In the Long Island Sound , the world ’s fastest nuclear poor boy was cruise 200 metrical unit beneath the wave . Sirens and horns whined as the crowd tested the torpedo ’s alarms . As common , the USS Skipjack seethe with body process . Sailors walk purposefully through stringent passageways , their buzz snub skimming the ceilings . That was n’t the only buzz in the air : discussion on the ship was that Clementine Paddleford was touring the ship’s galley .
It was March 26 , 1960 , and after a year of wrangle , the U.S. Navy had finally given the 61 - twelvemonth - old diary keeper permission to board the Skipjack . Now she was in the submarine ’s capsule kitchen , a cape around her shoulders and a notebook computer in mitt , scoping out the 54 - square - foot room where cook prepared virtually 300 meals a day for the crew . They flurry about , making strawberry shortcake , choice rib , and endless pots of coffee from component pack together to keep open space . Though she was no stranger to unusual kitchens , the endeavor was nerve - racking . Paddleford would later pen that as she boarded the ship loaded with torpedoes , she ’d been “ clothed in gooseflesh . ”
But she had n’t worked so intemperately just to walk off empty - handed — she’d get her story , along with a brownie recipe that could tip 80 . Whether Paddleford was inspecting a kitchen at the bottom of the ocean or pilot a plane across the area in search of fresh delicacies , she was a fearless pioneer , intent on expose tarradiddle that would resonate with the American public .
grow up on a farm in Stockdale , Kansas , taught Paddleford to appreciate the difficulties of ushering food from field to plate — if you crave pork barrel , you needed to kill one of the pigs out back — and her mother instilled a strong oeuvre ethic , monish , “ Never grow a wishing bone , daughter , where your moxie ought to be . ”
As Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris recite in their comprehensive 2009 biography , Hometown Appetites : The Story of Clementine Paddleford , the Forgotten Food Writer Who chronicle How America Ate , Paddleford was ambitious and nosy , spending her mellow schoolhouse years writing for the local newspaper . She would channelize to the local train terminus at 6 a.m. after her job to gage out tale . One first light , the 15 - year - old spotted a local businessman boarding a string with a woman who was n’t his married woman . It could have been the scoop of her young career , but the story never ran . Her Father of the Church would n’t let her file it .
Little else could break her . She majored in industrial news media at Kansas State , where she was an editor at both the college newspaper and the local paper she reported for as a teenager . All the while , she earned money freelance for Kansas newspapers and farm magazines .
After graduating , Paddleford pack her bag with notepads and pencil and left Manhattan , Kansas , for Manhattan , New York . As Alexander and Harris excuse , she worked feverishly , freelance for The Sun , The New York Telegram , and paper back in Kansas . She made $ 8 per Sun story , writing puff piece like “ Girl use a Fake Limp to Get Seat . ” Despite her motivation , she struggled to make ends meet and supplemented her income with babysitting , await table at a seminary , save jam releases for an interior intriguer , and working at the Gimbels umbrella counter .
Paddleford felt like a failure . “ Sometimes I fairly hate New York , ” she wrote to her mother . In the outflow of 1922 , she go to a marriage in Chicago , and within two week , she ’d made the Windy City her Modern home . Paddleford quick landed two jobs — with the Agricultural News Service and the Milk Market News — making a name for herself cover everything from price - fixing scandals to lading come in all the way from China .
Within two year , New York had point out . The editor program of Farm & Firesidemagazine call for Paddleford to be the women ’s editor program , and she hark back to the metropolis . She educate a gabby , important representative , reaching out to readers directly for write up . They reached back : answer increased 179 percentage during her tenure . Unlike other editors , she refused to be chain to her desk , shlep onto Midwest farm run by women to find out how they lived . On another assignment , she reported from the rest home of famous flapper Clara Bow .
In 1930 , Paddleford joined the Christian Herald , the Carry Nation ’s largest spiritual newspaper , and pick up the church kitchen heartbeat . She wrote increasingly about food : how to brew a skilful cupful of burnt umber , how Dickens serve Christmas pudding . At the meter , most nutrient composition was wry , myopic , and scientific . diary keeper explained the benefit of food and how to appraise ingredients for recipes . Paddleford ’s authorship was different . She focused on the people and stories behind recipes rather of just the recipes themselves . Though her routine of phrase would verge on overwrought through the years — mushrooms were “ pixie umbrellas , ” the sunshine did n’t rise when it could “ flame into a new day”—her descriptions were so vivid that readers could almost savor each saucer . She tapped into their emotions , too : “ We all have hometown appetite , ” she say . “ Every other someone is a bundle of longing for the simplicities of well perceptiveness once enjoy on the farm or the hometown they leave behind . ” Her words made hoi polloi think about solid food not only as nutriment but as an experience . Then , just as her career was blossom , her voice became raspy .
Paddleford was a no - meaninglessness farm girl . She was n’t going to visit the doctor over a measly sore pharynx . But as hebdomad authorize , her huskiness did n’t improve . The pain became so unbearable that she finally caved and confabulate New York Hospital . The doctor had spoiled news : The 33 - year - previous had laryngeal cancer .
Paddleford was devastated . She needed her interpreter . How could she do her caper as a reporter without talking to citizenry ? The timing felt particularly cruel . eventually on the cusp of a national career , she was about to fall behind what made her particular .
Doctors gave her two options . They could stop the Cancer the Crab by removing her larynx and vocal cords , result her ineffectual to speak . Or she could undergo a fond laryngectomy , a unexampled and unpredictable routine that removed part of her larynx . In this case , she would put on the line a lapse .
There was only one response for Paddleford : She needed to speak . Surgeons removed part of her voice box and inserted a lasting tracheotomy electron tube . For the rest of her life , she ’d have to breathe through a hole in her throat — but she could talk . To speak , she had to press a button on the side of her throat to allow air to pass through her mouth .
Though it took her a yr to speak above a whisper , within six calendar month of surgery she was back to body of work , a dim velvet palm wrapped around her neck to hide the hole . Her humiliated , grating voice did n’t stop her from reporting with her typical dynamism . She ’d afterwards say it was a blessing in camouflage : “ masses never leave me . ”
In March 1936 , she took over the New York Herald Tribune ’s mart column . She wake before dawning and pluck to the markets to file transcript about produce prices . It was n’t her creative aspiration , but Paddleford see it as a strategic move — the opportunity to spell about solid food full sentence .
The decision was n’t but bear out of a passion for practiced eating — it was also business savvy . In the waning yr of the Great Depression , Paddleford want a steadfast income from a beat she recognise would keep people interested even in concentrated times . Brainstorming what people needed most , she wound up with shoes and food . And evidently , she liked food better .
That bet paid off . Her singular voice was a perfect convulsion for a regular column . Reader response most tripled in her first year . shortly she was the report ’s nutrient editor , and by 1940 , she ’d become the solid food editor program of the nationwide syndicate Sunday magazine This Week .
Her work was game alter . Paddleford was the first American writer to come near nutrient with as much obedience and research as other journalists did with the established serious topics . She used it as a fomite to talk about the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and the New York World ’s Fair . When Winston Churchill inspect Missouri in 1946 , most reporters parsed his Iron Curtain speech . Paddleford wrote about the sideboard menu .
She jaunt the country , looking for good nutrient and good history in the cooking mickle at tramp conventions and the pantries at governors ’ mansions , in the kitchens of fine restaurants in New Orleans , Louisiana , and the ship’s galley of an 85 - foot yacht sailing the Gulf of Mexico . She cajoled kitchen enigma out of everyone from actress Joan Crawford to caterer at the Ritz - Carlton . By the tardy 1940s , she was file stories from sugar shacks in Vermont , Salmon River cannery in Alaska , and lagger homes in Florida , travel more than 50,000 mi a year as a “ roving intellectual nourishment editor . ” It was more than a full - time business : Paddleford work 12 - hour days , protrude a pillar each day at 5 a.m. palisade by a personal library of 1,900 cookbooks , she guzzle coffee tree and , to save clock time , type in a individualized stenography . ( A secretary interpret it . ) When she visited the power , she take her cats . She did n’t just move to do her reporting — she flew a Piper Cub aeroplane . Between 1948 and 1960 , she log more than 800,000 miles , enough mileage to span the world 31 sentence . In her secret life story , she kept track of her male admirer according to what they feed . She almost never cooked at home . One of her two amah prepared her dinner party , which she ’d run through at her desk .
She was an educator , discover the country to new dish antenna . And she was pragmatic : During World War II , she tested turtleneck , beaver , bear , and whale as substitutes for rationed beef cattle , and she promoted American attempt at European tall mallow . ( Her recipe , however , call for Cheez - Its and dismiss mushroom cloud soup more often than they call for earthnut and fresh lobster . )
The employment pay off . Paddleford earned a wage of $ 25,000 — about $ 250,000 today . More important , she became America ’s keeper of regional nutrient , the first individual to celebrate the nation ’s culinary art as uniquely multicultural . “ say me where your gran do from and I can tell you how many kinds of pie you help for Thanksgiving , ” she wrote in 1960 .
At Paddleford ’s height in the tardy fifties , roughly 12 million home read her column . In 1960 , she published How America Eats , a collecting of regional formula and story . It was enormously successful and function through several print runs . By then , other writers had begun to stake claims in Paddleford ’s territory . Food committal to writing was now a logical enterprise , and citizenry want more .
But when she fail in 1967 , the musical style she create draw a blank her . Her name was eclipse by new television food personalities ( Julia Child ’s The French Chefwent on air in 1963 ) . By 1969 , her book was out of print . The work that had consumed her life was run on by other writer who recalled her name only dimly — and as years passed , not at all .
Still , Paddleford ’s work survives in the many magazine publisher , books , and TV shows now devoted to food , as well as in the realization that taste , acculturation , and the diversity of America are all vividly reflected in what we eat . Paddleford did n’t just discover that . She embraced it , wind account with a voice that doctors once feared would never speak again . Its influence has been heard , and has helped nourish people , all over the world .
