It’s Bookshelf Travelling time again, a meme which was originally hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. I’ve been gathering the posts recently but I think it’s now time to hand it on to someone else, if anyone wants to continue with it.
The bookshelf above is in the sun room and it’s a mixture of old travel books, cookery books and gardening/nature books.
I believe that The Glasgow Cookery book was used in the ‘Dough School’ which was the Domestic Science College in Glasgow. It was first published in 1962 and it’s a mixture of what must have seemed to be quite posh recipes at the time such as Salmi of Pheasant, and peasant fare such as Pease Pudding. It actually contains a recipe for Dressed Sheep’s Head. The recipe reads like something from a horror film!
The Companion Garden – How Nature can help your plants by Bob Flowerdew is a book about which plants should be grown together. The herb Hyssop apparently wards off cabbage white butterflies when grown near your vegetable plot. If you grow tomatoes beside your asparagus they will keep the asparagus beetle away. I’ve never had enough ground to grow asparagus so I’ve never tried that. In any case there’s practically no chance of being able to grow tomatoes outside a greenhouse in Scotland, but this is a nice wee book with lovely illustrations by Sally Maltby.
Ode to the Countryside is a book of poems to celebrate the British landscape. I must admit that I bought it for the illustrations by such artists as Frank Newbould and Walter E. Spreadberry. Unfortunately the illustrations aren’t signed and there’s no name check for the artists, but quite a lot of the images are like the 1930s travel poster art which is a style I really like.
There’s a Delia Smith cookery book there. I still use a lot of her recipes, you’re never in any danger of having a failure when you use them.
The travel books are about various areas of Scotland, pretty old but not really out of date because things don’t change that much in the more far-flung parts of Scotland.
So that’s that! I hope you enjoyed having a wee keek at many of my bookshelves over these pandemic months. As I write this blogpost the news is that we in the UK are going into another strict lockdown and Christmas as we knew it is cancelled. Worse than that though is the news that it looks as though mainland Europe has shut us off. I wonder how much food the supermarkets have in storage and how long it will take for it to be depleted as no deliveries will be coming from Europe? Just when we thought we could see the light at the end of the tunnel too.
Anyway – other Bookshelf Travellers this week are:
I love gardening books and cookbooks, although we keep only a few cookbooks now. (I think I said that last week.) I do wish I had held onto a Joy of Cooking that I got when I married my first husband (1971) and was just beginning to cook. Oh well, too late now.
I will continue to do Bookshelf Traveling posts (partly because I still have some photos of shelves to visit), but not as regularly. I think you have done a great job of collecting the links in the last few months and I thank you for doing that.
tracybham,
You could probably find another copy of that book on eBay, I’ve not heard of it. I think that US/UK cookery books often don’t cross the pond well, there are quite a few differences in ingredients and things that aren’t easily obtainable.
I’m looking forward to seeing and reading about your bookshelves in the future. I enjoyed collecting the links.
I love gardening books and these have a beautiful “old edition” feel that goes straight to my heart. The oldest books I have are old tales, old plays and a needlepoint that must go back to the 19th century đŸ™‚
Iza,
I have my dad’s old gardening book and I can remember him reading it, so handling that 40 years after his death still brings the memories back.
Katrina, maybe we could do a final Bookshelf Traveling post this weekend just to finish out the year?
Constance,
Yes, I’ll do a last one but I think that Tracy K might be keen to carry on doing it.
We can discuss. I have a few more bookcases but maybe not the energy to do it every week.
I generously promised to donate platelets today, thinking that even if it took 3 hours I could read but just reviewed the instructions and it warns me no reading, only TV, so I am quickly checking Netflix to find something not too complex.
Constance,
I hope that you found something interesting to watch on Netflix. I hope you feel well after your generous donation, I’ve never done anything like that. Presumably it would strain your eyes too much to read after doing it.