"Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink."

I grew up in a house with a copy of Peg Bracken's "The I Hate To Cook Book." I remember reading it and hoping that my mother was laughing when she did the same, not taking notes.

Peg Bracken died recently at the age of 89. There's a great obit in the NYT....I wasn't shocked to learn that she'd worked as an advertising copywriter....she just had that golden age of Madison Ave sound about her.

Of course, the Times obit writer is no slouch, either. "Peg Bracken, an advertising copywriter who nearly half a century ago parlayed her irreverent wit — and her passionate dislike of a traditional womanly duty — into a subversive best seller, “The I Hate to Cook Book,” died on Saturday at her home in Portland, Ore."

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