You Don't See This Very Often...

Over the past two years or so I have been collecting vintage cookbooks. What I like are pre-1960's books because I like to see the thrift and old cooking methods that were once employed by homemakers of the past.

I recently visited the local Value Village and came across an older book published in 1968 - "The American Every Day Cook Book in Color". I originally picked it up because it looked old, but bought it only because it was authored by Marguerite Patten.

If you are unfamiliar with Marguerite Patten she is a British home economist who has authored around 170 books.  Durring the Second World War she assisted the British government's Ministry of Food in educating the public in rationing and invented nourishing recipes from the foods available at the time.

So, of course I needed to have this book in my collection even though it was published in the 1960's.  Upon looking at the recipes there were many things that struck me as being from before the '60s such as this recipe for Mulligatawny soup (and you don't see this very often)...

I don't know about you, but I have never seen a recipe requiring you to simmer a small lamb's head in any modern cookbooks.  In fact, I'm not sure if my butcher even stocks small lamb's heads... maybe I'll ask next time I visit the shop.

Anyway, the book surprised me with the thrift and use of ingredients(?) that nowadays we no longer use or would even think of using.

What We're Reading

I currently have a huge stack of books from the library piled in the kitchen in a basket beside the fireplace. The books mainly cover rare farm breeds, pigs, ducks and square foot gardening. Can you tell where my mind is?

SON: Just finished reading Dick Proenneke's "One Man's Wilderness, An Alaskan Odyssey" and really enjoyed it.

If you don't know anything about Dick Proenneke or haven't seen his video journals on PBS, he is a very interesting fellow. He retired at age 50 in 1967 and decided to build his own cabin by hand on the shore of Twin Lakes in Alaska. The first summer he scouted for the best cabin site, and cut and peeled the logs he would need for his cabin. He then returned the next summer to finish the cabin where he lived for over 30 years.

Son is currently reading "Crazy Man's Creek". Here is the book description from the publishers website:
In Crazy Man's Creek, author Jack Boudreau tells of the characters who have "caught the fever" in the rugged McGregor Mountain Range east of Prince George. Long recognized as some of the toughest bush in British Columbia, it was home to many who chose to lose themselves.

Once there, life included confrontations with grizzly bears and raids by wolves. But if men were to snap, it was the long cold winters and the deafening silence that did them in.



DAUGHTER: Has finshed reading the "Hunger Games" series by Suzanne Collins for the second time.



ME: I'm reading "BEEF: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat and Muscle Shaped the World" by Andrew Rimas and Evan D.G. Fraser. I'm only a few pages in, but so far a rather interesting look at how human civilization has been shaped by the cow.



HUSBAND: Husband is not a reader in the sense of sitting down with a novel and enjoying it. He does read rather regularily magazines such as Garden Railway, Mother Earth News, Harrowsmith, Canadian Gardening, Hobby Farm and Hobby Farm Home.

Post shared on Barn Hop #9

Vintage Blog and Historical Cookbooks

I have decided to discontinue my vintage blog as I just don't have time to work on it along with everything else I do. I do want to save this one particular post so I have copied it over onto this blog.

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For my birthday in May my sister at Reduce, Reuse and Rummage bought me the wonderful book "Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks they Wrote" It's a wonderful book which reaches far beyond recipes (or receipts as they were called long ago) and into the social lives of women, the struggle for equality in regard learning how to read and write, and the struggle of women to become published authors.

This brings me to a topic I have been wanting to write about since January when I purchased a vintage metal recipe box as a gift for my sister. When the box arrived it came with some freebees and you can't imagine how excited I was! In it were several cookbooks with handwritten recipes, newspaper and magazine recipes, newspaper articles and most things were also dated! I have been pouring over the books and have come to learn a lot about the previous owner.

The brown spiral notebook begins in 1940 when I presume Mrs. Sheldon was a young bride. I know her name is Mrs. Sheldon because the red "Sugar An' Spice And All Things Nice" children's cookbook was copyrighted 1950 and contains the name Melissa Linda Sheldon (I assume this was her daughter as the dates fit) and most articles in the books are from Cleveland. The strange thing that I found in the red children's cookbook was a stash of alcoholic drink recipes.

I'm not sure if you can see the daughter's signature in this photo

More photos of the brown notebook with newspaper clippings and handwritten recipes and Mrs. Sheldon's notes about the recipes and changes she made. Again the first dates on the recipes are 1940, but the stamps on the lower corner are from 1935 and 1936 - I wonder if she just had them lying around and then added them to the book. This notebook appears to end after WWII as on the back cover there is a newspaper clipping about two brothers stationed in the South Pacific.


Close up of stamps

The blue binder is predominately composed of recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines and covers the 1950's and into the mid 1960's.

I love her notes! Obviously the books came from an estate sale and I am sorry that Mrs. Sheldon's family let them go and didn't see the books for the insight/history that they provide about this woman's life.

The back of the binder held several newspaper articles about people.

This clipping is from an entire page of The Cleveland Press dated Wednesday, June 24, 1964
Entitled "40 Years Ago in Lorain Tornado Struck Like Giant Claw of Death"

Mrs Sheldon has written in green ink "I remember this storm"


So, what I have learned about Mrs. Sheldon (from my detective work)? That she was a young bride in around 1940 and had at least one daughter. She grew up and lived in or around the Cleveland, Ohio area and was most like born around 1920. I don't think she had much of an education, perhaps just some high school based on the simple spelling mistakes that I find throughout the books. I believe she was of Danish origin as there are several Danish recipes in the books and one note "Recipes from a danish church out west". She must have had friends who lived in or she visited Michigan and Toronto as some recipes say "Sandusky, Michigan" and there are two sheets of letterhead from the Royal York hotel in Toronto with recipes on them (but the handwriting is different than Mrs. Sheldon's)

I can say that I feel blessed to have received these books. I feel that I am now the keeper of Mrs. Sheldon's life in a way. It would have been such a shame should these books have been thrown away or destroyed.

It has made me come to realize that I also need to clean up the mess I have of my own recipes. For years I have just thrown things into a binder (not even clipped in!). I am now slowly taking everything and either writing or pasting the recipes into a proper book. Hopefully my children will keep the book and pass it on.

Environmental/Green/Food Books

The latest books in the pile are all by Canadian authors...

"Food Security for the Faint of Heart" By Robin Wheeler. I received this book for Christmas and have finally finished it (not that its a difficult read, but it took some time trying to read it in amongst other activities such as work)

It has lots of practical information for growing and storing food and really hits the spot about having to be prepared for emergencies. She uses many recent provincial emergency situations as examples, and as she is from the West Coast she cites 'the big one' (eventual major earthquake) as a very good reason to get prepared.

I am currently reading 'The End of Food: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Food Supply - and What You Can Do About It." by Thomas F. Pawlick. I happened to see it at the public library and I quickly added it to my book stack.

If you like Michael Pollan's books or "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver, you will like this book too. It really delves into the food industry, farming practices, and can be quite graphic especially the part about the life of battery hens.

I'm about half way through this book and I am finding it extremely informative, as it has been very well researched.

"Mom, Will This Chicken Give Me Man Boobs?" by Robin Harding. I just received this book from my sister as an early birthday present (same one who gifted my the Food Security book above - I guess she knows what I like to read). I quickly read the first few pages and it is HILARIOUS! I can't wait to dive into it.

From Laura to Nellie

I have finished most of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and am yearning for more! I was not able to find some of them at the local library and have now resorted to ordering them from Amazon.ca.

In the meantime, I borrowed a book from the Library entitled "Lovingly Yours Nellie" which contains letters written by Nellie Campbell to her family in Maine about her trip, marriage to George, and life in Saskatchewan in the 1920's and then to her move to my area of the world. I am finding the book very interesting as I personally know her daughter-in-law, many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.

I love this excerpt from the book in which a farm rooster has been fighting with her pet rooster "He certainly was a bloody bird when I rescued him. George killed Turner so Theodbold could have peace and I stuffed and roasted him and invited Bob and Jim and Jim's sister up to supper."

Life was different then - butcher and eat all in the same day. Now we are lucky when our children know from which animal the pre-packaged meat from the grocery store comes from (of even that it comes from an animal at all!)


http://lovinglyyoursnellie.com/

I bought Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" while I was in Penticton the other week. I have been reading it slowly ever since. What a powerful book! If you want to know what we eat, where it comes from and how it is processed - then is the book to read. I found it very informative and yet disturbing.

It has certainly opened my eyes to farming practices... idyllic pastoral fantasies are no longer harboured in my brain. I am approximately half way through the book and realize why I am growing a garden and will eventually raise some chickens, why my family tries to buy local, and why we buy organic.

Though I long wondered about the practice of organic produce farming on a huge scale and if it really is better than traditional farming, this book has answered a lot of my questions.

I found the book so interesting that while in Kennewick I also purchased his other book "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto".

Books purchased this week:

Tomato seeds have finally been planted and today I can see the sprouts poking up out of the peat pots.

I'm too busy to do much posting. This is a busy time at work and all my energies have been devoted to my clients.

On and exciting note, my sister gave birth to a baby girl this morning! I am an aunt again!