Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth

by Jean Zimmerman

In this stunning celebration and reappraisal of the importance of "women's work," acclaimed journalist Jean Zimmerman poignantly addresses the tug that many Americans of the twenty-first century feel between our professional and private lives. With sharp wit and intelligence, she offers evidence that in the current domestic vacuum, we still long for a richer home life -- a paradox visible in the Martha Stewart phenomenon, in the continuing popularity of women's service magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Ladies' Home Journal -- whose combined circulation of over 17 million is nearly twice the combined circulation of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report -- and the booming business of restorations, where onlookers get a hands-on view of domestic life as it flourished in past centuries. This book is about the ways home traditions passed from one generation to the next -- baking a birthday cake from scratch, cherishing family heirlooms, or discovering the satisfaction of piecing a quilt -- sustain our souls, especially in our ever more processed, synthetic world, where we buy "homemade" goods and fail to see the irony in that. Made from Scratch tells the story of the unsung heroines of the hearth, investigating the history of female domesticity and charting its cultural changes over centuries. Zimmerman traces the lives of her own family's homemakers -- from her tiny but indomitable grandmother, who managed a farm, strangled chickens with her bare hands, and sewed all the family clothing, to her mother, who rejected her country upbringing yet kept a fastidious suburban home where the gender divide stayed firmly in place, to her own experiences as a wife and mother weaned on the Women's Movement of the 1970s, with its emphatic view that housework was a dirty word and that the domestic sphere was to be fled rather than cherished. In this book Zimmerman questions the unexamined trade-off we have made in a shockingly brief time span, as we've "progressed" from home-raised chickens to frozen TV dinners to McNuggets from the food court at the mall. What is lost when we no longer engage, as individuals and as a community, in the ancient rituals of food, craft, and

Genres: Nonfiction, Food

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 22, 2003

About the author

Throughout her writing career Jean Zimmerman has published both nonfiction and fictional works that center around the changing role of women in America.

In Tailspin (Doubleday, 1995) she wrote about intrepid Navy fighter pilot Kara Hultgreen. Ballsy soccer players were the subject of Raising Our Athletic Daughters (Doubleday, 1998, with Gil Reavill). She covered heroic female homemakers in Made From Scratch (Free Press, 2003). The Women of the House (Harcourt, 2006) allowed Zimmerman to portray New Amsterdam fur trader extraordinaire Margaret Hardenbroeck. She brought larger-than-life beauty Edith Minturn out of obscurity in Love, Fiercely (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). She also created intrepid fictional heroines from earlier eras in The Orphanmaster (Viking, 2012) and Savage Girl (Viking, 2014).

To promote her books Zimmerman has appeared on “The Today Show,” NBC; “Good Morning America,” ABC; “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather”; “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio; “The Diane Rehm Show,” National Public Radio; “New York & Company With Leonard Lopate,” WNYC; “To the Best of our Knowledge,” Wisconsin Public Radio and others. She also spoken before audiences at historic sites, libraries, museums, book clubs and other venues.

An honors graduate of Barnard College, Zimmerman earned an MFA in writing from the Columbia University School of the Arts and published her poetry widely in literary magazines. Her awards and prizes include an Academy of American Poets Prize in poetry, 1985; a New York Foundation for the Arts grant in poetry, 1986; Books for a Better Life Award, finalist, 1998, for Raising Our Athletic Daughters; Washington Irving Book Selection of The Women of the House; Washington Irving Book Selection of The Orphanmaster; Westchester Library Association prize, 2007, for The Women of the House; Original Voices Selection, Borders, 2006 for The Women of the House.

She lives with her family in Westchester County, New York. Zimmerman’s blog, Blog Cabin, can be found at jeanzimmerman.com.

Reviews

[Melea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was not one that I could "inhale", however because I had to stop and think about what Jean Zimmerman had to say. Sometimes, I had to stop and DO something around my home. I must say, I am cooking more since I began this book. Although I don't have a family at home anymore, I decided that I was worth the time and effort to make good, nutritious, ingredient-controlled sustenence. Making and creating a home and what I always called a haven from the outside world is valuable work. I don't see that this is entirely being erased from the face of the earth as the author does, although I do see homemaking decreasing and devalued. I do agree with Ms. Zimmerman that creating a home is not necessarily a gender specific role, nor does it need to be done at the exclusion of other financially-compensated work. Cooking non-convenience foods, decorating, being involved with the fabric and needle arts, and other homemaking tasks are expressions of creativity, and caring in my extended family, and bring about treasured memories. Going out to a restaurant that probably won't be around in 20 years just doesn't have the same memory "power" that sitting around a table at home consuming home prepared foods for us.
OK, so this is one of my soapboxes, and probably always will be. I was living this life in the '80s and '90s. Over the past year, I have been slowly returning to that life. I enjoy it. I feel fulfilled and contented. Even though my daughter has a profession that involves long hours, she also comes home and prepares a delicious and nutritious meal for her man, and keeps her own home-fires burning. The environment in which she was raised influenced her, and became part of the happy woman she is today.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not what I expected. I was hoping for inspiring stories about women rediscovering the pleasures of the hearth - the satisfaction that comes from making a loaf of bread from scratch or the love that goes into making a homemade gift for a friend. While there was a little of that mixed in I felt that the majority of the time the author was trying to justify to herself and her readers that it's ok to be a modern woman and enjoy domestic arts.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a misleading title. A more accurate subtitle would be "The Rise and Fall of Home Cooking." Still, it had one well-researched chapter about the history of women making crafts, quilting, knitting, weaving, and so forth.

[raccoon reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It examines very clearly and in non academic way, women's roles in the home and kitchen. It begins with the earliest of times relating how the goddess of the hearth was revered and follows through time here and there until arriving to the turn of the century and settling firmly into a closer examination of the authors own lifetime (50s- today). It is both fascinating and though provoking. If you have any curiosity about the social transformation of women's roles in the home then you will probably like this book. But be forewarned- it is not a quick read. You will need to give yourself plenty of time to digest this one. I was particularly interested in the two chapters that discussed food and the evolution of recipes and foodways in our kitchens. I agreed with a lot (but not all) of what the author says, and that's okay.

I only have one criticism of the book. It is full of factual information indicating she did a hefty amount of serious research for this tome- this is good. Unfortunately, it wasn't until well over a 100 pages in and several unnecessary deaths of used sticky notes that I realized she had notes corresponding to these facts in the back of the book. All the way through I kept wondering why she would quote, paraphrase, and reference so many authors, books, etc. and not include footnotes! "Where are the footnotes!" I'd accuse. Oh, she has the foot notes in the back and although she has fancy numbers by each note, she does NOT put numbers in the actual body of her work. SO its sort of a hidden foot note. If I had known that there were footnotes I would have not stickied the book to death up until page 197. I can only assume that some one gave her the bad advice that having foot note numbers present in the body to correspond to the numbered notes in the back would look to "academic" and scare off certain readers, or perhaps she thought it just looked prettier. Who knows. Either way despite my moderate aggravation at her bad layout with the notes, I was exceptionally pleased with this book.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an interesting mix of historical information about the work of the home, and the journey of one woman to figure out what it all means to her in our modern, feminist society. I liked that this book made me think about my own life experiences as they relate to various aspects of home and the work done there. I could relate with the author's statement that, "I do my best, but I don't feel totally comfortable in the skin of my home." I think many women feel that way. Always wondering if we are doing the best things, establishing the best priorities, etc.
The last two or three chapters felt disjointed as she tried to cover too much history, but overall I thought it was a worthwhile read.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, so I tried not to exect anything. But I still ended up a little disappointed. I was hoping I would get inspiration to want to keep a better house. But it just didn't happen. Her chapter on housekeeping spent 20+ pages on how women have justified not keeping their house anymore, but only 3 pages on why we should.

That said, I loved the chapters on cooking and home crafts. They really made me want to be a better example for my children in both of those areas. And overall, despite the small disappointment, I liked it and it did inspire me to want to be a better person.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Someone wrote a review, and what she said were my thoughts exactly:

"This book was not what I expected. I was hoping for inspiring stories about women rediscovering the pleasures of the hearth - the satisfaction that comes from making a loaf of bread from scratch or the love that goes into making a homemade gift for a friend. While there was a little of that mixed in I felt that the majority of the time the author was trying to justify to herself and her readers that it's okay to be a modern woman and enjoy domestic arts."

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zimmerman grapples with being a feminist and simultaneously enjoying washing the dishes. As I do not feel any particular angst about the fact that I like to wash dishes, and indeed take pride and pleasure in homemaking, I felt the book often descended into tediousness as she belabored her point every few pages.

[Rae · Rating 2 out of 5]

Our modern technologies and fast paced lifestyles have contributed to the demise of the craft of homemaking...swept them under the carpet, so to speak. The author, when she isn't off on a tangent, discusses this problem and what we can do to bring back those arts.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this book. I read it for a class of mine and have since read it again. It has such great truths in it and reminds me of the wonderful value of choosing to be a homemaker, and that it's not a bad thing! A definitely for anyone who wants to find/remember the value in homemaking!

[Torieqwq · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well researched, very readable book about the Domestic Arts. The chapters are distinct, so that I could read one, put the book down and think about what I had read, rather than having to race to the next chapter

[Shayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring, and an interesting view of the domestic scene from a feminist. Made me think differently about my mother and mother-in-law, along with my own meager domestic habits. Changed my mind on a few things, too.

[Gil Reavill · Rating 5 out of 5]

My wife's mid-life soul-plumbing book

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just ok.

[Andrea Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't read it because she's too much of a feminist and it was making me grumpy instead of enjoying it.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating!