There's potentially a paying book in this new hobby. Think a food-related version of The Notebooks of Lazarus Long. A collection of lovingly illustrated aphorisms and brief stories.
Hmm... write a cookbook and weave a story around it.
I need to motivate and finish writing a sorta cookbook i started years ago. I have a couple hundred pages but to convey all i wanted would take about a thousand. Have thought sbout breaking it into a book series..
Kitchen skills
History and care of cast iron
Long term storage of foods
Recipies using long term storage foods
Condiments from scratch
Common spices and spice mixtures from scratch
Growing spices and herbs
Growing and making teas
Canning basics
Fermentation basics
basics
Pluss another dozen topics. Some are mostly done. Some under half done and a bunch not started
It started with a friend that 15 years ago went on a prepper journey for a while and asked me for advice as i come from a farming background, so many of the skills and knowledge i had. He offered to give me a percentage of what he got if i packeged it up for him..
It was almost free food so i said yes. After all was said and done and he is looking at all these stacks of buckets with rice and beans and hundreds og other foods in the, he looked at me and said.. ummm.. i dont actually know what to do with all this if i had to use it. I told him i would try and write something up that would allow some one to learn vasic kitchen and cooking skills aime at long term storage type foods like he had. Over the years i have realized that most people need this any more.
The number of inlaws that have nice kitchens in their house with inadequate tools and no food in the cupboards was shocking to me. Fridges with a tub of icecream, milk for the one box of cereal on the counter, case of beer, soda, and 3 boxes of eestraunt left overs in various states of growth. These are people with grown children.
Cooking is probably one of the top social institutions of the human race. It is not chance that pretty much every culture on the planet has a rich and powerful foodie culture and strong traditions in cooking and eating socially. That when family or friends get together it always incorporates food. That food festivels are big in every country. And that festivals not about food still have massive representation of regional and local foods.
I was raised by a single mother who was a southerner. Hospitality and food are baked into our genes. She was the black sheep of the family and left home and traveled. She expanded our horizons with that experience by introducing us kids to mexican, italian, chinese, and other ethinice and regional american foods.
She taught us to be foodies and taught us how to cook. It binds us to community, family, and generation to generation.
Would love to browse your collection. Like you i have old, new, ethnic, topical, regional and comunity based cookbooks. I have a 7 shelf 4ft x 8ft set of shelves full and enough overflow to fill another that size. Not sure how many. Hundreds for sure. Digitally i have at lear 4x that many pluss recipies from the web to create multiple mre cookbooks.
Of all my books other than my science fiction fantasy collection im most obsesive with cookbooks. I cant not get that one that juat lloks so interesting. I love the regional and ethnic ones by wives and grandmothers, sons and daughters the most that have generational recipies that are the most authentic.
My wife, a second generation Sicilian, cooks from an old and battered composition book. In April, right before Easter, the recipe she'll use for calzone has three sets of handwritten notes: Grandmother, mother, wife, and in not too long a fourth will be added when we pass the book on to our daughter. Lots of changes there, as food and tastes shifted over time, but the women all have been the constant stewards of taste and tradition. It's something special just to hold the book. Oh ... and the calzone is unbelievable.
Only have one recipie that is family traditionsl that isnt bog standard southern cooking and i suspect it was a Campbell rrcipie as it uses beef consume and beef broth with butter onions and rice to make a baked rice dish.
Only other isnt so to say family recipie so much as town specialty that they have a festival and cook off for every year for longer than ive been alive. Family cooked it all the time and i still do.
Cook chicken and debone. Put meat white and dark back into strained stock. Put ground sausage or link sausage cut in disks into pot add rice. Salt and pepper to taste. Then hundreds of variations of sausage such as mild or spicy sage or other spices.. every one has their favorites. Rice is cooked fluffy or more wet and sticky. Type of rice can vary.. we call it Chicken Bog. And the festival is the loris bog off. Most of main street and some side streets are bocked off and people cooking there. Lots of arts and craft booths etc. You can look it up online. Lots of tourism to the festival as it is regionally famous. I mostly avoid nowadays as its a pain in my injured back and crouded enough that i now feel uneasy. Especially with wife and kids that don't stay nearby. Not that ive heard of anything bad happening. Just gotten old and more paranoid in my getting older with young girls as dad age.
My parents spent a part of WWII in New Orleans, Dad at the Navy Yard, Mom learning how to bake pie that would stand up to LA heat and humidity. She got the better part of the deal. Though a decent baker, I could never touch her when it came to pies.
It does sound like our collections come from the same place. I love the community cookbooks, and have many. The recipes in them range from the absurd to the sublime!
Maybe this is morbid or something but when I'm hungry but shouldn't be eating because I've had enough for the day, reading a recipe helps me not eat. (Sometimes it backfires)
When our children were at home, we (mostly I) would make a variety - but if the kids liked a thing, they wanted That Recipe Only, and changes got complaints. They're better these days - it's my grandchildren who get fixated. Still, a lot of repeats with variations from 50 years of making them.
We got a set of Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks as a wedding present, supplemented with a bunch of Sunset cookbooks, and a couple editions of Joy of Cooking.
Also note that those BH&G cookbooks star in James Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food; never could figure out the mayonnaise spread on a jello mold thing, but lots of the recipes became favorites.
I have a paperback copy of the 1993 10th edition; don't use it much. Used the heck out of the 1968 edition of Fannie Farmer/Boston Cooking School, but it fell apart, as old paperbacks are wont to do.
See also McGee's On Food and Cooking, which is quite the adventure!
I haven't gone to look, but pretty sure Mom's was from the 50's. Lots of good basic instruction in there. Sure helped me out when I went off to school. (Just checked: 1947)
Paraphrasing: "...forming the inchoate into reasoned and rational expression." What a worthy pursuit. A Sisyphean task, lots of heavy lifting, can often involve loneliness. But somebody's gotta do it.
Am I the only one who’s wildly curious about the Antarctica cookbook? Because I’d love to know the title and take a peek at the contents. I have in my (currently packed, waiting for the house to be ready) collection one from Alaska, which I’m looking forward to digging into.
Community cookbooks are great. I own a number of them as well. I try to keep my collection down to what I’m actually using, but really, that’s a futile task!
I have *several* cookbooks from Alaska, because my family has been up there since before it was a state! I inherited some, and some are from when I lived up there for a good chunk of my childhood.
The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning by Wendy Trusler and Carol Devine seems to be part journal, part coping with spartan conditions - I should do a proper review.
There's potentially a paying book in this new hobby. Think a food-related version of The Notebooks of Lazarus Long. A collection of lovingly illustrated aphorisms and brief stories.
Thank you. It's in the back of my mind, yes. We will see what pans out as I keep thinking and writing to organize my thoughts.
Hmm... write a cookbook and weave a story around it.
I need to motivate and finish writing a sorta cookbook i started years ago. I have a couple hundred pages but to convey all i wanted would take about a thousand. Have thought sbout breaking it into a book series..
Kitchen skills
History and care of cast iron
Long term storage of foods
Recipies using long term storage foods
Condiments from scratch
Common spices and spice mixtures from scratch
Growing spices and herbs
Growing and making teas
Canning basics
Fermentation basics
basics
Pluss another dozen topics. Some are mostly done. Some under half done and a bunch not started
It started with a friend that 15 years ago went on a prepper journey for a while and asked me for advice as i come from a farming background, so many of the skills and knowledge i had. He offered to give me a percentage of what he got if i packeged it up for him..
It was almost free food so i said yes. After all was said and done and he is looking at all these stacks of buckets with rice and beans and hundreds og other foods in the, he looked at me and said.. ummm.. i dont actually know what to do with all this if i had to use it. I told him i would try and write something up that would allow some one to learn vasic kitchen and cooking skills aime at long term storage type foods like he had. Over the years i have realized that most people need this any more.
The number of inlaws that have nice kitchens in their house with inadequate tools and no food in the cupboards was shocking to me. Fridges with a tub of icecream, milk for the one box of cereal on the counter, case of beer, soda, and 3 boxes of eestraunt left overs in various states of growth. These are people with grown children.
Especially one that might make a good wedding or graduation gift.
Cooking is probably one of the top social institutions of the human race. It is not chance that pretty much every culture on the planet has a rich and powerful foodie culture and strong traditions in cooking and eating socially. That when family or friends get together it always incorporates food. That food festivels are big in every country. And that festivals not about food still have massive representation of regional and local foods.
I was raised by a single mother who was a southerner. Hospitality and food are baked into our genes. She was the black sheep of the family and left home and traveled. She expanded our horizons with that experience by introducing us kids to mexican, italian, chinese, and other ethinice and regional american foods.
She taught us to be foodies and taught us how to cook. It binds us to community, family, and generation to generation.
Would love to browse your collection. Like you i have old, new, ethnic, topical, regional and comunity based cookbooks. I have a 7 shelf 4ft x 8ft set of shelves full and enough overflow to fill another that size. Not sure how many. Hundreds for sure. Digitally i have at lear 4x that many pluss recipies from the web to create multiple mre cookbooks.
Of all my books other than my science fiction fantasy collection im most obsesive with cookbooks. I cant not get that one that juat lloks so interesting. I love the regional and ethnic ones by wives and grandmothers, sons and daughters the most that have generational recipies that are the most authentic.
My wife, a second generation Sicilian, cooks from an old and battered composition book. In April, right before Easter, the recipe she'll use for calzone has three sets of handwritten notes: Grandmother, mother, wife, and in not too long a fourth will be added when we pass the book on to our daughter. Lots of changes there, as food and tastes shifted over time, but the women all have been the constant stewards of taste and tradition. It's something special just to hold the book. Oh ... and the calzone is unbelievable.
Only have one recipie that is family traditionsl that isnt bog standard southern cooking and i suspect it was a Campbell rrcipie as it uses beef consume and beef broth with butter onions and rice to make a baked rice dish.
Only other isnt so to say family recipie so much as town specialty that they have a festival and cook off for every year for longer than ive been alive. Family cooked it all the time and i still do.
Cook chicken and debone. Put meat white and dark back into strained stock. Put ground sausage or link sausage cut in disks into pot add rice. Salt and pepper to taste. Then hundreds of variations of sausage such as mild or spicy sage or other spices.. every one has their favorites. Rice is cooked fluffy or more wet and sticky. Type of rice can vary.. we call it Chicken Bog. And the festival is the loris bog off. Most of main street and some side streets are bocked off and people cooking there. Lots of arts and craft booths etc. You can look it up online. Lots of tourism to the festival as it is regionally famous. I mostly avoid nowadays as its a pain in my injured back and crouded enough that i now feel uneasy. Especially with wife and kids that don't stay nearby. Not that ive heard of anything bad happening. Just gotten old and more paranoid in my getting older with young girls as dad age.
Lol
Sounds absolutely wonderful: https://lorischamber.com/loris-bog-off-festival-1
My parents spent a part of WWII in New Orleans, Dad at the Navy Yard, Mom learning how to bake pie that would stand up to LA heat and humidity. She got the better part of the deal. Though a decent baker, I could never touch her when it came to pies.
It does sound like our collections come from the same place. I love the community cookbooks, and have many. The recipes in them range from the absurd to the sublime!
Maybe this is morbid or something but when I'm hungry but shouldn't be eating because I've had enough for the day, reading a recipe helps me not eat. (Sometimes it backfires)
Absolutly backfires
Here's another one for your list of titles for the lady of the house: Chatelaine.
Our home is our castle!
Yes! And it also implies a working partnership with her husband, the Chatelain, in their responsibility to their castle and everyone dependent on it.
I LIKE that!
When our children were at home, we (mostly I) would make a variety - but if the kids liked a thing, they wanted That Recipe Only, and changes got complaints. They're better these days - it's my grandchildren who get fixated. Still, a lot of repeats with variations from 50 years of making them.
We got a set of Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks as a wedding present, supplemented with a bunch of Sunset cookbooks, and a couple editions of Joy of Cooking.
Also note that those BH&G cookbooks star in James Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food; never could figure out the mayonnaise spread on a jello mold thing, but lots of the recipes became favorites.
Still have Mom's BH and G in the red checked tablecloth cover.
I have a paperback copy of the 1993 10th edition; don't use it much. Used the heck out of the 1968 edition of Fannie Farmer/Boston Cooking School, but it fell apart, as old paperbacks are wont to do.
See also McGee's On Food and Cooking, which is quite the adventure!
I haven't gone to look, but pretty sure Mom's was from the 50's. Lots of good basic instruction in there. Sure helped me out when I went off to school. (Just checked: 1947)
Paraphrasing: "...forming the inchoate into reasoned and rational expression." What a worthy pursuit. A Sisyphean task, lots of heavy lifting, can often involve loneliness. But somebody's gotta do it.
I'm never lonely doing it, because I have you, and many others, taking part along with me, pointing out where I get it wrong, or right. Thank you.
Yeah, that's a real diamond, isn't it: "forming the inchoate into reasoned and rational"
Am I the only one who’s wildly curious about the Antarctica cookbook? Because I’d love to know the title and take a peek at the contents. I have in my (currently packed, waiting for the house to be ready) collection one from Alaska, which I’m looking forward to digging into.
Community cookbooks are great. I own a number of them as well. I try to keep my collection down to what I’m actually using, but really, that’s a futile task!
I have *several* cookbooks from Alaska, because my family has been up there since before it was a state! I inherited some, and some are from when I lived up there for a good chunk of my childhood.
The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning by Wendy Trusler and Carol Devine seems to be part journal, part coping with spartan conditions - I should do a proper review.