Thursday, May 17, 2007
Old cookbooks I have loved
Larry Bly
Larry Bly runs an ad agency and does freelance writing in the Roanoke area.
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I have hundreds of cookbooks, collected over a period of 40-plus years.
Some were purchased, many were given to me by the authors -- I have a cookie cookbook from Delores Kostelni, the other food columnist for The Roanoke Times -- and many that were awards for putting myself through personal appearances and "food judging" events. Yikes! My old TV cooking partner, Laban Johnson, and I used to get invited to a lot of those.
We once accepted an invitation to "judge" a local cheesecake baking contest.
Upon our arrival, we were bombarded with 300 crazed women and their prize cakes. We nearly died of sugar poisoning that day from tasting 300 entries, over and over again. Then we were again in danger while trying to get to our car, as we were followed by an angry mob of unhappy losers.
Then there was the time we were invited to Danville to judge all manner of local cooking. We found ourselves in a small room with hundreds of ladies, listening for our every little remark as we tasted this and that. Laban and I had to resort to whispering into each other's ear so as not to incite the lovely, but demanding bunch. They hung on our every grimace.
I have a favorite recipe or two from each cookbook and can usually remember which recipe is in which book for quick reference. Sadly, even with all of those home resources, today I find myself going to Google in search of a quick fix when I need one.
My lovely assistant, Kim, came to me one day with a request: Her beloved boyfriend very much wanted a homemade chicken pot pie. If you've ever made a really good one from scratch, it can take an hour or more. Only the Chinese have dishes that require more chopping.
Anyway, she came to me knowing that if anyone had a great home recipe, I would. I told her to give me a few minutes so that I could search my personal file. Down the hallway I leapt to my office. Onto the Internet I weant and before you can say "Google: chickenpotpie," I had a great recipe.
I cut off the top of the sheet and hand-wrote, "Larr's homemade chicken pot pie" across the bottom and handed it to her. To this day, she talks about my "old home recipe" and how much she treasures it.
But nothing ... not the Internet ... not any other medium available today, will ever take the place of picking up a book and thumbing through it. Or, heaven forbid, actually reading it.
Recently I pulled out some my oldest cookbooks, not noteworthy so much for their fine recipes as they are for their historic and offbeat prose. One, from 1930, called "Better Meals for Less," by George Cornforth (what a great name for a food writer!) is great fun, featuring black and white photos of grandma making bread, little baby somebody, now probably long gone, eating, and a bespectacled grandpa wolfing down legumes with that old "madman-eating-goobers" look on his face.
It has long-forgotten recipes for baked split peas, pea cutlets with nut crumbs, and lentil headcheese. MMMMMMM. Just makes you long for the '30s, doesn't it?
It also has some common-sense tidbits, like: "Cabbage is most valuable when served raw in salad" and "It is important that children be taught regularity in eating."
And lest we forget how far we've come, a chapter is devoted to "Simple Desserts that Every Housewife Should Know." For the simple lady of the house. The only thing men do in these photos is snorting down food like gluttonous pigs.
Another cookbook, the original spiral-bound "Cookin' Cheap Cookbook," features a photo of Laban and me on the front and an inscription inside to: "My Toots, who taught me how to cook. Love, Larry." I proudly gave it to my Aunt Toots, who raised me and did indeed teach me the ways of the kitchen.
When she passed away, I found it among her treasures. OK, I found it stuffed in a box with other junk, but that's OK. This book was a companion to our wildly successful, long-running show on Blue Ridge Public TV, "Cookin' Cheap."
Unfortunately, this and a second cookbook several years later are about all that's left of the show. The last GM at WBRA threw all the master tapes in the trash. I've found another source for them and they'll live again in DVD format eventually now that I've got my copyright back. I have the same feelings for Blue Ridge Public TV that I have for the aforementioned split pea soup cutlets with crumbs.
And finally, there's the Heironimus "Celebrating Our New Century With Good Taste!" cookbook from 1989, featuring favorite recipes from Heironimus employees, executives and friends of the now-defunct store.
What was hot in the kitchens of Southwest Virginians in 1989? This cookbook features no fewer than nine different broccoli casseroles, more than a half dozen chicken casseroles, seven kinds of meatloaf, a gazillion impossible pies (pie crust had fallen out of favor for some reason), and tons of pound cakes of all shapes and sizes, including the once-popular "Seven-Up Pound Cake" -- the only pound cake that could make you burp.
Only a small amount of the book was given over to "Beverages, Microwave, and Miscellaneous" recipes.
However, a full page of "Microwave Hints" was provided for those trying to get used to doing anything more ambitious than heating up a cup of coffee.
Cookbooks, especially local ones, can be a window to our culinary past.
Someday I'll revisit this topic and drag out my REALLY old books, like the 1890s version of the "Fanny Farmer Cookbook." We could all use a refresher course on cooking with lard!
Bly for now.
