“There were many kitchens, but this one was where I spent the most time.” [in] I was in Elizabeth, New Jersey,” said the legendary children’s author. Judy Blume tell the host Michelle Norris for her weekly podcast, your mom’s kitchen. On the show, NPR journalists encourage guests to share their first cooking experiences. Blume spent most of her childhood in her home. “We had a stove and a sink with sides where we could work. And we also had a canary cage. We always had canaries,” she says.
Author Judy Blume will be featured in the 2012 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Photo credit: Shutterstock
As a child during World War II, Blume remembers how her mother made her feel guilty for not washing the dishes. Dinner was served early when her father returned home from the dentist’s office.She also remembers what she ate and saw howdy doody. “My mother made me eat the same thing every night: lamb chops and baked potatoes,” Blume says. “When her child was born, I fed her lamb chops every day at noon, probably because I felt I had to.”
Bloom remembers the dark green and flamingo pink kitchen that her parents renovated in memory of their time in Miami Beach. She describes her mother as a nervous cook, which she inherited, and that her mother in particular was nervous about using a pressure cooker. Before hosting her dinner party, she often had anxious dreams that she would drop the platter containing her main course on the floor.
In the podcast “Your Mama’s Kitchen,” journalist Michelle Norris sits down with guests to talk about their first cooking experiences. Photo courtesy of Higher Ground Productions.
