We’ll hear how she dealt with grief as a child and why she felt like she had to be the perfect daughter, why cooking never really captured her interest and how she has had a lifelong sweet tooth… and because of that we learn about her mother Essie’s decadent, sweet noodle pudding. All that, coming up.

ACT 1

Michele Norris Judy Blume, thank you so much for being with us. This is such a treat to me. You have been such a part of my life over many, many, many, many years. And, I'm very excited about this conversation. You know, I've read about you. I've seen interviews with you. I've seen the documentary, but now I'm actually talking to you, and that's quite exciting. I'm so glad you're with us.

Judy Blume Well, thank you so much. I've heard you many, many times, so it's wonderful to be talking to you.

Michele Norris I'm going to ask you about your mama's kitchen, and I'm excited about the answer because I want to learn about your life. But also, as an author, I have a feeling that you were going to use all of your descriptive powers to take me back to that kitchen. I assume we're talking about the kitchen in New Jersey, but I guess it could be in Florida too. Which kitchen does your mind go to?

Judy Blume Well, there were many kitchens. But the kitchen where I spent the most time was in Elizabeth, New Jersey. We moved into that house when I was two, and I lived there until I was 18 or 19. So there was a lot of time spent in that kitchen. And of course, it changed over the years, which I'd love to tell you about. But my first kitchen, it was old, I mean, it was 1940 when we moved into this house. So the kitchen was white. Now I know that it was very old, you know, stove, sink with sides where you could work, and there was a canary cage with a canary. We always had a canary, not in the closet, but out in the kitchen. And we had a long wooden table and that's where we ate. That's where, you know, my mother was anxious and she fretted that my brother and I didn't eat. We didn't eat enough to stay alive. You know, it was wartime. And so everybody I know who grew up when I did heard the same thing. The children are starving in Europe and you won't eat your egg, or something like that to make us feel very guilty and I remember my mother was not a cook. My grandmother was the cook. My grandmother had three children, and she didn't teach any of them to cook. So yes, my mother, you know, put dinner on the table. And there was a pressure cooker

Michele Norris A pressure cooker.

Judy Blume My mother was so afraid of that pressure cooker. And because she was, I was. And so I won't do anything like any of these. I don't know, are Insta pots like pressure cookers?

Michele Norris They are. They're a safer version of a pressure cooker. I mean, I understand why your mother was afraid of a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers are scary. They make a lot of noise. They hiss. You're afraid that they might explode at any minute. It's like having sort of a nuclear armament in your kitchen on the counter.

Judy Blume But she did have it, and she did occasionally use it. So that's interesting, but not me. And my father was a dentist, and he came home from the office early. We used to eat dinner at 5:30, but I can't remember so much about eating the family dinner because I think my mother fed me and maybe my brother, who is four years older, before, because once there was a TV, a little tiny black and white TV, and I think I was 9 or 10 when, you know, people were able to have TVs in their house. We had this little black and white TV in the kitchen, and we ate and watched Howdy Doody at the same time. And my mother, I think, fed me the same thing every single night, which was a lamb chop and a baked potato. And she didn't cut the lamb chop from it. She actually scraped it. And I remember her putting it in my mouth. Ugh. And, you know, when I had a child, my first child, I fed her a lamb chop every day at noon. Because I guess that's what I thought you had to do. Feed your baby a lamb chop.

Michele Norris And a baked potato.

Judy Blume And a baked potato. An iceberg. A wedge of iceberg lettuce, I like that.

Michele Norris When you say your mom was anxious, if I may ask, how did that present itself? Did you know that even as a child, or as you look back now with the wisdom of years and the wisdom of being a novelist, you now understand that she was anxious.

Judy Blume Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, she was worried. We called it then worried. But of course she was very anxious and life was hard for her. When you're an anxious person like that, you know, today there would be therapy. There would be drugs. But there was nothing like that for her. She once told me that before she went to sleep at night. This is, you know, many, many, many years later, before she went to sleep at night, she had to go over everything in her mind that could happen to those she loved, bad things that could happen to those she loved. And then remind herself that those she loved were okay. And then she could go to sleep. So, there was a lot going on there. And my father was just the opposite. I mean, my father was the one who everyone went to with their problems. He was the baby of the family, but he was the one that you came to when you had a problem. If you were in the family or even his patients made appointments to see him after hours. He was that kind of person.

Michele Norris So he was like a dentist and almost like a therapist also, they just came to see him to talk.

Judy Blume They did. Yeah. It was before there was a lot of therapy, I guess. And then my grandmother nanny, we called her nanny mama. Nanny, she was a great cook. But I can't tell you anything about being in her kitchen, because although she lived with us for two years, when we were in Miami Beach, my mother and my brother and me, because my brother had been sick. It's a long story. I've written about it and nanny did all the cooking. It is possible it's occurred to me and thinking about it, maybe that was her job and she didn't want anybody else to be able to do it. And maybe that's why she didn't teach her daughters to cook. Surely if her daughters wanted to cook, they would have learned. My aunt took it up, quite… She was very enthusiastic about it. After. My grandmother died. She died when I was 15, and my aunt was then making all kinds of things and having friends over entertaining things that nanny would have done before. I remember nanny's rice pudding. I loved her rice pudding. I have a sweet tooth. And I have to tell you about the kitchen. When my parents redid the kitchen because nobody else had a kitchen that was dark green and flamingo pink, the Formica, which was something new then, and it had squiggles in it. I don't know if you remember. I remember there was no solid Formica. In those days, it must have been the 50s, of course. This was flamingo pink Formica with squiggles and deep green floor and whatever else it was. My parents just thought it was very modern and wonderful, and I mostly remember it. The colors.

Michele Norris So what was going on in their life that they chose a pink and green kitchen? Had they been to Miami and were bringing that home? Was it an expression of, we're doing well in life. We've lived the depression. We want to surround ourselves with joyful colors in the kitchen. What was…

Judy Blume I just don't know. I mean, we did live in Miami Beach for two years. You know, when I was in third grade and fourth grade and, you know, my grandma with my grandmother was there. So nanny did all the cooking. Of course, my mother didn't have to.

ACT 2

Michele Norris In reading about your life, it sounds like your parents were Rudolph and Esther.

Judy Blume Yes.

Michele Norris And you, it sounds like you had a very special relationship with your father in particular.

Judy Blume Yes, I mean, he was the adored parent. And my brother always said I was the adored child. So he died young. He was 54 when he died. And, it was on the eve of my first wedding. Yeah, it was a hard time for everybody, but my mother never talked about it.

Michele Norris She never, never sat down with you all and sort of coached you through your grief.

Judy Blume No. She never really showed us her grief. And there was grief. I mean, they had been together since high school. And, it was depression. So they didn't really marry until they were 26. My mother was not one to show anything, and she did not want us to show anything. At the funeral, she said no weeping or wailing or loud anything. And I mean, that's very hard. My father was not like that.

Michele Norris Judy, it sounds like, you know, in reading your books, grief is often one of the themes people are dealing with loss or trying to figure out how to make their way forward when things haven't gone their way. But in reading about you and your own personal life story, it seems like grief has been a throughline also. Your father was one of seven brothers and or seven children, and they all died fairly young. And, it sounds like you were, your house was sort of a center of activity in that way that people were often sitting shiva.

Judy Blume Oh, I grew up sitting shiva. And I don't know what I knew when I was little because, my father was the baby of the family and all of these siblings were dying while I was small and I remember the fruit baskets that were delivered. And I remember, you know, people pinching my cheek and saying, oh, look how you've grown. That was kind of since the last funeral. Yeah, I did grow up sitting, but I don't think it ever really hit me until my father.

Michele Norris Yeah. Yeah. You are so emotive in your writing and you handle emotions so well in your writing that it's surprising in some ways to learn that you grew up in a household where you were asked to suppress your emotions. Is there a connection there in some way? Was the writing then an outlet for you to deal with the things that you couldn't express at home?

Judy Blume I think with my father I could express more, but I had the idea that, you know, I was playacting at being the perfect child that I thought I was supposed to be because my brother was not. And so I didn't, I didn't confess things that were really going on in my life or inside me. And my mother was certainly that way. You know, she didn't express anything.

Michele Norris When you say your brother was not, your brother was more let a more internal life was. You two had very different personalities.

Judy Blume Different planets.

Michele Norris Different planets. Okay.

Judy Blume Yeah, but much later in life, I would say when we were in our 60s, we came together and we talked. And I mean, I think we became friends. And that's good. And he lived to be 87, and that was just a few years ago. Yeah. He died during Covid. So of course, you know, I was in Key West. He was he was on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I wasn't allowed to see him. They wouldn't let anybody in. But I talked to him on the phone until he couldn't do that anymore.

Michele Norris Sibling relationships are very special, and they change over time. And sometimes you can develop a closeness with someone later in life that wasn't present when you were living under the same roof. And sometimes when siblings are under the same roof, if there is a child who is perceived to be, I'm not going to say difficult, I'm just going to say more challenging. There are other children in the mix who sometimes feel like they have to make up for that.

Judy Blume Yes.

Michele Norris Okay. All the energy is going in that direction. So let me be the perfect, the perfect happy child

Judy Blume That was me.

Michele Norris That brings sunshine into the room. It was your role.

Judy Blume That was my role. But you know, that may also be who I was, because I still kind of sing and dance my way through life. Maybe I learn to be that. Maybe… it's interesting because I was a very, very shy child. Getting back to food for a second… My mother never liked to cook, and she was a nervous cook. And I also became that kind of cook when I grew up. I didn't really know anything about cooking. I really didn't like it. I had an anxiety dream every time I was having a dinner party that I would take the main course out of the fridge, which I had prepared the day before, to heat it up, and it would drop on the floor and splatter everywhere. And that that was an anxiety dream that I had for a long time.

Michele Norris And you would have this only when you were entertaining people, or was it like a revisiting anxiety dream?

Judy Blume Yes.

Michele Norris So you keep, like, a, pocket meal is somewhere in the house. Like, if I dropped the platter, at least I can throw a frozen pizza in or something like that.

Judy Blume Well, I didn't know about frozen pizza. I didn't even eat pizza till I was 36 years old. I never ate a pizza. Now I love it, you know, I have pizza every week, but, yeah, that was my anxiety dream. But you know, what do you do? Do you try to pick it up and put it back in pot? Or do you call out for the pizza?

Michele Norris Oh, I vote for calling out for pizza. I think you make an S.O.S. call and figure something out. So anxiety dreams are interesting, though, aren't they?

Judy Blume Mhmm.

Michele Norris How they sort of figure out what our deepest fears are.

Judy Blume Yeah.

ACT 3 MIDROLL

Michele Norris We've learned some things about you, Judy, in this conversation. We've learned that you have a sweet tooth.

Judy Blume Oh, yes, oh, yes.

Michele Norris And we've learned that throughout your entire life, people have been worried that you're not getting enough to eat.

Judy Blume Oh, that's funny. I didn't think about that. Yeah, I got plenty to eat during the pandemic. I was on the phone with my daughter all the time, cooking because there was time. And, yeah. She was always taking me through recipes. And I thought, well, now I'm going to cook more. You know, my daughter, I think, started cooking and baking when she was still in high school, and she's wonderful. She's coming tomorrow to visit. We both have February birthdays, and I know she will be baking me a wonderful birthday cake. She even fills our freezer. She's worried about us. It's like she thinks we won't eat well. And she fills our freezer with soups and lasagna and bakes me cupcakes. I'm still such a cupcake fanatic, and she leaves me 36 cupcakes. So she's very generous and sweet and loving and, you know, food is her way of saying I love you.

Michele Norris Food is a good way to say I love you.

Judy Blume Yeah. But I remember the night that she and her friends, they made this noodle pudding that I wouldn't ever make today. But this was from my mother's. I still have sitting right here on my desk. Well, doesn't pay to show it to you. I'm going to show it to you anyway. My mother's recipe box.

Michele Norris Oh, my goodness. So, anyone listening to this, I'm going to try to describe it. Or maybe I should let you describe it. Judy, why don't you describe it? It’s gorgeous.

Judy Blume It's yellow metal and it has big red flowers on it. And when you open it up, of course, it's got, you know, all the little filing cards inside. But I went through when I knew that you wanted a recipe, I went through this box. And it is just full of 1950s Jell-O molds and party cookies. Things that I never remember her making. She would take a recipe from someone, but did she ever make it?

Michele Norris I want to go back to that box. I just am thrilled that you found your mother's recipe box and that it's…

Judy Blume Oh, I've always had it. I've never been without it.

Michele Norris Is it tin or wooden?

Judy Blume It's tin.

Michele Norris Tin held up so well. The colors are so vibrant.

Judy Blume It's perfect.

Michele Norris With its yellow and it has roses and vines. It almost looks like the kind of Russian, little painting that you see on some of the, cutting boards and things that you see in Russia or in Eastern Europe and it's full of recipes that she cut out. But you say she didn't cook, so.

Judy Blume Oh, no. What? They're in her handwriting.

Michele Norris They're in her handwriting. So she was writing down things that she intended to cook.

Judy Blume Yes, some—some is in her handwriting. Most of it. Here's Belince’s soufflé for six. And I mean, that's held up very well. All the recipes in here. It looks like she wrote it yesterday.

Michele Norris Wow. But these are a lot of things she never cooked. So in some ways, it's like a box of dreams.

Judy Blume It is. She never cooked it. I don't think she ever made this. And she. But she collected it, you know, she wanted sweet sherry. Bavarian torte I'm sure my mother never made sweet sherry. Bavarian coconut coffee cake. A lot of it is cake. Apricot icebox cake? So. Yeah. I've kept that.

ACT 4 RECIPE

Michele Norris So the recipe that we always ask our guests to leave, a recipe that we can share with our listeners, and in your case, it's Essie's noodle pudding.

Judy Blume Essie’s noodle pudding.

Michele Norris Is this sort of like a kugel?

Judy Blume Yes, I guess so. We never called it that. But it's a sweet kugel. And actually I would say to your listeners, this has a full cup of sugar in it. I would never make anything like that anymore. But I've asked Randy. I said, Randy, can't it be cut down to half? And she said, mother, I made it with half a cup of sugar and it was totally disgusting.

Michele Norris Okay, you need the full cupof sugar?Note to anyone who wants to do this. You need the whole cup of sugar.

Judy Blume She said at least three quarters. So I have this and when I look at that recipe, I just cringe because I'm lactose intolerant and it's full of sour cream and cottage cheese. Like, I can take a Lactaid pill and eat, you know, a small portion. I wouldn't need a lot of it.

Michele Norris Can we just go through that? Because it's interesting. You mention a cup of sugar. It's a pound of cottage cheese and not reduced fat.

Judy Blume That's a container. Right.

Michele Norris And also a full container, a pint of sour cream. And they both say don't try to cut corners. Don't use the reduced fat. Use the full fat cottage cheese and the full fat sour cream and six eggs and that they need to be at room temperature. Leave them out a little bit before you use them.

Judy Blume They need to be separated.

Michele Norris Okay, separated also. And a quarter cup of melted butter, salted or unsalted? Do you know, maybe Randy can let us know.

Judy Blume I would say unsalted.

Michele Norris Unsalted. Okay. And then a pound of broad egg noodles.

Judy Blume This is not something that I would make today. This is something from my past, but if I go to a friend's house on a Jewish holiday and it's served, I will eat it. And I especially like the sweet ones. Not the savory ones.

Michele Norris So what's the story behind this noodle pudding and why is it so important to your family?

Judy Blume Well, I guess you know that we had it at holiday dinners. I loved celebrating holidays. Not in a religious way, but in a way that brought the families together. And everything was pretty. And my father was doing platters and it was just very lovely. And I continued that tradition when I was married and had children. And my daughter continues it today. But the noodle pudding she and her girlfriends made one night, when they were in high school. And I came out the next morning because I had already been asleep when they were in the kitchen having fun, and the noodle pudding was sitting on the counter, and things were a little messy and I was not happy. So they had forgotten they had made the mess. They had made the noodle pudding and then forgotten to put it in the refrigerator. And it's a dish, of course, that has to be refrigerated. And so I had to throw it out and clean up the kitchen. I was not a happy mom, but I am now, and it is wonderful. You know, you talked about sibling relationships changing and, mother child relationships change to parent child as your children grow older. And I am incredibly lucky because between us, we have three adult children. And our relationship with them has just gotten better and better and better, loving and satisfying and just, I couldn't be happier that I've lived to see this.

Michele Norris Oh, that's a blessing. That's such a blessing. And it sounds like food is at the center of that.

Judy Blume Yeah.

Michele Norris So do you still have that anxiety dream?

Judy Blume Well, if I were having a dinner party and I were cooking, I might.

Michele Norris Yeah. And now you can pass that off to the kids.

Judy Blume Well, they're not here. I mean, they don't live near me, so I can't do it just like that. But Randy did say to me, mother I'm going to cook for your birthday and make you a cake. So if you want to have a few friends over, this is the time to do it. And she would not be nervous or embarrassed, even if what she made turned out to be less than perfect. And I really admire that. She's a therapist, by the way.

Michele Norris If I can reach back to your mom a minute, I'm listening to you talk about Randy and how she is a therapist and doesn't worry about being perfect. Coming out of the Depression and World War II. There was a lot of pressure on women to be perfect. US troops are returning home, as they were sort of building the idea of a family unit. There was a lot of pressure on women to look a certain way and make sure their home looked a certain way. And I wonder if that box of dreams that you have there, your mother's aspirational recipes. If the fear of not being perfect may have kept women like her from trying some of these things because some of the things that are in that, the ice cream apricot torte, that sounds like it has a lot of steps and it has to look a certain way, and it's the kind of thing you put it on the table: Tada! Look what I've done. And if it's floppy or if it kind of isn't straight, that might be less than perfect. And so it might be easy just I'm not going to try that, because if I can't do it exactly right and get a full ten on that, then I'm not even going to attempt it.

Judy Blume I think that's absolutely true. Everything that you just said, I think, again, I do believe that life was harder for my mother than it had to be than it is for me. And I think that quest for perfection did keep her from doing things. I asked her when she was much, much older, 80 plus, do you have any regrets? And she said yes. I wish I had gone to college like my brother and sister, and I wish I had become a teacher, which is so interesting because my mother was an incredibly organized person. You know, when my father died, my aunt, her sister, they were very close. Kind of pushed her out of the house and said you're young, you're 54 years old. You need to have a job. You need to have something to do every day. And my mother went back to secretarial school for a fresher. When she was out of high school she had been a legal secretary. And so now she went back and she got a job for a big law firm. And she was so proud of, the work that she did there. She said, when I go on vacation, they have to hire two people to replace me because she was a crackerjack typist, and she could she was just organized—I mean, she could have—there’s so much she could have done with in her life. But this was when she was born. This was when she was married. These were the times, that we read about. Now, I, of course, lived through the 50s, and I was born in 38, so I lived through the 40s too, and the 50s, with my mother, you know. And when I started to write, I mean, I don't know what she thought. She was proud of me, but she didn't like the mothers in my books. And she said, just leave mothers out of your books. And I was like, I'm really sorry, but I can't do that because my characters have mothers. They're, they aren't you? When she said, but all my friends will think they are. She was very concerned about what her friends would think.

Michele Norris And at some point she was the typist for you. She actually typed all your manuscripts. When you actually record something like that and transcribe it, you absorb it in a different way than you do, even if you're reading. Was that difficult for her? And I'm wondering also, as I asked this question, were you able to communicate with her in a certain way by letting her be the first reader as the person who transcribed your work?

Judy Blume You would think so, wouldn't you? I mean, but the answer is no. I mean, she never said anything about my books or characters other than what she said about mothers. I think she probably said that after Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself, which was my most autobiographical book. And the mother. Well, all the characters in the family were most like my family. And, she did not like that.

Michele Norris So did she also, transcribe in the unlikely event.

Judy Blume Oh, no, no, no. She died in 87. An unlikely event as my last book. Yeah.

Michele Norris It's a great book. I highly, highly recommend it.

Judy Blume Thank you. I think it's my best and it's my last. It's the book I'm going out on.

Michele Norris Oh that’s what you say.

Judy Blume No. It's true. No no no no it's true. I mean, 50 years of writing I think was enough for me being locked up. And, you know, I have a bookstore now, and I love going to the bookstore. I love putting your book up on the shelf.

Michele Norris I am coming to Key West, I'm so glad that we could go down memory lane together.

Judy Blume Oh, thank you so.

Michele Norris Much that you brought into the room that beautiful yellow tin recipe box with the red roses on top, and all the aspirational recipes that your mother wrote down by hand inside that box. It was really a treat to get to see that. And I want to wish you a happy birthday. We're talking to you just a few days before your birthday. And I hope that it's full of love and laughter and lots of chocolate cake.

Judy Blume Thank you. Thank you, Michele. It's been lovely. Thank you so much.

Michele Norris And we'll have the recipe for our listeners. We'll share that with them. And maybe they will send you notes about their experience in the kitchen making Essie's noodle pudding. Thanks so much. Much love.

Judy Blume Thank you. Thank you.

KICKER

Don’t you just love that Judy Blume has held on to her mother's yellow recipe box? Even though it was filled with Jello molds and complicated souffles that never made their way to the table—that little tin box is like a time capsule that provides a little window into family life and expectations about motherhood—and womanhood in the 1950s.

Judy’s story reminds me of how many of us get to witness how we, our families and our relationships can evolve from generation to generation. She and her brother came from—as she said—“different planets,’ but they grew to become close in their 60s. She was raised in a household where she was taught by her mother to suppress her emotions… Now, she and her kids are extremely close and have a loving relationship where emotions are expressed more freely and the quest for perfection… is not so important.

Perfection is overrated. Being present. That’s the good stuff

If you’d like to learn more about Essie’s Noodle Pudding, you can find that recipe on my Instagram page at Michele underscore underscore Norris, that’s two underscores. AND you can also find it at our website – yourmamaskitchen.com. You will find all the recipes from previous episodes there

And before we sign off, we want to hear from you! We want to hear about YOUR mama’s kitchens, thoughts on some of the stories you’ve heard on this podcast, maybe you want to tell us about YOUR mama’s recipe box. I don’t know about you but I still have my mother’s recipe box and I cherish the little 3 by 5 notes that are written out in her precise handwriting. We’d love to hear from you—make sure to send us a voice memo at ymk@highergroundproductions.com … and you might just be featured in a future episode!

Thanks for joining us! Make sure you come back next week because we are always serving up something good. Until then—be bountiful.

CREDITS

Michele: This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original. Produced by Higher Ground Studios

Senior producer - Natalie Rinn

Producer - Sonia Htoon

Additional production support by Misha Jones

Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Ryan Kozlowski

Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Roy Baum

Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistant is Camila Thur de Koos.

Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman and me, Michele Norris.

Executive producers for Audible are Nick D’Angelo and Ann Heppermann.

The show’s closing song is 504 by The Soul Rebels.

Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media.

Talent booker - Angela Peluso

Special thanks this week to Clean Cuts and George Cooper.

Chief Content Officer Rachel Ghiazza [Ghee-AHT-zAH]

And that’s it - goodbye everybody.

Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.

Sound Recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.