Sarah Archer

Yes.

And it seems like maybe some of the most enduring inventions and the ones that we end up liking the most are the ones that people come up with when they don't have access to the things that they're used to or when we have to innovate or when we have to figure out how to make something out of out of almost nothing.

Yeah, because it kind of it spurs a kind of inventiveness and kind of out of the box thinking that is unusual.

Would you like to talk about TV dinners?

I can.

And I'm thinking of like the international frozen meals thing that you sent me.

Oh, do you mean Foreign Flair?

Yes, I mean Foreign Flair.

Okay, because that's not Frozen.

Actually, do you want to look at the cover of that?

Yeah, that would be great.

So here's the cover, and I chose an interior spread.

And this is published in 1963, which is the same year that The French Chef premieres on WGBH Boston, interestingly.

And Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks are like they're in every secondhand store you've ever been in.

Like there's the kind of red and white check covered binder cookbook.

That's the standard.

And then they published a ton of like dozens and dozens of these kind of more slim cookbooks.

volumes that were like hors d'oeuvres or desserts or Christmas cookies or meals for two.

And it was, interestingly, they're not individually authored.

So I did a little digging into this and the Better Homes and Gardens sort of creative office in Des Moines, Iowa and part of Meredith Publishing were just cranking these out.