Now, most of us will have a shedload of cookbooks which have been collected over the years, some well used and others almost untouched.
And I suppose they say much about their owners offering up insights into the accomplished cook, the occasional cook, and the sucker for the latest in food fashion.
Added to these will be all those books bought on the day after a holiday in the expectation of recreating the culinary pleasures of that “delightful and authentic little back street restaurant only the locals frequent”.
I should know because our kitchen is full of them, while the more favoured, and the more arty the books sit in the dinning room, to be looked at like picture books rather than a guide to making a meal.
Occasionally we have a clear out but that only means they end up in the cellar rather than the charity shop.
Most end up becoming history books, which I read not as a means to a meal but as an insight into how we lived, and what we thought was important.
And so, to F.W.P. Carter’s “The Penguin Book of Food Growing Storing and Cooking” subtitled “From Seed to Table”, which is not the most zippy of titles.
Indeed, I doubt that today it would get past the commissioning stage of the publishing process, but they did things differently in 1941 when the book came out.
Back then the production of home grown food was an essential part of the war effort with the Dig For Victory campaign which encouraged everyone to grow their own food, whether it be on an allotment or a vegetable garden in what had been the lawn or the flower beds.
Speaking in Southport the Minister of Agriculture said “What we do ask and ask insistently is that you shall grow all the vegetables you possibly can. There are 5, 000,000 gardens and allotments.
If 5,000,000 families would provide themselves with vegetables for eight months of the year, that would be a very notable addition to our war effort, The NATION needs your gardening skill, skill not only to produce but to plan production, [involving vitamins, variety and storage]”.
And Mr. Carter’s book had the lot, including how to grow a huge variety of vegetables, describing their different qualities, and how to store them. There were also plenty of diagrams and a detailed description on how to prepare and maintain an allotment.
Nor was he alone.
Penguin books also published Food the Deciding Factor, which was a guide to rationing and food values, along with Hydroponics, Food Without Soil.
Just how popular these books were I have yet to find out, and my copy seems less well used, but I suppose there could be many reasons for that.
It won’t ever make its way to the kitchen, and it sits with all those other “period” history books I have collected over the years and occasionally dip into.
Leaving me just to reflect on those books that did make it into the kitchen and what their fate should be.
Pictures; from “The Penguin Book of Food Growing Storing and Cooking” and few from the kitchen, all of which have themselves past into history.
Added to these will be all those books bought on the day after a holiday in the expectation of recreating the culinary pleasures of that “delightful and authentic little back street restaurant only the locals frequent”.
I should know because our kitchen is full of them, while the more favoured, and the more arty the books sit in the dinning room, to be looked at like picture books rather than a guide to making a meal.
Occasionally we have a clear out but that only means they end up in the cellar rather than the charity shop.
Most end up becoming history books, which I read not as a means to a meal but as an insight into how we lived, and what we thought was important.
And so, to F.W.P. Carter’s “The Penguin Book of Food Growing Storing and Cooking” subtitled “From Seed to Table”, which is not the most zippy of titles.
Back then the production of home grown food was an essential part of the war effort with the Dig For Victory campaign which encouraged everyone to grow their own food, whether it be on an allotment or a vegetable garden in what had been the lawn or the flower beds.
Speaking in Southport the Minister of Agriculture said “What we do ask and ask insistently is that you shall grow all the vegetables you possibly can. There are 5, 000,000 gardens and allotments.
If 5,000,000 families would provide themselves with vegetables for eight months of the year, that would be a very notable addition to our war effort, The NATION needs your gardening skill, skill not only to produce but to plan production, [involving vitamins, variety and storage]”.
And Mr. Carter’s book had the lot, including how to grow a huge variety of vegetables, describing their different qualities, and how to store them. There were also plenty of diagrams and a detailed description on how to prepare and maintain an allotment.
Penguin books also published Food the Deciding Factor, which was a guide to rationing and food values, along with Hydroponics, Food Without Soil.
Just how popular these books were I have yet to find out, and my copy seems less well used, but I suppose there could be many reasons for that.
It won’t ever make its way to the kitchen, and it sits with all those other “period” history books I have collected over the years and occasionally dip into.
Leaving me just to reflect on those books that did make it into the kitchen and what their fate should be.
Pictures; from “The Penguin Book of Food Growing Storing and Cooking” and few from the kitchen, all of which have themselves past into history.
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