Guest Blog
Retro Cookbooks and a week of Chilli
by Just Cook It -
09.02.2010
T.S. Eliot was wrong. February is the cruellest month.
With the
day:night ratio still brutally weighted towards darkness and the good
intentions of January ending in frustration or failure there is little
to cheer come month number two.
What’s more, financially imposed
restraint withers the bud of any frivolous relief: one must pay for
midwinter exuberance at some point and that is usually about 30 days
into the year. There shall be no steaks or fine wines in February.
But
it presents the enthusiastic cook with a challenge. With budgets
slashed more brutally than an American teenager in a bad horror movie,
the cogs of invention begin to splutter and whirr into gear in an
attempt to answer the age-old question: how does one eat well – cheaply?
I found the answer in the 1980s.
When we moved in together, the GF and I inevitably meshed media collections. This explains why
Destiny’s Child now cosy up to
The Dears and how
Badly Drawn Boy ended up in such close proximity to
Band of Horses (the alphabetisation is all me, sadly).
The
cookbook collection was also enriched by this collision. In addition to
the Nigels and Nigellas were some fabulous items from the mid 1980s
which 20-some years on have managed to recapture their appeal, if only
for kitsch value.
The
Austrialian Women’s Weekly Dinner Party Cookbook No.2, its cover adorned with a domed fruit jelly, whipped cream piped around the perimeter, is a particular favourite.
How to Make Good Curries is another I adore, chiefly because of the modest ambitions of its title.
The good folks at the Aussie Women’s Weekly are also responsible for
The Barbecue Cookbook including – I kid you not – a section on a barbecued wedding breakfast.
But
our favourite discovery, and one that caused much mirth when we were
going through our new collection is a small undated pamphlet issued by
the British Sausage Bureau entitled
A Month of Sausages.
I think that warrants some thought.
Firstly,
it is both commendable and highly amusing that such an organisation
existed given that it sounds like something dreamt up by Edmund
Blackadder or the writers of
The Thick Of It. An entire (government funded) organisation dedicated solely to the advancement of the sausage. Magnificent.
But
what’s more surprising and sadly archaic is the notion that a tentacle
of the government would recommend eating sausages – albeit in various
guises – every day. For a month.
In an era of five-a-day,
low-sodium, low-fat, no-butter, no booze, no fags, no eggs, no cream,
no bacon – the very idea that a publicly funded body could recommend
eating processed pork for thirty straight days like some sort of
inverse Lent is anathema to modern health proclamations.
Towards
the end of the booklet they seem to be getting a little short on ideas
(sausage kebabs – a sausage on a stick, Welsh Sausage Supper – sausages
fried with leeks) but one has to admire the sentiment even if the
execution is a little suspect.
However, despite my adoration of
pork, I fear that a month of sausages is a challenge beyond even my
capabilities but I was tickled by the notion and it chimed with the
rather timely need for thrift.
For the next week we shall be
eating chilli con carne. But we won’t be eating the same meal twice.
The chilli shall serve as inspiration and base but the format shall
vary.
At the moment it is bubbling away slowly in the oven and
has been for four hours. The total cost of the ingredients was under a
fiver and I’m as yet unsure where to go beyond chilli with rice and
enchiladas but we’ll get there.
It might not be a month of sausages but a week of chilli is a darn good way to start a frugal February.
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You can read the original post here:
http://justcookit.blogspot.com/2010/02/retro-cookbooks-and-week-of-chilli.html
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