Sqwertz wrote:

> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/*******-cookbook
>
> How ******* Luminaries Put Together a Groundbreaking Cookbook
>
> "Whoever Said Dykes Cant Cook? combined art, food, and fundraising.
>
> BY RACHEL HOPE CLEVES
> APRIL 26, 2021
>
> "IN THE UNITED STATES, WOMENS groups have published fundraising
> cookbooks since the Civil War. Carefully compiled booklets filled
> with recipes can be powerful money-making tools for all kinds of
> causes. So when Maya Contenta and Victoria Ramstetter published a
> fundraising cookbook in 1983, it was not unusual in terms of
> strategy. But one glance at the title makes it obvious that Contenta
> and Ramstetter were indeed breaking new ground. The Whoever Said
> Dykes Cant Cook? Cookbook, published in support of the Cincinnati
> ******* Activist Bureau, ushered in a new genre of fundraising
> cookbooks for queer organizations.
>
> Whoever Said Dykes Cant Cook? was actually not the first *******
> cookbook. That honor belongs to The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954),
> a memoir-with-recipes about Toklass relationship with the modernist
> writer Gertrude Stein. Whoever Said Dykes Cant Cook? was also
> preceded by The Political Palate (1980), a cookbook published by the
> *******-feminist Bloodroot Collective restaurant in Bridgeport,
> Connecticut. Contenta and Ramstetter included recipes from The
> Political Palate in their own cookbook, and followed the restaurants
> lead in only publishing vegetarian recipes.
>
> But Contenta and Ramstetter appear to have been the first to publish
> a community cookbook in support of a *** or ******* organization.
> Attempts had been made before. Amazons, Inc., a ******* community
> group in Philadelphia, floated the idea of publishing a cookbook as a
> fundraiser in 1978, but the project never came to fruition. And the
> International ******* Information Service, based in Amsterdam,
> published a metaphorical €œcookbook€� in 1982, but its recipes focused
> on how to organize and coordinate a social movement, not on how to
> cook.
>
> For Contenta and Ramstetter, their passion for food was part of their
> advocacy. Contenta had worked as a cook at a ******* vegetarian
> restaurant in Chicago for the previous four years, before relocating
> to Cincinnati to manage the feminist collective Crazy Ladies
> Bookstore. €œI love to eat, I love to cook and even better I love to
> share these, and other good times with my sweet wimmin friends,€�
> Contenta wrote in her back-cover bio. Ramstetter was a poet,
> novelist, and essayist, whose column €œIs Sex a Political Act?€�
> appeared in each issue of the Cincinnati ******* Activist Bureaus
> official publication, Dinah. Imagery of food suffused her writing, as
> in her poem €œ******* Epic,€� published in the Berkeley-based *******
> arts periodical Sinister Wisdom, where she described a lover who
> smelled of €œoranges and sex.€�
>
> A booming ******* alternative-publishing scene in the early 1980s was
> critical to the Ramstetters and Contentas enterprise. Looking for
> book content, they placed advertisements in WomaNews, Big Mama Rag,
> and the New Womens Times. The notices, published in the spring and
> summer of 1982, asked readers to send in recipes, drawings, poems,
> jokes and aphrodisiacs. The advertisements worked. €œWe never expected
> to receive so many contributions€”from near and far,€� the editors
> remarked in the cookbooks introduction. Many entries came from
> leading figures in ******* arts and letters.
>
> Tee Corinne, whose photographs of female nudes could be found hanging
> on the walls of many a ******* household in the early "80s,
> contributed a recipe for €œZana-bread€� (gluten-free, dairy-free,
> inspired by a friend with food allergies), and a poem titled €œThe
> flours that Bloom in the Spring.€� She also sent in a recipe titled
> €œJeannette H. Foster Memorial Breakfast,€� named for the *******
> bibliographer who had spent 40 years researching and compiling the
> critical text Sex Variant Women in Literature.
>
> In fact, Ramstetter and Contenta dedicated the cookbook to Foster,
> who had recently died of old age. Before her passing, Corinne had
> gone to visit Foster in her nursing home and was €œdelighted by her
> still active eye for attractive women.€�
>
> Artists Diane Ayott, Judith Masur, Zana, and Jennifer Weston all
> contributed sketches, resulting in a richly illustrated cookbook.
> Ayott also sent in recipes for vegetarian fettuccine and eggplant
> casserole (€œa real filler!€�). Weston sent in a sketch of a woman
> standing in the kitchen holding a wooden spoon carved into a heart,
> with a heart-shaped cake on a cake stand. Masur drew the cover,
> featuring a curvy woman standing at a cinder-block table laid with a
> salad and a cake, holding a birthday card, and being kissed on each
> cheek by two more curvy €œwimmin.€� The cover captured the books
> spirit, treating cooking as a sensual, romantic, embodied pleasure.
> . ******* writers and activists also mailed in contributions.
> Barbara Grier, former editor of The Ladder, the official publication
> of the ******* civil rights group The Daughters of Bilitis and
> founder of the Naiad Press, offered up her recipe for lasagna. Gayle
> Rubin and Pat (now Patrick) Califia, leading theorists and writers in
> the sex-positive wing of the ******* feminist movement, contributed a
> recipe for €œNoodles with Hot Peanut Sauce.€� Activist and writer
> Barbara Deming, a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, didnt send
> in a recipe, but she did lend a typewriter to the editors.
>
> Many of the recipes were selected for their suitability to be served
> up at what Contenta and Ramstetter called €œthose sensual, magnificent
> feasts: ******* potlucks.€� During the 1970s and "80s, ******* groups
> frequently hosted potlucks as community-building events. But not all
> recipes were so practical in spirit. Some contributors took a more
> playful approach. Rochelle H. DuBois, an author and board-member of
> the Feminist Writers Guild, contributed a recipe for an €œAngel cake.€�
> The ingredients were €œ1 angel, 1 dream, ¾ full moon, 1 night, 2 brown
> eyes, 10-12 chocolate roses, ½ bottle of champagne, 1 kiss, [and] a
> secret meeting-place.€�
>
> Despite the outpouring of support, The Whoever Said Dykes Cant Cook?
> Cookbook wasnt a huge bestseller, and the editors only printed 300
> copies. But it did set a precedent. Other queer organizations
> followed Contenta and Ramstetters example in the years that
> followed. The San Francisco *** and ******* Congregation Shaar Zahav
> published Out of our Kitchen Closets: San Francisco *** Jewish
> Cooking in 1987 as a fundraiser for the San Francisco AIDS
> Foundation. (A recipe for €œLatkes nouvelle California€� called for
> blue corn tortilla crumbs, and suggested garnishes of hamachi sushi,
> kiwi, raspberry chutney, and mint yogurt.) San Franciscos
> ***-affirming Metropolitan Community Church followed with its own
> community cookbook in 1995. And the tradition lives on today, judging
> from a recent call for submissions for a cookbook to raise money for
> queer families affected by COVID-19, put out by Anchochaba
> Publishing, a Chickasaw two spirit-owned publisher.
>
> The editors and contributors to The Whoever Said Dykes Cant Cook?
> Cookbook never stopped contributing to queer arts and letters. After
> briefly relocating to Florida and launching The Sea Wench Times,
> Ramstetter returned to Cincinnati and helped found the Ohio *******
> Archives, in its first home above the (now-defunct) Crazy Ladies
> Bookstore. Meanwhile, Contenta managed the bookstore and remained
> involved in the Cincinnati art scene.
>
> As for the contributors, Gayle Rubin published €œThinking Sex€� in
> 1984, a foundational text in sexuality studies, and soon after
> co-founded the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. Patrick
> Califia, who now identifies as a trans man, became a leading figure
> in the BDSM scene and published countless newspaper columns, short
> stories, and novels, while Diane Ayott and Judith Masur went on to
> thriving art practices. As groundbreaking as it was, Whoever Said
> Dykes Cant Cook? ended up as a single delicious chapter in the lives
> of these artists and activists..."

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