I wrote about Paddleford last March when I posted the recipe for Ruth Thornton’s Stuffed Peppers.

Some years ago I took an online class, Writing American Food. Among the food and restaurant critics, cooks and authors the course covered was the “first food journalist,” Clementine Paddleford (1898-1967). She was a hoot. While based in New York, she traveled the county to discover “how America eats”– even went so far as to become a pilot and buy her own small plane so she could get to remote places.

Her book, How America Eats (1960) sounded so interesting we bought it, and from it Mr. Big Food culled a lot of great recipes for his Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide. I’ll be making MRS. HAVDU’S HUNGARIAN MEAT BALLS and SELMA’S SCALLOPED POTATOES for supper this evening.Both of these recipes come from Clementine’s trip to Florida visit the “modern gypsy queens who cook in trailer kitchens.”

Here’s Clementine’s introduction to the scalloped potato recipe:

“One can’t talk about cooking in Florida and overlook our modern gypsy queens who cook in trailer kitchens. Trailer parks cover hundreds of acres and each park is a model town in itself with a manager-mayor, recreation hall, garden club, swimming pool.

 “How do these trailer cooks cook? With a bit of conniving, it was arranged for me to visit with the women in the Bell Haven Park in north-western Miami.

 “I couldn’t believe my eyes! No wonder two million Americans have adopted the mobile way of life. I don’t know what I expected to see, certainly not three-legged gypsy pots over open fires. Yet not what I saw—efficient, compact little kitchens designed for easy cooking, for effortless work. Most of the trailers I looked into, half a hundred at least, have automatic dishwashers, garbage disposers, eye-level ovens, double sinks, huge refrigerators, automatic washing machines. Trailer cooks have it better than kitchenette cooks. But like the gypsies of old, one-dish meals are preferred, done top-stove or in the oven depending on the weather.

“First stop was to visit park manager Frederick J. Bird and his wife Selma. They lived in a thirty-six-foot carrier—three rooms, over seven feet wide, wall to wall; two porch enclosures, north side, south side. Spaciousness is the first impression on entering the living room, efficiency next, then the luxuriousness of the furnishings. There were wall-to-wall carpet, built-in television, radio, foldaway tables, comfortable sofa, easy chairs, complete electrical equipment, including air conditioner. But I came to see the kitchen. Mrs. Bird stood in the center of her workroom and pivoted a half turn in each direction to show me that she could reach sink, range, refrigerator, work counter and cupboards and never take a step. “No bend, no stoop, no squat,” she said. Mrs. Bird had a job in the city, so like any career woman, she planned supper menus that get together in a jiffy. Her Sunday dinners are more elaborate. A favorite is a three-dish meal: fried chicken, scalloped potatoes, this from her Norwegian mother, and a green vegetable salad. Fresh fruit for dessert; add a beverage and dinner is served.”

What she has to say about the Havdu lifestyle below.

“Mr. and Mrs. George Havdu of Plainfield, New Jersey, leave their twelve-room stand-still home in mid-January to enjoy Florida’s semi-tropical winter. The two children are taken along and enrolled for the spring term of school in Miami. The Havdu trailer is three-and-a-half room size with two bedrooms, with combination living room, dinette and kitchen, with enclosed all-aluminum patio. Mrs. Havdu calls cooking her recreation. Her husband is Hungarian and just to please him she makes this meat-ball casserole, the recipe one of his mother’s.”

Recipes tomorrow.