I met Lewis A. Wolff (Lew) through the newspaper. One of my regular assignments was writing stories about servicemen on the basis of their letters to family or friends. Sgt. Wolff’s mother was inordinately proud of her son’s experiences and came in on a weekly basis for a “story.” After three or four years of service in India, he came home to resume his advertising business. Our paths crossed and we were married in 1949.
Friends predicted a dismal future. We were of totally different backgrounds. He was the adored second son of Jewish parentage. I was the dyed in the wool Calvinist who until she entered newspaper reporting at the age of 17 had probably met ten Jews in her life. It is another story, another life, another time, but since it will come up in some of the chapters in this book as it relates to cooking.
Neither of us were bothered by the religious aspect. We had both suffered from “too much religion” and our new found freedom to make our own decisions on that issue was wonderful.
The more important stumbling block was my total lack of cooking ability. We came home from a four-day “honeymoon” in Atlantic City to a new garden apartment, furnished sparsely with a bed, an orange crate for a table, and two folding chairs. Friends had kindly filled the food closet and refrigerator with enough staples to meet our basic needs. We ate out that first night and vowed to talk the food preparation problem out the next day.
It was a complex problem. Lew explained that his mother was an adequate, if plain cook, who used only Kosher food, and cooked a bountiful dinner for Friday and then, he recalled, “we ate the same leftovers for the rest of the week.” Hence his insistence that he would not want a menu to be repeated more than once a month. My background of living with a non-cooking mother had prepared me for nothing, but less the ability to produce a variety of items.
Additionally, Lew was in the early stages of developing his advertising agency. He and his partner were struggling with under capitalization and too many loans and the immediate future seemed scary. One of my duties would be to entertain clients and prospective clients at dinner since “who could afford a restaurant?”
By the end of the week, I had purchased Irma Rombauer’s still popular “The Joy of Cooking” and it became my Bible. I learned how to cook and in six months I had mastered the basic skills. In a way this book is the result of those early struggles which blossomed into worthy accomplishments. Anyone can cook these recipes, follow them carefully or configure them to your own needs. I have eschewed lengthy directions, too many ingredients and difficult techniques. There is food for every occasion, even the occasional “client dinner.”