the Betty Crocker Cookbook

the only cookbook my mom ever purchased from a store was the Big Red Betty Crocker Cookbook
the book resided in a cupboard above the stove next to Morton’s Salt & dirty glass vases
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approximately 75 million copies have been sold since its original 1950 publication
fifty chefs developed the book’s 2,161 recipes each with a vibrant Atomic-Age photo
the Times noted that the first Big Red sold several times that of Hemingway’s most recent novel
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my mom may have read Hemingway in high school but i don’t think she actually read the cookbook
the first time she saw me whip eggs with water she was shocked & shoveled them down
‘these are delicious’ she said at least three times jotting down ‘whip eggs with water’ on a post-it
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Betty Crocker was first invented in 1921 for the Minneapolis-based Washburn-Crosby Company
by advertiser Bruce Barton to give ‘cooking and homemaking advice’ to housewives
her voice first appeared on Twin Cities radio in 1924 & a painted ‘motherly image’ appeared in 1936 Washburn-Crosby Company no longer exists it is now General Mills a transnational behemoth
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the early portraits of Betty Crocker look just like my maternal grandmother stern curled hair
a white collar & red blouse the same color as the Big Red that maybe my grandma used
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Betty Crocker was to be ‘motherly and knowledgeable’ my grandma was knowledgeable
but she wasn’t motherly her voice was the grumble of a car that won’t turn over
she left my teenaged mom alone for weeks & my mom would sneak down bottles of whiskey
& her friends would smoke weed on the 70s shag carpet of Grandma’s farmhouse
Mom would skip school every other day & buy Big Macs at the McDonald’s in Estacada, OR
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when i was little & sick Mom would take me to a McDonald’s & buy me two Bacon Cheese Biscuits
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the Big Red has always had a section for learning the basic techniques of home cooking & baking
older editions also had guides for ‘household management’ for meeting ‘the needs of a husband’
for balancing a budget for being a good neighbor for being a consumer of Betty Crocker products
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during the many years in which Mom lived as an addict i often dreamt of the moms i saw on TV
fresh-faced women appeared in my sleep they brought meals that had been passed down to them
meats steaming with moist flavor & vegetables that glowed with the definition of their own color
in those dreams i was full maybe one of those women was the dream-model for Betty Crocker
or more likely the dictates of consumption-driven TV seeped down into my slumbering self
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now that she’s gone i’m realizing that i’m grateful Mom never read through Betty Crocker
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the food Mom enjoyed most was string cheese salt & vinegar chips chicken strips vanilla wafers
her role in the neighborhood was to scream at the neighbors who left their dogs out in the rain
to steal rocks from front yards so she could paint dirty jokes on them in her garage studio
to sit on her back porch & reread pulp horror novels while drinking her fourth glass of red wine
& any home-management rules were ignored when she spent electric-bill money on bags of candy
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these corporate efforts at homogenizing the home life of American wives had little effect on her
but how could they? how could someone so battered by hunger be made complete by control?
how could love’s failures ever be redeemed through the replication of a model made up by men
who hoped to tame the limitless variety of women of mothers & sisters & daughters & friends?
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Big Red gathered dust before it was passed on to me it lingers unused still between dogeared books
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like my grandmother my mom was knowledgeable in her own way witty too & occasionally tender
her hair was always dyed an artificial color & i can still hear her singing showtunes in the shower
but she wasn’t motherly couldn’t ever be motherly not in that dreadful commercial-dream way

the dentist shows her an x-ray

my teeth are in their final transfiguration
curdled black crops in october
crinkled wrappers litter my life

each time i come back from rehab
i celebrate with piles of dairy sweetness
my red leather purse holds my keys
my rotation of sobriety chips cigarettes
whatever i can spend crumpled dollars on
at the corner gas station

my favorite?
an Australian candy in a purple wrapper called Violet Crumble white chocolate
Hershey Bars too the melted remainder
on my fingertips Butterfingers that i break
into three pieces the harsh wafer must have
weakened gums their pink embrace

my teeth whimper every day
for too much sweetness
for too much delight
i knew that this would happen
but what’s knowledge? a fleeting pang
when the body gives in to the disastrous jolt
that courses down to gut from the vacuum
of my insatiable mouth