“Fast food and processed foods such as TV dinners came about in the wake of the Second World War,” says Jacobs, who wrote and produced a three-hour feature documentary on the impact of the war on the U.S. economy, World War II: Breadlines to Boomtimes (Monterey Home Video, 1994).
“When the U.S. entered the two-front war in 1942, the situation we found on the domestic front was that dad was off fighting in Europe or the Pacific and mom was working eight-to-12-
Easy-to-prepare processed foods, Jacobs asserts, filled a void for homemakers too weary to prepare a home-cooked meal after a long day on the assembly line.
“No matter how many mouths you have to feed,” says the independent publisher based out of Las Vegas, Nevada, “it’s much more sensible to buy the ingredients for a pot roast dinner, for instance, over a handful of TV dinners because a frozen meal will not provide the consumer with much-needed leftovers to fill the fridge and the belly.”
Jacobs’ maternal grandmother, a devoted military officer’s wife for over three decades, worked with a tight household budget to provide a vast array of healthy, homemade meals that combined her Indiana farm upbringing in the 1920s with certain modern sensibilities.
“At some point in the 1970s my grandmother self-published a cook book of her own recipes for family and friends. That cook book, called A Pinch of This and a Dash of That, formed the foundation for Carver’s Café.
Carver’s Café: Stories and Recipes for a Ravaged Economy is described a unique blend of “frugal food” from Jacob’s Midwestern family kitchens and offerings of flash fiction from the author’s award-winning pen.
“They’re short, short stories, something to read while waiting for the oven to pre-heat or the water to boil. The goal here was to create a product that is both entertaining and informative and, moreover, gets the American consumer thinking sensibly again about home cooking and resisting the lie that fast food is somehow more economically sensible.”
The 186-page spiral-bound book contains 240 recipes ranging from soups, salads, appetizers, main dishes, desserts, holiday menus, and even cocktail recipes, as well as handy and practical household tips, which the author believes many Americans have strayed from.
“I think that in this ravaged economy, a lot of folks will be forced into a shotgun marriage with their kitchen. Carver’s Café hopes to help ease the transition from fast food dependence to more healthy and sensible and affordable dietary habits.”
Carver’s Café: Stories and Recipes for a Ravaged Economy is currently available in a limited pre-release holiday edition through Trace Publications for $13.99 plus shipping and handling. The book is scheduled for wide release in February 2009.
"Carver’s Café: Stories and Recipes for a Ravaged Economy”
Publication Date: November 2008/February 2009
Price: $13.95
