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.