Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe

“What shall we read before bed? Georgia O’Keeffe was a fan of cookbooks, telling her young assistant Margaret Wood that they were ‘enjoyable nighttime company, providing brief and pleasant reading.’ Among the culinary volumes in her Abiquiu, New Mexico ranch home were The Fanny Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook, The Joy of Cooking, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit and Cook Right, Live Longer. Also Pickups and Cheerups from the Waring Blender, a 21-page pamphlet featuring blended cocktails, that now rests in Yale University’s Beinecke Library, along with the rest of the contents of O’Keeffe’s recipe box, acquired the night before it was due to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. (Some of the images on this page come courtesy of Sotheby’s.) In addition to recipes—inscribed by the artist’s own hand in ink from a fountain pen, typed by assistants, clipped from magazines and newspapers, or in promotional booklets such as the one published by the Waring Products Company—the box housed manuals for O’Keeffe’s kitchen appliances. The booklet that came with her pressure cooker includes a spattered page devoted to cooking fresh veggies, a testament to her abiding interest in eating healthfully. O’Keeffe had a high regard for salads, garden fresh herbs, and simple, locally sourced food. Today’s buddha bowl craze is, however, ‘the opposite of what she would enjoy’ according to Wood, author of the books Remembering Miss O’Keeffe: Stories from Abiquiu and A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe. … An example of what she did like: Roasted lemon chicken with fried potatoes, a green salad featuring lettuce and herbs from her garden, and steamed broccoli. Also yogurt made with the milk of local goats, whole wheat flour ground on the premises, watercress plucked from local streams, and home canning. Most of these labor-intensive tasks fell to her staff, but she maintained a keen interest in the proceedings. Not for nothing did the friend who referred Wood for the job warn her it would ‘require a lot of patience because Miss O’Keeffe was extremely particular.’ The jottings from the recipe box don’t really convey this exacting nature. …”
Open Culture
NY Times: Own the Recipes of Georgia O’Keeffe
Guardian – Carrot soup, chicken enchiladas and brownies: cooking with Georgia O’Keeffe
amazon

Georgia O’Keeffe cutting herbs, New Mexico 1960 by Tony Vaccaro