Ode to an Old Cookbook

I may not have shared here, but over a year or so ago, I was hired as a library assistant at my local library.  It's been quite a lot of fun, and I find that I very much love the atmosphere in the library.  It's a good job, but it keeps me busy.  Not a bad or a good thing.  Just a thing.

One of the things I love very much about my job is being around all of the books, and I'm not being facetious.  What I mean is that I am finding books to love that I didn't know existed, and that's thrilling. The happiest times are when a patron returns a book with the comment, "This one was great!"

Such was the case last week, when a lovely woman handed me her stack of returns, pulled out the book on the bottom, and said, "This was a great cookbook!" 

I flipped through the pages to the index and asked, "Did you make anything in it?" 

She said, "I copied the recipes.  Oh, and I made the pumpkin custard."

I nodded.

She turned and wandered off into the stacks to find more treasures, and I started looking at the recipes.  I decided in that moment, looking through that amazing cookbook, that I really love old cookbooks.  

This one, in particular, was very cool, because the ingredients are simple, whole, and accessible.   Many of the recipes call for ingredients that I have, on hand, as a rule.

Just flipping through the book, on page 192, is a recipe for Cranberry Crunch.  The ingredients are: 

1 c quick cooking oats ... CHECK

1/2 c flour ... (gluten-free flour, CHECK)

1 c brown sugar ... (sub raw sugar, CHECK)

1/2 c butter ... CHECK

2 c whole berry cranberry sauce ... umm .... 

I have all of the ingredients, as listed, except the last one, and for that one, it would take about 15 minutes for me to make it on my stove, because I have whole, frozen cranberries, which I can: 

1.  Dump in a pan.

2.  Add 1 c water and 1 c sugar

3.  Bring to a boil.

4.  Cook until berries split.

And DONE!

One bag of berries is around a pint, which is around two cups.

Dessert, and I don't have to make a trip to the grocery store.  Easy-peasy.

What I was thinking as I was reading through the cookbook is that nothing in the book is terribly difficult to make.  It's very unlike that Meditteranean cookbook I purchased recently that calls for all sorts of fancy ingredients and long prep times.  I mean, I've made what I thought was Ratatouille, but according to the fancy Meditteranean cookbook, what I was making was something different.  At best, mine is a roasted vegetable dish (very tasty, but not what I thought it was).  True Ratatouille is a stew, and it's an all day cooking event that should be prepared in a clay cooking vessel, if one wants to be authentic.

If those are the sorts of dishes we are expected to make, it's no wonder no one wants to learn to cook.  It's no wonder that so many of us turn to the experts and/or purchase processed/pre-made foods rather than delve into the wild world of home cooking.

Enter the Mystic Seaport cookbook, with its easy recipes using simple ingredients where the prep time is about 15 minutes and the cook time is 45 minutes (during which one can be doing something else), et voila, dinner!

I read an article today ... well, part of an article, because there was just too much doom and gloom in it to keep slogging through.

I know, right?!  Too much doom and gloom for ME, means it must have been pretty dreary, right?

I won't share a link, but the gist of it is that there are going to be a lot of people, this spring, who will be edging closer to that "hunger cliff" (the words the article used).  The article was about the cutting of nutritional supplement funds (or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), which is going to mean that people who are already food insecure are going to be that much more food insecure in a few weeks.  This summer is likely to be brutal. 

When I was a graduate student, I was a very poor mother of two, and one summer, I applied for and received food stamps.  While applying for the assistance and using them at the grocery store was humiliating and soul-crushing (unnecessarily, so - just sayin'), having $300 to spend all at once on groceries was amazing!  I felt RICH!  Ironically. 

I don't know what other people buy with their food supplement funds, but I bought the biggest bag of flour I could find and yeast, and I made my own bread.  In fact, I bought a lot of stuff I didn't normally get to buy.  My typical weekly/monthly food budget was usually a lot less, and I had never had that much money for groceries all at the same time.

I've done calculations before, comparing the price of ingredients to the price of prepared foods, and what I have always found - always - is that the ingredients, overall, cost less.  True, one can purchase two loaves of bread for the cost of 5lbs of flour, but that 5lbs of flour will make a heck of a lot more than just two loaves of bread.

There are 18 cups of flour in a 5lb bag.  One loaf of bread takes four cups of flour.  That's four loaves of bread, plus two more cups of flour for other stuff, for the price of two loaves of bread.  I mean ... why buy bread with all of the preservatives and additives?

Additionally, if one spends all of one's money on bread, one is limited to eating bread.  With whole ingredients, like flour, the possibilities are exponentially increased.  If I have flour (and a few other ingredients), for instance, I can make sandwich bread, biscuits, English muffins, bagels, cookies, cakes, pancakes, waffles, pie crust, and pizza crust.  With a couple of eggs and water, I can make pasta.  Flour, butter, sugar, salt, and water makes crackers.  Melt some butter in a pan, add some flour for a roux, add water or milk, and I have gravy, which is both filling and comforting ... especially over bread. 

There was an article recently about changing one's mindset regarding food.  The gist was that a bread and water diet can be toast and tea - with a different mindset.   Doesn't toast and tea sound so much more ... delicious!  

What I hear from people about why buy the prepared food instead of the ingredient is that cooking takes a lot of time, and ... well, that's not entirely true.  Sure, a ready-made cake from the bakery (that costs $20) is much faster than baking a cake at home, but if one is baking that cake from a boxed cake mix, is there really a time savings?  If I'm using a box cake mix, I still have to mix it with eggs, oil, and water, pour it into a prepared pan, and bake it.  It doesn't take any more effort or time to dump some flour, salt, and baking soda/powder into a bowl than it does to open the cardboard box and the plastic bag the cake mix comes in.  

And if I have flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, I can make a lot more than *just* a cake.

I guess most of the people who read here already know and agree with what I'm saying, but it is not a bad idea to remind us why we do what we do.  

We cook from scratch, using whole ingredients, because we know that cooking is a skill.  It's not about what or how we eat, or even about what or how we prepare it.  It's about resiliency.  If I already have an "I can make that" mind-set, then even if I find myself with a smaller grocery budget (or with a food sensitivity that requires I change my entire diet), I can still eat, and eat well, and spend a lot less money buying the food I want.  

Does anyone remember that amazing scene at the end of part one of Gone with the Wind, where Scarlet O'Hara is standing in the ruins of her garden with the sunsetting behind her.  She is clutching a measly carrot - the only thing she could wrest from the parched and trodden earth.  She holds this pitiful little root to the sky and declares, "As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again!"

Not to iconize Scarlet - she was not a good person - but her determination is admirable, and while we may not want to model her conniving behaviors, we can be just as determined and resilient, and yes, we can declare that we will never go hungry .... 

Not by manipulation and treachery, but by changing our mindset to one of abundance in the face of scarcity.

And by thumbing through an old cookbook.