MOORHEAD– Karla Knutson, a professor of English at Concordia College, gave a Centennial Scholars lecture in Frida Nilsen on Tuesday, Jan. 30.
The lecture titled, “Food, Gender, and Culture in Central North Dakota: Church Cookbooks and Women’s Lives in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” discussed Knutson’s research into a 1985 cookbook The Joy of Sharing from Velva, North Dakota. The Joy of Sharing was created by the Oak Valley American Lutheran Church in Velva and comprised of recipes submitted by women in the church to share with the community.
Knutson began her lecture by describing what her inspiration was for her research project. She explained that she owned a copy of The Joy of Sharing, and that it had once belonged to her grandmother. While searching for a recipe for scalloped corn, she came across a recipe for microwaved bacon-wrapped liver.
“It was a recipe so far removed from my culinary expectations that it seemed like I’d unearthed a time capsule,” Knutson said.
She wanted to learn more about the recipe’s origins, which had been contributed by her mother, and that sparked an interest in the creation of The Joy of Sharing and community cookbooks, Knutson said.
Knutson applied for a Centennial Scholars grant to research her project, which included cooking recipes found in The Joy of Sharing, writing about the experiences on her blog and interviewing several cookbook contributors from Velva.
Knutson’s lecture took the audience through the creation of the cookbook, its contents, which included recipes such as “saucy beef boats” and “big boy pudding,” as well as provided background information on some of the contributors to The Joy of Sharing.
“My project is intended to provide clarity and context. Illustrating why these recipes are as instructive as they are and illustrating the cultural forces shaping lives at a particular historical moment in a particular historical location,” Knutson said.
In addition to highlighting some of the recipes in The Joys of Sharing, Knutson’s project explored the role gender plays in cooking, and the perceptions that come with it.
“Cooking and baking are both work and pleasure, labor and leisure, and drudgery and art,” Knutson said.
Knutson said the genre of community cookbooks offers the perfect opportunity to circulate women’s stories and the constraints placed upon them. Community cookbook contributors are typically women, and readers, cooks and scholars of such books get the chance to peer into their lives through their recipes.
“I want to highlight that much iconography of femininity and motherhood relies on obscuring the reality that cooking is labor,” said Knutson.
Caroline Becker, a sophomore in attendance at the lecture, said she appreciated how Knutson pointed out the effort that goes into cooking and baking and validated the feelings of women.
“Dr. Knutson’s acknowledgement of the fact that cooking is time-consuming and laborious, despite the perpetuated idea that it is simple, felt very validating for my own personal experiences. It was refreshing to hear this argument, and it gave me more respect for the people, oftentimes women, who came before me and the unfair expectations they lived through. It was a position on cooking that is rarely talked about, and as she explained has very damaging consequences,” Becker said.
Frida Nilsen was filled with students, faculty, and members of the surrounding community who had all turned out to see Knutson’s presentation.
“At first, I was intrigued by the topic because it seemed to be an interdisciplinary take on topics that I typically wouldn’t cross over. But the relation of food, in the form of cookbooks, and the cultural and societal standards that it held was super interesting,” said Hannah Paysse, a senior at Concordia.
Knutson said she plans to cook her way through The Joys of Sharing and that her project is not over. Knutson intends to turn her project into a book, which she will be working on next year as she takes a sabbatical from Concordia. People can learn more about her work on her project’s blog at blog.cord.edu/karlaknutson/cookbook-project/ or through her new monthly features column in the Fargo Forum, entitled “Vintage Dishes”.
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