My affection for Joan and Walter “Fritz” Mondale developed long after the Carter administration and the 1984 presidential election. The Beeman family was solidly and unapologetically pro-Reagan. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I could swear my baby [...]]]> Mondale, Joan. The Mondale Family Cookbook. Washington, DC: Mondale for President Committee, 1984.

My affection for Joan and Walter “Fritz” Mondale developed long after the Carter administration and the 1984 presidential election. The Beeman family was solidly and unapologetically pro-Reagan. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I could swear my baby sister wore Reagan buttons on her onesies through much of 1984. I was in first grade, and not in much of a position to protest.

More recently, after many years on the east coast and a subsequent shift in my political leanings, I discovered The Mondale Family Cookbook. Published by the Mondale for President Committee in 1984, the book was purportedly written by Joan Mondale. From the woman who filled the vice president’s house with 20th-century American art (Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Hopper) and who told Maureen Dowd that she would not talk about recipes or clothes during the campaign, the cookbook was clearly an attempt at a balancing act. Fritz wanted Geraldine Ferraro to be his vice president, and ran on a pro-Equal Rights Amendment, anti-nuclear platform. Joan, meanwhile, insisted that she was “a traditional wife and mother and supporter” and seemed at pains to counter the media’s portrayal of her husband’s campaign as radical. The cookbook allowed her to cast herself as a loving housewife from Minneapolis.

This was Fritz’s campaign, though, so the cookbook begins with him. “Crazy Legs” Mondale, captain of his high school football team, looks as eager to please and all-American as can be. The accompanying recipe, for “Fettucine à la Pimento Mondale,” is, unfortunately, somewhat less reassuring. To be fair, it is basically a passable (for 1984, certainly) version of fettucine alfredo. It does not call for margarine or garlic powder, and the pasta is meant to be cooked al dente. The pimentos, though, make me cringe a bit. Sour and insufficiently spicy (except in olives, where I still kind of love them), pimentos always seemed to me like the saddest way to jazz up a dish.

My favorite chapter in the book is “Menus and Recipes from the Vice President’s House.” Here, Joan is clearly in her element. The menus feature more adventurous recipes, like Poached Pears with Sabayon Sauce and Tomato Cases with Spinach and Anchovies. The real highlights, though, are the pictures with the guests. Barry Goldwater, Lady Bird Johnson, and Mrs. Marion Barry all make appearances. I love the picture above, in which Joan and Fritz earnestly discuss kinetic sculpture with artist George Rickey. Joan, in a lovely dress from New Mexico, looks enthralled.

The Reagan administration, claiming that there had been a “lowering of standards” in the National Endowment for the Arts during the Carter years, tried with limited success to reduce and restrict arts funding in the early 1980s. Joan, who as Second Lady served as the Honorary Chairwoman of the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, filled her cookbook with picture after picture of artists visiting the vice president’s house to discuss and display their work.  Above, Georgia O’Keefe smiles broadly while Joan accepts a sculpture for the vice president’s collection; Joan’s rebuke of Reagan’s policies was polite, but unmistakable.

Sadly, the election did not go well for the Mondales. Fritz won just over 40% of the popular vote, but carried only Washington, DC and his home state of Minnesota, giving him 13 electoral votes to Ronald Reagan’s 525.

Joan wrote one other book, Politics in Art, in addition to The Mondale Family Cookbook.

The lacquered lobster on the cover was all it took. I was unable to resist buying Jim Fobel’s Beautiful Food  when I found it in a used bookstore several years ago. To its credit (as promised on the jacket), it has been a “constant source of [...]]]> Fobel, Jim. Beautiful Food. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983.

The lacquered lobster on the cover was all it took. I was unable to resist buying Jim Fobel’s Beautiful Food  when I found it in a used bookstore several years ago. To its credit (as promised on the jacket), it has been a “constant source of delight and inspiration to [me]” since then. Possibly more delight than inspiration–I’ve never actually made any of the recipes, which range from the merely fussy to the totally insane. The premise of the cookbook is that “meals in minutes” must be vanquished, and that food should be as much (or more) about appearance as taste. While I’m all for lovely presentation, Fobel sometimes took things a bit too far, in a completely charming sort of way. On Thanksgiving, for instance, he recommended dressing up the turkey “with a tailor-made pastry outfit,” otherwise known as a tuxedo:

(Recognizing that it might be difficult to freehand those spats, he was kind enough to include a template.)

 As Fobel mentioned several times, his background as a painter and potter (in San Francisco, in the 60s) informed his ideas about food. He saw his dishes as “finished edible creations,” fertile ground for experimentation. Unsurprisingly, his antipasto jars and Bas-Relief Oat Bread were a sight to behold.  The Mosaic Shrimp-and-Salmon Mousse was especially elaborate and exciting:

 As with most of the recipes, the mousse was accompanied by helpful diagrams (like this one) and detailed structural advice. Fobel seems to have recognized that his Erector Set-approach to cooking needed ample documentation.

One last treat: the author photo. I LOVE the cats.  

All in all, a delightful, if not so useful, cookbook. And it’s going for $.20 on Amazon! A steal, if you ask me.

Fobel wrote at least nine other cookbooks, including Jim Fobel’s Old-Fashioned Baking Book, Jim Fobel’s Big Flavors, Jim Fobel’s Casseroles, and Jim Fobel’s Diet Feasts.

(Housekeeping note: I finally put all of my cookbooks on LibraryThing.)