It’s been a while my friends, and I’m sorry about that.  It’s amazing how this time of  year, life gets busy, and so very little new cooking gets done.  There just hasn’t been time to shop for new ingredients and hunt down new recipes, and that bothers me.  As I think about this blog, and I think about the last several months of little posting, it’s almost embarrassing.  Well, actually it is embarrassing, but I’ve been inspired, and it’s time to use this blog to help make me more accountable.

Someone recently shared with me a blog called Jen But Never Jenn, and Jen did a 1950’s Housewife Experiment.  Not once, but twice.  During that time she tried to be the idyllic June Cleaver, meeting her husband at the door with a kiss and a cocktail.  She cooked all sorts of 1950’s era foods, some successes, and some dismal failures.   That link I just posted will take you to the homepage for the experiment.  She really learned a lot during the experiment- and not just about bizarre cooking from eras gone by.   As I read of her exploits, they cracked me up quite a bit, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of something like that.  An experiment of sorts is exactly what I need to get me out of a funk.

Then I thought of another blog I read regularly Alinea At Home, and I thought to myself that if Carol can work a crazy job involved in politics somehow, and still manage to cook out of this crazy Molecular Gastronomy cookbook AND blog about it, I have to be able to find time somewhere.

So last night I looked my cookbook shelves over.  I was looking for a book that might present me with things I wouldn’t normally cook, but wouldn’t be all the same type of food.  I didn’t want an Italian cookbook, for example.   My hand hovered over my Amish cookbook once or twice, and then a third time, and then I thought that one would be too easy.  So my hand settled on something unexpected.

This Women’s Day Collector’s Cookbook has a published date of 1960.   Are the recipes that were written and published over 50 years ago still relevant today?  As I flipped through the book, I was surprised to see some familiar type recipes, yet many that seem like the beginnings of popular favorites today.   While there are a few of the jellied aspics and salads of the 50’s in here, there aren’t many, and I have to laugh a little, because it seems to me that because of the prevalence of soy sauce in the book, it must have been a fairly new ingredient for the housewife of the time.    The sections of the book are neatly divided by protein, including one spectacular chapter devoted to the Frankfurter.

Humor aside, when was the last time you had a hot dog prepared in a way other than on a bun slathered with condiments?  There are over 30 different preparations in this book for the humble hot dog.  I really like the introductions to each chapter.  Written by none other than the late, great James Beard, the introductions paint pictures with food.  He tells you how the piece of meat that you have in your hand should be treated with precision and respect, and how appetizers should tantalize both the eye and the taste-buds.

So.  This is my inspiration.   There are 35 chapters in this book and hundreds of recipes, so I didn’t think that cooking through it one recipe at a time until the were completed sounded fun- that could take years.  And I have to draw the line at organ meats- I’m not going to be preparing those.   But with 35 chapters to choose from, if I plan to do two recipes a week from this book, with the rule that I have to cook out of each chapter twice, that’s 70 recipes, and 35 weeks of inspiration.  Hopefully I will also take the cue from the inspiration and do more new cooking throughout, but this is a good start.

Some chapters will be a challenge.  The chapter on Veal in particular.  We can get it, but I’ve never cooked it.  Shrimp and Lamb will be two chapters that will have to be carefully poured over, because those are not very budget friendly.  But the chapter on Chafing Dish Specialties will prove a bit exotic on my part- thank goodness I have a chafing dish!  The chapters range from Pot Roasts to Hamburger to Onions to Party Pastries.  And of course there’s that chapter on Frankfurters which I suspect will really stretch me out of my comfort zone.

The Women’s Day Collector’s Cookbook Challenge is on.  I start today, and I hope you’ll hang around and help me keep it going.

1 thought on “Lost, And Then Found: Inspiration

  1. I’m so glad I gave that book to you! I know there was at least one recipe I used out of that book… but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was! LOL! I’m sure you could remind me, tho. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *