Sunday, May 23, 2010

Vintage Cook Books

Neil sent me this link last week to an article on ABE books all about vintage cookbooks. I love old books and have been collecting kitchen and cooking related books and pamphlets for a while.

My collection increased significantly recently after visiting the most amazing vintage store in Portland called Avant Garden Vintage. If you are in Portland you have to head over to 2853 SE Stark street and check them out (they don't have a website if you get lost here's their numbers 503-283-4184/971-222-7364 ).

This was given to me by a dear friend, it's basically Atkins, but with some very funny suggestions like on page 94 entitled: Your Weekend Shopping List and starts off with 1 bottle dry sherry.
Diet with bread! Now that's my kind of diet...
If you notice the lilac color of her pot is the same color as the centerpiece on the cover of the Snacks book below. The Artist at the Gas Range book is a trip for some reason they thought it would be intriguing to have a "mystery chef" create recipes so the book is filled with recipes like:
Sole Mystery Chef, Mystery Chef Soup, Mystery Chef Stuffed eggs, etc. The other weird thing is the section featuring: Famous Hungarian Dish (Goulash), Famous Scottish Dish (Scotch Collops?), Famous French Dishes (Uncle Victor's Ragout and The Student's Ragout - sounds real French doesn't it?), Famous Swedish Dish (meatballs) you get the idea? It certainly was a different era...
This is by far the scariest cover:
The classic of all cookbooks which includes her recipe for Hashich Fudge which she got from Bryon Gysin. It isn't really fudge, but rather a spicy sweet Moroccan fruit ball with pot in it not hash. She starts off the recipe by saying "which anyone could whip up on a rainy day!" and goes on to say would make an entertaining refreshment for a ladies' bridge club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. That Alice she cracks me up!

1 comment:

Neil Soten Theise said...

why would the roast be colored lavendar? who thought of THAT? is brown, lavendar in the right light and i never noticed...? lol

 
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