Mary Meade and Me

My first college-degree job was as a research assistant for a magazine, now defunct. Twelve editors each had his or her own office, all down a long corridor, and I had the research library to myself, where I read incoming manuscripts and routed those onto the editors that I thought might fit the magazine. I also assisted editors with their articles by doing research for them.

Newspapers were delivered to the research library each day, and so it was that I experienced my first job where it was okay to sit and read for awhile. My favorite day was Thursdays when the Chicago Tribune food section appeared. Those were the grand days of food sections. Pages and pages of articles and recipes, truly content-rich. Nothing like the lean pages of today's newspaper food sections.

As a newly married, I couldn't really afford to buy cookbooks, but with the Tribune's Food Guide, I didn't need to. I had Mary Meade instead.

Tribune Food Editor Ruth Ellen Church was "Mary Meade" for over twenty years. Julia Child was on the rise then, and the women editors at my magazine often talked about all the fancy dinner parties they had given, particularly in the early 1960s, before they became working women in the early 1970s.

But I loved Mary Meade more. I couldn't tear recipes out of the newspaper, but I did have a typewriter and an unlimited supply of 4x6 index cards. So every Thursday I typed away, until I had an impressive collection neatly filed away, not in a cute recipe box, but in a somber taupe box, suitable for the office. Some of the recipes I actually made, but my roots had already taken hold as an Armchair Cook, so I typed many more than I cooked.

Sadly, that recipe box is lost to me now. But one day I came across a book of her recipes: Mary Meade's Country Cookbook: Traditional American Cooking. I bought it on the spot. The original copyright is 1968, with a renewed copyright by Church in 1977. I had found a reissue of that book. I loved her recipes so much that I unwittingly bought this book twice. The first one was a paperback, and years later in hardback. I didn't discover I had two copies until I had done some organizing of all my cookbooks. Considering all the cookbooks I have and that it's only been recently that I've been able to shelve them all in one room, I think it's pretty amazing that I haven't done this more.

Here is a recipe I never made, but I do recall the miraculous day I sampled it at a friend's house, back in the early 1960s. She lived in Apple Orchard, a subdivision that was a recent and novel addition to my small town where every house was different and with some dating as far back into the previous century, and ours, built in 1950, was considered "new." Houses that looked virtually the same, and packed close together, lined the curving street. Inside my friend's home, everything seemed so modern and compact. Eight-packs of pop in a rainbow of colors filled one corner of the kitchen, which actually had a table in it where the family could eat. I'm not sure if they did, though, because she had more brothers and sisters than I could count. She had taken me into her house for a break from our playing and from the refrigerator she pulled a green plastic bowl about as round and big as a hubcap, popped off the lid, and shoved it toward me: "Want some?" she asked.

I couldn't tell what it was, as everything was mixed together, but she gave it a name. "Heavenly Hash." I admit, I am still not a very adventurous eater, but I was even less so then. "My mom makes it all the time."

She grabbed a serving-sized spoon, dug in deep, and pulled it out, mounded with a pale orange, creamy cloud. "Here. Try it."

I didn't want to be impolite, so I accepted it and took a small bite. Creamy sweetness and puffy little pillows and little bits of something all swirled around my mouth; there was nothing to chew, so I just swallowed and was left with an overwhelmingly sweet sensation.

I had never had anything like it. Plus, I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that her mom had actually made it. And I'm thinking it was the first time I had experienced coconut outside an Almond Joy.

Mary Meade has the recipe (page 166) of what I'm sure I had that day.

Heavenly Hash
1 cup cooked rice
1 cup canned or sweetened fresh fruit, diced or sliced
1 cup heavy cream, whipped and sweetened.

Combine and pile into sherbet glasses. Baby marshmallows or chopped nuts may be added.

My friend's mom made copious quanities of this for her big family. No nuts, but definitly the marshmallows, and coconut, too. I'm quite certain it was all canned fruit, as everything had the same, soft texture, with the only resistance in the dish being the tiny grains of rice and slivers of coconut. I've had versions of this over the years, but this Heavenly Hash is the one I will always remember.