady of the house wouldn't have done the cooking.
00:50Her duties as a homemaker included selecting a menu and delegating the hard and sweaty labor of cooking to those
00:56beneath her.
00:56The homemaker archetype was established in Europe and imported wholesale to America.
01:02The first cookbook produced in the United States was Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, published in 1796.
01:09It's considered the first truly American cookbook!
01:13Truly American in that it erased Native Americans and claimed to have discovered fucking corn!
01:21And thus, cultural appropriation and erasure became unspoken foundations for American culinary traditions.
01:29It's a labor of love!
01:30Next, we'll just...
01:38Uh-oh!
01:39It isn't enough to merely just put food on the table.
01:43It has to be a magical presentation.
01:45Magically delicious!
01:48Cooking isn't all backbreaking work and drudgery.
01:52It brings people together!
01:54Sure!
01:54Women had legit authority preparing meals.
01:59Because there weren't a lot of places to be an expert back then.
02:02But then World War II changed all of that.
02:05And cookbooks responded.
02:06The cookbook began to put women's traditional roles in writing.
02:09Filling in at the factory was all well and good.
02:12But as soon as Johnny's back from the war, you better get your ass back in the kitchen, woman!
02:16As a post-war Betty Crocker cookbook once said,
02:21Women are first and foremost homemakers.
02:25I actually have it tattooed on my body.
02:27I just...
02:28Whoa!
02:29Mainstream cookbook publishers virtually ignored cookbooks produced by women of color.
02:35Though there are some examples of some groundbreaking cookbooks written by women of color.
02:40Frida de Nights, A Date with a Dish,
02:43A Complex Guide to African American Cuisine by the legendary editor of Ebony,
02:47and How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Chinese immigrant Bu Wei Yang Chao.
02:51Otherwise, quote-unquote, ethnic ingredients were considered exotic
02:55or something to spice up your family's week-time meals.
02:59The post-war period was all about processed, ready-made food.
03:02And for the first time in American history,
03:05supermarkets were stuffed with a wealth of options that no longer required women to spend hours
03:09making food from scratch.
03:11Store-bought is just fine.
03:13After the labor of cooking vanished,
03:16women had to use creativity to prove that they were loving and caring mothers.
03:20Nothing says love like a weird-ass jello mold.
03:23While ready-made food cut down cooking time, it soon fell out of fashion.
03:27See, cooking in and of itself can be an amazing and fulfilling form of expression.
03:32It's just the cookbook industry and cooking shows are filled with all these sort of fucked-up discriminatory problems
03:38that nobody really wants to talk about.
03:40Bobby Flay and Emeril rarely offer tips on how to cook for a family.
03:44And they always get to chill in industrial kitchens.
03:47Wait, wait, wait.
03:48I love cooking and baking and having beds made and dinner ready by five.
03:55Okay?
03:57I love to crochet oven mitts for my loved ones.
04:02Where the- where are we?
04:04This isn't my kitchen.
04:06Ina?
04:08Martha?
04:12It's time to challenge these old perspectives with new ones.
04:17What we're doing here is work.
04:19It's not just a cute hobby.
04:21Also, where the fuck is the female version of Anthony Bourdain?
04:27Is she okay?
04:30Hmm, she's bleeding out.
04:33Up next, Hot Cop!
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04:37Subscribe in this corner.
04:40Or watch another soapboxing episode in this corner.
04:44Or else.
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