"the Smithsonian Institution is not, and has never been, under the authority of the Executive Branch"

I’m so so enjoying your recap of this

Ahhh would love to see you if I can kick this cold in time! Keep me posted.

I was teaching Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook book tonight and she said this almost verbatim.

Yes yes yes—their correspondence is so good and such an amazing snapshot of how Julia clapped back at her conservative upbringing. Great piece!

I love that book, and wrote it up in the scope of the crime novels that do dining/discernment right: www.saveur.com/culture/food...

I teach it in my Writing Cookbooks class, in the same unit as “Ad Hoc at Home,” to prompt discussions of access and “easy” cooking. Masterwork.

I think it's because Bracken was brave enough to write an anti-cookbook that no one has truly emulated since then. (I wrote about this briefly in my Substack on the NYT list): frenchfriesandmartinis.substack.com/p/what-is-a-...