This Week's Cookbooks

My menus this week are all inspired by an 1893 source! I had gotten it free at the wonderful archive.org -- https://archive.org/details/whatshallwehavet00burr -- and I loved it so much I wanted it "in person" (my eyes are weird, I'm so much happier with paper copies) -- abebooks.com had a lot of print-on-demand of it, but I've not had great luck with that (it took forever and the printing wasn't great) -- but one book seller, in Massachusetts, had an OK original copy and I grabbed it, and it just arrived. I never check ebay; they very well may have other copies!


My "new" copy is in the back of the picture, complete with clippings that were enclosed, and protected by the paper they ( https://www.abebooks.com/The-Book-Store-W-Bridgewater-MA/7144/sf?cm_sp=BOT-_-seller-_-sf) wrapped it in. Speaking of 1893, I am very impressed by how fun these menus can be -- did you know this old a cookbook would be suggesting one have doughnuts occasionally? I'm not having those myself this week; their menu for this week didn't call for them anyway; but as usual this old cookbook did give ideas for other interesting items I would not have thought of, and reminded me of inexpensive not-necessarily-gourmet-but-delicious vegetables out there. Like many very old cookbooks (I'm thinking 1800s and earlier), however, they have only two "real" meals per day, with supper or similar being more of a snacktime/teatime with lots of sweets! But this particular book has so many ideas it was easy for me to get ideas for both lunch and dinner from their luncheon/dinner menus.


(I see I also caught another older book I got recently that's also out of print I think -- a children's author we used to sell at a bookshop I worked at ages ago, in a beautiful old mansion by a river -- Racey Helps.)