OP: Alcatraz Women's Club Cook Book
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Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, San Francisco, 1995. Staple bound paperback. Near Fine.
In addition to those living incarcerated on Alcatraz Island were the employees of the prison and their families. It is a bizarre juxtaposition of very different but related circumstances between those isolated within the prison walls and those isolated without, especially with the added context that those on the outside had the advantage of slaking their solitude by establishing a variety of social clubs.
The Alcatraz Women’s Club Cook Book was first issued in the 1950s and sold to raise funds for Halloween and Christmas parties, Sunday School events, and other festivities. Reproduced in 1995, the cookbook—then sold on behalf of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy for the preservation of the shuttered prison and surrounding island—resembles any other community cookbook of the period, just one representing an unusual sort of community.
You’ll find Mrs. Olaf Hansen’s Swedish meatballs; Mrs. Bettsy Clark’s tuna fish casserole; Jean Turner’s ground beef-stuffed peppers; Mrs. Viola Delmore’s barbecue spare ribs and sauerkraut; Mrs. Mildred Kaeppel’s wilted leaf lettuce, tossed in hot bacon fat; Mrs. Estelle Fisher’s surprise berry cobbler; and Mrs. Esther Faulk’s grandma’s fruitcake. Other than the introduction, there is no hint as to the environment in which the recipes were compiled.
Our copy is a Near Fine, staple bound paperback of the 1995 edition. An intriguing souvenir.
