By Nancy Pollard
After owning one of the best cooking stores in the US for 47 years—La Cuisine: The Cook’s Resource in Alexandria, Virginia—Nancy Pollard writes Kitchen Detail, a blog about food in all its aspects—recipes, film, books, travel, superior sources, and food-related issues.
OUR USUAL mid-afternoon turkey celebration on Thanksgiving Day normally has a second part on Sunday: Zee Toorki Sahnveesh Pahty. I remember a time in my modestly misspent youth when I was wearing long skirts made from resewn Levi’s, and my husband, after nine blissful years at the University of Virginia, eschewed a law career and went into construction as a timekeeper. He had loved the industry ever since he had worked in construction crews as a teenager. Our lives were guided by The Whole Earth Catalog and we were relentless in trying to buy organic products, no easy feat back then. But we usually spent a Thanksgiving holiday afternoon watching the 1969 film Alice’s Restaurant, often
Nancy Pollard and daughter Anastasia at Thanksgiving dinner in Nancy’s hippie days. Anastasia, or Natasha, is now a portrait painter living and working in London.
with our daughters when they were toddlers. We realized later that it was a Thanksgiving tradition with many other 20- and 30-somethings too.
A Song Becomes a Film
The film is very loosely based on an 18-minute blues song recorded by Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody Guthrie, if you need a refresher course in American folk-song troubadours). This sort of talking-song-saga celebrates Arlo’s arrest for littering after a Thanksgiving meal with Alice and Ray Brock. The litterbug arrest saved him from getting drafted during the Vietnam war. The film was conceived and directed by Arthur Penn, who also directed Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man. It is definitely a kinder, gentler film about the hippie counter-culture of my youth. You will see an early Joni Mitchell, and Lee Hays and Peter Seeger of the The Weavers fame. Some of the real-life characters (and I include the blind judge at Arlo’s trial) play themselves in the film.
There really were an Alice and Ray Brock. And yes, they did live in a church and she did have a 
counter-culture-style restaurant. She was very resentful of the fame bequeathed on her by Arthur Penn’s film, but she agreed to create the Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook. She and Ray divorced and she sold their church home. After Ray died, she moved to Provincetown and painted rocks and wrote a second book, titled How to Massage Your Cat, which is very funny but not helpful in feline reflexology. Alice is now 83. The church was purchased by Arlo in 1991 and turned into a non-denominational worship center.
The “church” hosts a “Thanksgiving Dinner that can’t be beat” for the local community, and there is an annual “Garbage Trail Walk” made famous by Arlo’s song. The proceeds go to raise money for Huntington’s Disease research, from which Woody Guthrie died a very slow and painful death.
Alice wrote her cookbook, including funny drawings and typical counter-culture prose. We used to sell it at La Cuisine (in the very early days) replete with a recorded introduction by Arlo. And yes, truthfully, I cooked out of it. And probably dressed like it too.
(If this inspires you to watch or re-watch the Alice’s Restaurant movie, you will find a DVD on Amazon for less than $20.
A Sweet Ending
I remember making this cake from Alice’s cookbook because, at the time, I thought it was cool to make a cake where each ingredient was really a pound: Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, even the confectioner’s sugar for the frosting weighed a pound. I had to change the timing for baking; it is much closer to 60 minutes rather than 90 minutes. Also, weigh your ingredients: a pound of extra-large eggs equals eight eggs whereas you need 10 large eggs to make a pound. I use a Thermapen to check the interior temperature of a cake. When it measures between 190F and 195F, it is done. This large pound cake plays well with fruit, whipped cream or with Stella Park’s superlative vanilla ice cream.
Thelma’s (My Ex-Mother-in-Law) Pound Cake
- 1 pound (454gr) salted butter
- 1 pound (454gr) white granulated sugar
- 1 pound eggs (454gr)—for large eggs use 10, 8 eggs if extra-large
- 1 pound (454gr) white flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- Juice of a large lemon plus the zest
- 1 tablespoon salted butter
- 1 pound (454gr) powdered or confectioner’s sugar
- Juice of two lemons and zest of one lemon
- A few teaspoons of cream or evaporated milk if needed.
- Preheat your oven to 300F (150C) and grease a 10-inch (26cm) angel-food cake pan.
- In a stand mixer, cream the butter thoroughly and then gradually add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is very light and fluffy and there is no granular texture from the sugar.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, and then follow with folding in the flour.
- Add the salt, lemon juice and zest and fold thoroughly.
- Pour batter into the greased pan and bake for 60 to 70 minutes.
- Mix the frosting ingredients until smooth, adding the cream or evaporated milk as needed.
- When the cake has cooled, slowly pour the icing over it, a small ladleful at a time around the top of the cake.
- Keep in a covered cake dish at room temperature, or store covered in the refrigerator.
- I test the cake now with a Thermapen and when the probe reads around 195, it’s done.
- I use a classic 10-inch(25cm) angel-food pan from Fat Daddio’s.
- My favorite baking sugars are from India Tree.
For some unknown reason, when I met my husband, he had a copy of this cookbook. He didn’t cook or bake, he just ate. But it came with him when we moved in together, and remains in my cookbook collection 52 years later. I’ve never cooked anything from it, but maybe I’ll flip through to see what’s interesting. Fun column!