From My Shelf…

FROM MY SHELF…

I finished listening to East of Eden by John Steinbeck yesterday. I really enjoyed the book a lot once I got into it and had the characters straight in my head. Rather than wait to read a lot and finally learn who everyone is, I went to Chat GPT and asked it to list the characters in East of Eden.  Within a minute I had a complete list of the characters and who they are within the book, by family.  Wow! Would this be helpful if I were to dive into any big Russian novel. It was incredibly helpful.

I have to say I am enjoying reading older American authors as that is the America I remember and loved and nothing like it is there today. So nostalgic. People were just so different. Responsible, courteous, seemingly doing the right thing by others. Steinbeck is so very good writing about characters and dialogue. I will reread more of his books as I’ve  not read him in 50 years.

Now- the book from my shelf is one my neighbour’s (who just passed away,) sister gave me. It is a very old 1933, hardcover cook book called the New Standard Cookery Illustrated edited by Elizabeth Craig. Oldham Press Limited W,C. London. 

I laughed at the following paragraph from the book:

“I am glad to be able to present to housewives not only a large number of modern recipes but a large number of old favourites,which I have often been asked for and which I have found very few books carry.

There is one thing husbands won’t be able to say anymore if their wives use this cookery book, and that is that they can’t get the dishes mother used to make.”

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Many of the recipes are wild game, lots of butter and lard, all the old foods we don’t fix anymore.

The other thing I noticed is how much trouble these women would have had to go through to fix something relatively easy. I am typing up a recipe for Southern Corn Bread as an example.

This is a recipe one sees quite a bit in southern cookbooks from the American south. I used to make it when we lived in Florida for 15 yrs before we moved to Australia.

I could easily find corn meal there. I have made corn bread here but have used polenta as I haven’t found corn meal. So here we go.

Utensils needed:

Sieve, saucepan, 3 basins, egg beater, deep loaf tin, measuring spoons and a wooden spoon. 

Ingredients:

2 cups corn meal

2 eggs

2 cups milk

2 TBSP butter

1/2 tsp salt. 

3 tsp baking powder.

Instructions:   Sift the corn meal, salt and baking powder into a basin.  Scald the milk & add the butter. When the butter is melted add the milk & butter with the beaten egg yolks, to the corn meal. Fold in the stiffly frothed whites of eggs and bake in a deep, buttered loaf tin for about 1/2 hour.

(Temperature not given so guess the women of the world knew which to use.)

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Now there are corn bread mixes, especially in the USA and there are several steps I believe can be omitted.

I hope you enjoy some of the photos here.

Is this the oldest cook book I own now? No I actually have my grandmother’s cookbook from 1926 with a few comments strewn throughout. I find it interesting to look through these old books and see how people ate years ago. Would I want to live back then and have to cook everyday the way the women before us did? No, I don’t think so. Mr P does most of the cooking in our house. That would not have happened in the past except out of necessity. I think food would have been more wholesome in many ways but preparation is so much easier now. Wouldn’t it be fun to go back in time with a microwave under one arm and an air fryer under the other.

What is the oldest cook book you own now? Or What cook book is your favourite?