Here I am Bookshelf Travelling again, it’s the shelf above last week’s travelling and it is home to some of my cookery books. On the left hand side there are two copies of the same book –
Cookery in Colour by Marguerite Patten This is the first gift that Jack gave me – he denies this however! Well I suppose he might have bought me some chocolates before buying the book. It did make me think that he was serious enough about me to want to make sure that I could cook and therefore feed him! I bought another pristine copy of the book at a church sale some years ago as my copy has come adrift from its cover and spine, despite being used very carefully. My dad took the book to work and made a plastic cover for it to protect it, so he must have seen something important about it in the family history in the future, if you see what I mean, sadly he died a few years after we got married. The book is very much of its time but I still use quite a lot of the recipes in it. Marguerite Patten was very well known and came to the fore in Britain during the war years when she concocted recipes to help women feed their families while struggling with a lack of ingredients due to the strict rationing. She died just a few years ago.
The Victory Cookbook by Marguerite Patten was first published in 2002 in association with the Imperial War Museum. It’s subtitled Nostalgic Food and Facts from 1940-1954. Food rationing lasted 14 years in the UK and didn’t end until the 4th of July 1954. Actually it was a bit of a rebellion from women that made the government of the day realise that they were pushing their luck, having rationing long after it had ended in mainland Europe. Marguerite Patten said that the recipes in this book show how difficult it is to cook without butter or margaine. I’ve tried a few of the recipes, such as Woolton Pie and it was quite tasty.
There are a few gardening books on this shelf. Beth Chatto’s Garden Notebook is a book that I’ve just realised I haven’t read although I have read other books by her. For a few years we lived near her famous garden and nursery in Essex, just as she was constructing it all so I did see some of the work going on, before we gave up on Essex and moved back to Scotland. I really have to get around to reading this one.
There are some travel books on the shelf and A Book of Scotland by G.R. Harvey dates from 1950. It’s the sort of book that is ideal for dipping into when you are at a loose end. It’s another one that I haven’t read from cover to cover. It’s published by A&C Black. It has a mixture of black and white and colour plates. It’s older than me and is in better condition!
Are you Bookshelf Travelling this week?
We used to have a lot of cookbooks, but in the last few years we cut back to our old favorites and some basic ones that cover all types of cooking. Most of my gardening books are about gardening in California or southern California or specifice plants I love (geraniums/pelargoniums, succulents, coleus). Glen has one he read this year… The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature
by Sue Stuart-Smith. I hope to read that one in 2021.
I did not bookshelf travel this weekend but I did do a post on December 6 or 7th.
tracybham,
Sorry about that I thought I had linked to you last week, I even commented on your post. This is what happens when I blog late at night! I’m nearly at the end of my bookshelves, but will continue the Travelling until the end of the year, when someone else can take it up if they want.
I love all of the plants you mention, I wonder if you can leave your pelargoniums out all year. I’ve taken mine in and put them in the old summerhouse where I hope they’ll survive the winter. I should take some cuttings just in case. I must look up that Stuart-Smith book.
Katrina, in most cases my pelargoniums make it thru the winter with no problems. (All of mine are in pots.) We don’t have many nights when it goes below freezing, but that happens more now than in the past.
I have one pot that has had pelargoniums in it … mostly trailing plants… for years and at times it looked completely dead but this year and last year the plants looked great and bloomed profusely all summer. Recently I have had some small pelargoniums which have not made it through the summer and I have not figured that out yet. Scented pelargoniums seem to do well.
tracybham,
That’s interesting. Mine are in pots too, which makes it easy to put them under cover. They would never survive a winter, we generally get a lot of frost and some local plant nurseries don’t sell bedding plants until June, but a few years ago we had a ground frost in June! We had one in late May this year hence no plums or pears at all.