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Sunday 29 June 2014

Cookery books and how they...

chart our progress through life.

Just before luncheon today,
just after I'd learnt a few more words
to the songs,
sorted out my costumes for my 
*starring* (fib)
role in
'Oh What a Lovely War'.
Being at a loose end, as Ted was doing the lunch,
I idly perused my blog favourites, like you do.

One of my new blog fav's is
The Quince Tree
today her post transported me back in time.
That in turn got me to thinking about
recipes over the years which we've all used to
impress; fall back on as family favourites,
and, more importantly, ones that
conjure up time in our lives that, no matter how hard
we try, wish for, will never return.

The recipe for a coffee-soaked cake, star turn of my 
Seventies dinner parties,
 I was sure was in my much used...

'The Cookery Year'.




I rushed over to find it, only to discover...
I was wrong.
Where the devil was it?

Surely not the Robert Carrier
Cook Book that an old boyfriend of eons ago
had bought me for the princely sum of five guineas.
The inscription cut out by my father before
my wedding day.
I'm sorry he did now...
a tiny scrap of my own personal history gone.



Smells, tastes, sounds...
the recipe for a life well lived.

16 comments:

  1. My mother and father would sometimes invite couples over to our East Yorkshire schoolhouse for dinner and Mum would try very hard to produce special meals - haute cuisine with a Rawmarsh twist. This was back in the sixties. Those meals were about England emerging from the austerity of the war years, before pizza, before hamburgers, before Indian takeaways, trying to do something rather more delicious than meat and two veg or finny haddock on Fridays. The dinner guests - also part of the East Yorkshire primary school teaching scene would bring bottles of retro wines like "Blue Nun" or "Mateus Rose" and there'd be Black Forest Gateaux or sherry trifle.

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    1. Cutting edge dining experience, bet they even had a hostess trolley, and not forgetting the proliferation of wonderful Mateus Rose lamps.

      LLX

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  2. I was whisked back in time reading this. Sorry this is such a quick reply, life is getting in the way at the moment - I'll do a quick post about it soon - could the recipe have come from the Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book....there was a pretty delicious coffee-soaked cake in that one, but that could be the Liebfraumilch talking.x

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    1. After just reading your latest blog post this morning, I'm surprised you're not on mother's ruin. A new week, a fresh start, with hopefully better news Elaine.

      I did have the Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book, now gone, but I was so sure it was in The Cookery Year book. It isn't, as I've gone through it several times.

      LLX

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  3. I am intrigued at the inscription that your father tore out of your book. Pray tell!!!

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    Replies
    1. Oooh... It was from the boy, for so many reasons I should have married. My father was so anti him and his family although, they were very much and I hate to use the word here... our class. It is a long old story Jayne, it involves private schools, convents and religion. One day I may be brave enough to write about it in my long neglected blog... 'Doris'.

      The bottom line for me is... if I had married him, I wouldn't have travelled the same road, and experienced all the varied and exciting things. Or found the happiness and contentment I now have.

      LLX

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  4. I’ve just discovered your blog via the quince tree.

    We have The Cookery Year book still. I also remember the Hamylin all colour cook book.

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    1. Hello Lizzi, thanks for visiting and more importantly the life-blood of bloggers... commenting.

      The old cookery books seem to have comfort and charm and carry with them so many happy memories of food shared.

      LLX

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  5. Another holder of said Hamlyn book here, but our most used recipe is from the Good Houskeeping Colour Cookery book given to me by my MIL in 1972. The Christmas cake recipe has been made every year since and the page has almost worn away with use. There are some wicked photos too of food which Margo Leadbetter would most certainly have had at her dinner parties!

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    1. I've got that Good Housekeeping book, (my lovely mum's) with her wonderful writing on the back page. I noticed it yesterday while I was rummaging for that darn recipe... it's going to bug me now. Not for the ingredients, that's easy to replicate, but soley for the huge dollop of reminiscence.

      LLX

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  6. A good few years ago i gave away all of my cookery books as i never really used them much. Including several large heavy plastic folders of Robert Carrier's cookery magazine. My Dad collected them weekly then gave them to me long after i had left home. Of course i have bought more cook books, only yesterday a Folio book by Elizabeth David. Nowadays I search for inspiration on the net, but love to look through the books too.

    Jean x

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    1. Jean, The cookery books of mine I use as a springboard off onto my own ideas. Some work, some don't, that's the joy of going off piste.

      LLX

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  7. I love my old cookery books - they do tell one's history even when inscriptions are removed. I'm more of a Poor Cook (Campbell & Conran) girl myself! Do you have that one?

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    1. Me too! Every splash, greasy mark tells its own story. Food shared with family or friends, to me is the greatest way to spend fun times, laughing reminiscing, remembering those no longer with us. Celebrating our life, our kids and their children who are our lifetime achievement awards.

      'Poor Cook' never heard of it. I'll look out for it.

      LLX

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  8. " that's the joy of going off piste." I had to re read that bit! you can obviously guess what I thought you'd written. Was it the galloping gourmet used to slug back the wine and sherry as he cooked? he was always totally 'off piste' by the end of the program, we used to kill ourselves with laughter, now I know why my parents were always laughing when they watched Fanny and Johnny, happy days.x

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    1. Fanny was a harridan: I have a sneaky suspicion that I am rapidly morphing into her!

      LLX

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