A fascinating hobby

Lady Hackett's Household Guide was published in 1940. This was Gwennie's copy, or maybe even her mother's?

I've mentioned it before. I collect old recipe books. Before you click away, wait. It's actually very fascinating. Cookbooks are barometers of a society's wealth, health, fashions and values. Cookbooks can become family heirlooms and a source of nostalgia. Meals can equal memories. Recreating recipes can transport us back in time to Grandma's table or our childhood birthday dinner.
I have recipe books from the late 1800s. Many of the recipes could be recreated now and look very much of our time, while other recipes include ingredients that have long fallen
 It's chock-ful-o-handwritten recipes and magazine clippings. This one is not just a recipe book, but a guide on how to run a house; how to make boots last longer, how to re-use this and that. Lady Hackett discusses treating snake bites and toothaches. She details home hygiene and arming your family with healthy habits like getting enough fresh air and taking daily exercise.
She includes recipes, although they are mostly the ones that have either become extinct or are now only available in high end restaurants under fancier names; beef tea custard, chicken custard, jellied chicken, fricassee of tripe and devilled pig's feet.

This is Best of the Bake-Off Recipes, 1969.

Let me tell you, you'd be the most popular girl in the room if you put this Bacon and Sausage Plait on the table at Sunday Brunch.

Bacon and Sausage Plait
Pastry
3 cups plain flour, 1/2 teas salt, 6 oz butter, approx 1/4 cup water.
Filling
2 boiled eggs, salt, pepper, 1/2 teas powdered sage or basil, 1/2 lb bacon rashers, 1/2 lb pork sausage meat, beaten egg for glazing
Pastry: Sift flour and salt into mixing bowl, rub in butter until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add water, mix to firm dough. Turn on to a floured board and knead well. Roll out the pastry to 10 inch square.
Filling: Chop bacon and hard-boiled eggs, mix with remaing filling ingredients (except egg glazing), and place down the centre of pastry. Cut pastry on each side of filling into diagonal 1/2 inch strips; brush with egg. Lift alternate strips over the sausage mixture to form roll resembling a plait. Brush with egg, sprinkle with salt. Bake in hot oven 30-40 minutes.

I'm not sure if The Big Party Cookbook refers to the book itself, which is quite large, or whether it's to be used for huge gatherings?

Either way, take these Weisswurst Kebabs or Cocktail Banana Kebabs and Stuffed Sausages to your next barbecue invitation and you'll surely win yourself a husband.

Anyone who did Home Economics or 'Home Arts' as it was sold to us at my school, will be familiar with this ubiquitous little ditty. Day to Day Cookery, in all it's many revisions, was the text du jour of school kitchens - and maybe it still is? This one is from 1985.
Something I used to find hysterical as a teenager, and sady still do, is the recipe for a sandwich with....wait for it....eight steps! Step 4 is 'Cover with second slice and press together firmly'. You may be wondering how there could possibly be a further four steps after that one. I don't want to spoil it, just in case you want to read it at some stage.

Hints on Healthy Living by Dr Ulric Williams was written around 1931, I think. It has recipes with the focus being on good health. It is incredible to think of how many books have rehashed this same information in the last 82 years.
Dr Williams recommends eating as much of your food raw as possible and exercising daily. He includes recipes based on vegetables, fish, nuts and lentils. Sound familiar?

I love these little fundraising booklets published by kindergartens and schools. This one is from Mater Dei School in Ashgrove, published in 1991. Although that doesn't sound like very long ago, you'd be surprised how dated the recipes seem.

Davis Dainty Dishes was published in 1937. It has beautiful coloured illustrations of some of the recipes which seem extremely elaborate and surprisingly modern even now - orange ice cream, peach ice cream. Others are very much of their time; beetroot mould, salmon in jelly and lemon aspic.

On the other spectrum, the recipes in Square Meals for the Family (1939) are downright nauseating. First case in point, Sheep's Head and Barley Broth. Can you imagine coaxing your children to eat that?

There's also recipes for Beef Heart, Stuffed & Roasted (as if that makes it any more appealing), Tripe & Onions and Liver Paste for Sandwiches.

There's an advertisement in Square Meals for the Family from the Brisbane City Council Electricity Supply Department enticing people to have their electricity put on. It reads:

"Electricity scores. Your Matchless Servant - Electricity.

The more you use, the cheaper it becomes."

That concept has ended in tears!



 This Vogue Australia Cook Book (1969) is the height of sophistication. It includes classic French recipes like Le Coq Au Vin and Boeuf a la Bourguignonne. The book lists entire menus for specific dinner parties, many of which have also stood the test of time.

Beetroot salad with capers

Le coq au vin

Scalloped potatoes

Cheeseboard with water biscuits

Sliced preserved oranges

Other books like Cakes & Cake Decorating (1965) are demonstrative of the fashions of the day, and give us a little giggle.

Graham Kerr is a classic. The Graham Kerr Cookbook, as you can imagine with a recipe book from a man, is very meat-oriented.

And finally....are you still awake?

And finally, my favourite. The Australian Women's Weekly Original Cookbook (1977). As there have been over 800,000 sold, I'm sure you're familiar with it. This was my Mum's cookbook when I was growing up and she cooked up many a special meal from its pages.

I find old cookbooks very interesting, however, I completely understand if you don't. I hope you weren't completely and utterly bored to tears.

The hundred dresses

After a mammoth shop this morning I came home and reorganised the pantry - fascinating stuff I know.
It looks much better though.

Unbeknownst to me I have been stockpiling wholemeal pasta spirals of a particular size. Very specific isn't it? I have no idea why I have so much or why I keep buying it. I must have 2kg or more now. Don't be fooled by the photo, those glass jars are huge.
Have you ever cleaned out the pantry and found you've got an inordinate amount of a particular ingredient?

A little gem I picked up recently is this crocheted doiley complete with standing swan heads. It's the height of kitsch. I couldn't believe my luck. What better to pair it with than a footed bowl of faux candied fruit.

I also recently found this (supposedly) 1970s gumball machine, sans stand, this one would have sat on a shop counter. Remember they used to be outside every corner store.

We did have it full of lollies at one stage, but we've since eaten the whole lot.
I wish I could time travel back to 1982 and tell my 10-year-old-self, trying to jimmy more lollies out of one of these things at the North Street store, to relax. 'One day you'll own one yourself, then you can eat all the damn lollies you want, sweetie', I'd tell her.
Actually on my way back to now, Í may as well drop in on 1989 and tell my 17-year-old self to stop sun-baking and hit the books -  'this isn't a joke Miss'.
Do you remember the book called 'The Hundred Dresses'. I had it myself as a little girl and I recently bought it for Mim who is days away from turning eight. The story has aged well. She finished the whole book in one day and loved it. It was only when I was trying to buy it on-line that I realised what a classic 'The Hundred Dresses' is. You can even buy reading companions for it.

It's about a little girl who tells everyone at school she has a hundred dresses. She gets teased by the other girls because she wears the same old dress everyday. I didn't realise it the first time around, but it has an anti-bullying message.
I also discovered why my pseudonym is always 'Wanda'. You know how sometimes when you buy a coffee or a juice or something you need to give your name, which irritates me no end for some reason. I always say my name is 'Wanda'.
As it turns out, the main character in 'The Hundred Dresses' is Wanda Petronski. It obviously left more of an impression on me than I realised.

The Baby Shower

Saturday's baby shower went off without a hitch. The mother to be looked radiant, the father to be was calm and collected. Guests had their fill of champagne (no doubt, those people at Mumm HQ will be scratching their heads this morning wondering about the sudden spike in sales over the weekend).

Thanks to the talented Katie who did the cooking (after flying up from Sydney a few hours beforehand), the table looked fabo.

Lots of pink gifts were opened. The baby should never need wear the same thing twice!

I forgot to take a photo of my frock while I was wearing it, but this is she. It's brown and doesn't photograph very well. Notice the nanna-style hanger? You cannot have enough of these, they are the best for keeping clothes on the hanger and in their proper shape.

Now it's time to get back to my reading. The bedside table is getting ridiculous. I've even broken one of my reading rules - among the stack are several books I've already read. I try not to repeat, but The Bell Jar and The Great Gatsby are too good not to do over. I find them both meditative.

What a difference half a litre of cream makes

The cake was adequate to ok. Just as a good make-up primer can cover a multitude of creases and divets, so too can a thick layer of cream over a lumpy, less-than-perfect birthday cake.
Looking at the positives, I don't think anyone would have mistaken it for a professional job. It had obviously been made by a mother in the confines of the domestica galleria.

..and some layering to delight and surpise.

And in one of life's twisted ironies like Nigella marrying a man who's uninterested in food, I went to the doctor's on Wednesday, perfectly well, and now I have a bug!

Ai-Crumb-Ba!

Yes, it's that magical time of year again when I have to make a birthday cake. I'm going to reserve judgement until it's finished this afternoon, but to be honest, it's not looking great. This is the beast with just the 'crumb layer' done. For those ignorant of what a 'crumb layer' is, that is the layer of icing which serves to cement any crumbs to the actual cake, so the final layer of icing can go on without being compromised by wandering crumbs.
Let's not panic just yet. Let's wait til it's complete.

And again.

Butter, flour, sugar

It's amazing what can be achieved with a little butter, sugar and flour. Yesterday we had the Red Hill Fair, the main fundraiser for our kindy. Our cake stall raised almost $4000, not bad for some baking, well I suppose it would have been about five tonnes of cakes. Get a load of this....

...and that was about 2/3 of it. Cakes and sweeties as far as the eye can see. This is me simultaneously texting and selling cakes, being the clever person that I am! Please, don't anyone else try this.
I dragged out my special dachshund apron for the occasion.

I even got to serve a gang of fairies (I think that's what you call a group of them). They let me take their photo because I couldn't find my daughters at the time (they weren't behind me then) and I didn't think they'd believe I served a fairy gang actual fairy cakes!

I spent the whole day working on the stall. It was fun - kind of.
I spent $50 on ingredients and turned it into $35 worth of things to sell, through the magic that is my kitchen.
Now, late last week I was in one of my favourite thrifties - it's whereabouts shall remain a secret still. There wasn't a whole lot on offer, then what should I see as I was walking out? This painting, which is no doubt a  
masterpiece?

I asked the lady who worked there how much it was. Hmm? $2? Then she said, they were having a half price sale so it was actually $1. Some of you may think I overpaid, but I love it more every time I look at it.
Right, I've got some jobs to do pronto before my date with Kevin on the ABC at 7.30.

Anything's possible

Well it is when you have a stocked fridge, freezer and pantry.
We have been whooping it up for the past week, as far as dinner goes. I've made roast chicken with homemade coleslaw - a classic! For the coleslaw use half whole egg mayo and half Greek yogurt so it is a bit more refreshing. I chopped my coleslaw and carrot in the food processor and it came out looking identical to the Colonel's, sans the half cup of sugar they must put in theirs.
I've also whipped up a good old retro-licious apricot chicken and pea and ham soup. Still to come is a super vege lasagne, and a shepherd's pie made with lamb not beef. We eat a lot of nursery-style food (as Nigella calls it) around here. That's soft, simple food that maybe a four year old would love, but I don't know why I bother. I may as well cook the food I love, hot coconuty curries and sour Vietnamese salads.

I made lemon butter with some nobbly lemons bought off a little old man on Mt Tamborine.

 A little known fact about lemon butter, is that it is traditionally eaten with a spoon straight from the jar, ideally whilst standing at the open fridge.
The girls and I made these vegemite scrolly rolls. They are just like a cheese and vegemite sandwhich but in a different format, and they take 1/100th of the time to get into a lunchbox in the mornings.

Mim tells me she much prefers these to sandwiches because sandwiches are so....um....'Australian'. I think all my talk of marrying one of them off to Prince Christian of Denmark may be rubbing off.
That's not all, we made these little apple and cinnamon muffins for lunches too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to perform my dance of the Crazy Working Mother.

Hundreds of dollars later....

I did the mammoth food shop. I went to two supermarkets, the greengrocer, the butcher and the bakery. It took me six trips from the car to get everything into the house, and about an hour to put it all away.

Pantry before...mostly a collection of empty jars.

Pantry after...jam packed!!

Fridge before....

...and after. Sorry about the photo quality.

Fruit bowls (plural).

We now have to work our way through the perishables, down to the non-perishables, very methodically. Spanakopita tonight, made with two beautiful fresh bunches of silverbeet!! That's two vego dinners in a row. I don't want anything to do with meat at the moment, after the whole live exports thing.

Now that that's sorted, I shall endeavour to address more interesting topics in the future.