KITCHEN CONVERSATION: #3

 

RECIPE FOR ANGIE DICKINSON COOKIES

Preheat over to 350 degrees

Combine in a bowl 1 and 1/4 cups of flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of either allspice or cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

In a mixing bowl

2 sticks of softened butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

Once the sugar/butter mixture has been blended with the paddle attachment on the mixer fold in

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Once that has been mixed together remove from mixer stand and combine in

2 cups of oats

1 cup of dried cranberries

1/2 to 1 cup of chopped pecans

Grind in cracked pepper to taste and mix

Spoon out onto a cookie sheet approximately six cookies per sheet

Cook for 16 minutes

To read more about Cookie Mueller click here

Raymond Foye, who along with Francesco Clemente published some of Cookie’s work as a writer at their Hanuman Books,  has a theory about the oral quality of her writing by comparing it to the early works of William Burroughs. “When Bill would write,” says Foye,  “he would get up and walk around the room and do the voices and act it out. They were very much routines. I thought Cookie was kind of working in that same style.”  Writer Chris Krause – also a  performance and video artist who has  satirized gender politics and favored literary tropes by blending theatrical techniques with Dada, literary criticism, social activism, and performance art – says of Mueller, “somehow Cookie could translate her presence as an actress and performer into her writing. It was such an effortless segue between life and her presence as a writer. A manifesto for life.”

With these cooking videos, I am trying to translate my presence as a writer into being a performative cook.

To read more about Angie Dickinson, click here to read the Sam Kashner story in Vanity Fair.  In this article, she talks about beauty: “I wasn’t considered beautiful, not to the executives. I think I was just too unusual. I didn’t fit. Besides, it’s hard to define beauty, but I think one of its qualities is a generosity, a reaching out. I think I had that.” She recalls that, in the l950s, “everybody looked alike. Our hair was the same. I looked like Lana Turner sometimes; sometimes I looked like Esther Williams—the dress down to here, the ugliest fucker! It wasn’t until the 60s you were allowed some individuality.”

  • Kevin Sessums is the author of two New York Times bestselling memoirs, Mississippi Sissy and I Left It on the Mountain.

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