Ephemera and plans
My household has strange customs. Saying ‘my household has strange customs’ is much better than admitting that I myself have strange customs.
One of my habits is to clear away stray papers and deal with paperwork and generally clear the decks as far as I can the week before a heavy teaching week. Next week is a heavy teaching week, mainly because I’m starting two new courses. They need planning and notes and class preparation, and while I’m doing all that life is sure to throw a few spanners in the works just because it can and it wants to see what happens (another strange custom of this household is to attribute sentience to almost anything, and yet another is to use very long sentences when thunderstorms loom).
What this means is that you get a solid batch of cookbooks and ephemera in the next few days. You’ll get a whole month’s worth, in fact. This is so that I can put said cookbooks and ephemera away. If any of them had been related to medieval London or to writing skills, I could have held off, but I have ten comics and four books and they are taking up valuable flat surfaces.
Fortunately, they’re all interesting, so I can guarantee you won’t die of boredom. I’ll try to find sample recipes that look safe, so you don’t die from my cooking recommendations either. (No, it’s not your imagination – I feel a tad silly today. It’s a combination of those thunderstorms, going through piles and piles of paper, and fighting a battle with a piece of software. Currently the thunderstorms are hiding on the other side of the mountains, the piles are diminished by 50%, and the software and I have reached a truce: it will work nicely if I go through the startup wizard every single time I turn the computer on. Life and I have called a truce.).
Let me tell you of the pleasures in store for you over the next few days. Or is that warn you of what you have to face?
I have a mega-funky old copy of Cooking Better Electrically.
I have copies of British comic strip collections from the 1970s (it’s been too long since I mined something fun for what it says about food and foodways!).
There is a mysterious coverless cookbook from the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria and a little book for children about 1920s life in Australia.
The final book is La Cocina Sefardi, and I might just look for doughnut recipes in it, ready for Chanukah. This means we may be returning to La Cocina Sefardi in a few weeks, as I’m not quite ready for Chanukah yet. Halloween has to come first!
Which reminds me, two readers have sent in their cool narratives about Halloween – any more you care to email or put in the comments to posts will be much-appreciated in a few days by the non-USians who read the blog. Sometimes it seems that all we know about the US are stereotypes, so I’d love to hear your Halloween foodways (even if they mainly consist of eating sweets).
October 26th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Ah, a women’s missionary cookbook. I tell you, one day when I’m flush I want to gather up some church lady or junior league cookbooks from these parts and send them your way, Gillian. One in particular, called Charleston Receipts, is quite famous. It features recipes native to the low-country around Charleston, South Carolina. There are wonderful things and terrifying things in those pages. Especially for those of us with shellfish allergies!
October 27th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Sort of “It was the best of cookbooks, it was the worst of cookbooks”? I adore those books that come from specific communities and carry the messages of those communities. Jewish community cookbooks often seem to have an ‘eat chicken soup’ msesage, for instance.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Cooking ephemera is something I’d like to feature on my blog. Send me an email. I’d love to feature your cooking ephemera in an upcoming post on the ephemera blog. The 1920s children’s cookbook, for instance, sounds like it’d be fascinating to view.