“There’s no definition for the type of cooking that butches do,” asserts Nel Ward. There are, however, butches who cook, and Ward, her partner Sue Hardesty, and their friend, novelist Lee Lynch, have gathered a truckful of recipes from them into The Butch Cook Book
The idea came about when Lynch, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was joking with some other butch friends about how a butch cookbook would contain nothing but variations on boxed macaroni and cheese. Discussions with Hardesty and Ward (self-identified as butch and femme, respectively) later convinced her there was more to butch cooking than met the eye—or the taste buds.
Lynch affirms her initial concerns were unfounded. “Some of the butches, as you can see from the book, are obviously gourmet cooks, and some of us make fried egg sandwiches. . . . My rule is if it’s more than three ingredients, forget it. I know there are a lot of butches out there like that, but I’m sure there are a lot of femmes out there like that, too, especially the ones who’ve been lucky enough to be with butches who like to cook.”
The recipes include hearty dishes like Blackened Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo and Guinness Beef Stew, and ones that in name alone reveal a bit of the butches’ lives, such as Meatloaf from the Woodshop and Three Methods of Green Bean Preparation (Stone Butch, Soft Butch, and Green Beans for Butches Hoping for Sex on the First Date). There are also a bevy of sweets, including Melting Marshmallow Heart Buns to “impress that femme in your life!”
The “Butch Basics” section does include a few simple and stereotypical butch creations, like Cheese Melts and Hot Dog on a Raft. One reads this section not so much for the culinary details but to realize, if this is your cooking style, that you are not alone.
Overall, the book has the feel of the homespun cookbooks compiled by church groups and PTAs, a way for members of a community to share their good cooking with friends, complete with chatty asides.
While most of the contributors are not widely known, they include a few recognizable names like women’s music pioneer Tret Fure and comedian Kate Clinton. Clinton, more a jokester than a cook, offered only “air popcorn with Pam Spray to hold the salt,” but this led the editors to an excursus on various butch comedians.
Ward, a retired librarian who now spearheads the American Library Association’s Rainbow List of LGBT-inclusive children’s books, says of the contributors, “If there was any unity among them—and I’m not sure this leaves femmes out—all the butches love to cook for their women. That was important to them for romance, for a family.” She and Hardesty agree that cooking can be a significant part of building relationships, perhaps more so for lesbians than straight couples. Straight men, for the most part, “don’t expect to be part of the community cooking,” explains Ward. Two women are more likely to share the work, she says, even if one takes a predominant role.
All three editors stress that while some may think butch-femme identities are remnants of our lesbian past, they remain relevant. Hardesty notes that when she worked in education, “no way I could be nearly as butch as I wanted to be. . . . But it’s like a lot of them say: butch never went away, it just kind of gets quiet at times.”
Lynch, whose novels often feature butch and femme characters, observes, “It’s not a historical appellation, it’s very current. . . . Just the response to The Butch Cookbook. We had a wide range of ages and certainly a lot of butches out there.”
The authors have high goals for the book. Lynch explains, “I hope it will cross cultural barriers and people of every persuasion will use it as a tool for cooking, but I also hope it will be a cultural ambassador and educate lesbians about who we are and who we were and where we come from. . . . Having a funny, intelligent, and useful book like this might help someone feel more comfortable with their sexuality, or a family member’s sexuality.”
As she writes in her introduction, “It humanizes butches for those who have feared and rejected us and it puts the sex in the concept of homosexual into perspective. Finally we can tell you: this is what lesbians do, we cook.”
Ward, Hardesty, and Lynch are already soliciting recipes for a second (not necessarily butch) cookbook. Hardesty wrote to me in an e-mail: “Much of this one will be focused on family, i.e., couples cooking together, mothers and grandmothers cooking for their children, children cooking with mothers, and so on.” If you want to submit a recipe, you may do so through their Web site.
(While The Butch Cookbook isn’t about parenting per se, food forms a large part of most parents’ lives, so I thought it was relevant. I had interviewed one of the editors, Nel Ward, in her role as head of the American Library Association’s Rainbow Project of LGBT-inclusive children’s books. She was kind enough to send me a copy of the cookbook. Bay Windows’ arts editor Brian Jewell then suggested running parallel articles on this and Cooking Doesn’t Have to be a Drag, which is, as you may guess, a compilation of recipes by drag queens. Read his review of the latter here. Thanks to Brian for the idea and also for the title of my piece. Originally published in Bay Windows, August 28, 2008.)
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i will check this book out . i am a home body but not domesticated. cant cook even boiled rice. i guess its worth a look even though i am single right now. its true i would like to cook for my lady but my cooking is so bad the dog wont it eat.