Mad Cook Books

[Growem]

Never mind mad books, how about mad cooks? I went and took 30 cookbooks off someone on Freecycle about a year or more ago and still haven't even looked at half of them. The half I do look at are pretty good though. My husband and I both enjoy cookbooks, but after getting so many, we had to make a resolution which we did for quite a while until life got a bit more complicated. That resolution was to each find a new recipe in one of our MANY cookbooks (we already had lots before the new 30) to cook that week for dinner. We still try and do it, but it's more like one new recipe every two weeks instead.

My silliest cookbook is called "The Emotional Cook" and has menus and recipes for you to cook depending on whether you are happy, lazy, bored, feeling vengeful, satisfied, sad, etc etc. The recipes themselves are okay, but I never have the same mood long enough to go out & get ingredients, come back to cook and then eat it!

[Flummery]

I've got my grandad's vegetarian cookery book. It was printed in the wartime (on industrial grade cardboard!) and really does seem to rely on shades of brown.

[Rhona]

My silliest cookbook is called "The Emotional Cook" and has menus and recipes for you to cook depending on whether you are happy, lazy, bored, feeling vengeful, satisfied, sad, etc etc.

That's hilarious. "What do you fancy for dinner darling?"

"Hmmm... maybe a vengeful pasta, with a dash of bitterness and self-loathing?"

Can you imagine how emotionally high-maintenence you'd feel if someone bought you that book for Christmas or something?

[bluemoon]

I'm pretty certain that the Jocelyn Dimbleby one is the one I was given as a wedding present. Normally there's SOMETHING in a cookery book that you can make use of, but in this case there was not one single recipe that helped a newly wed with good family meals. In the end I pinched my mum's Mrs Beeton (which she had originally pinched from her mum) and used that. I managed to 'lose' the pretentious book the first time we moved house and at no point since have I ever thought 'Ooh, I wish I still had that book'.

[Sue]

I've got one printed in the 1960's called Cooking with Gelatine, which I've never used but love for the insane recipes and dreadful pictures. Anything you can suspend in gelatine is included and the pictures all have Ladies hands with lovely nails and gorgeous (!) nylon ruffled cuffs.

I've got lots of wartime cookery books which I love using - ideal for todays straightened times, local produce, economical recipes etc. They're going up in price now so I guess no-one would have guessed at the time that someone would pay £6 for something sold for 6d.
Sue

[HayleyB]

MIL gave me her entire Robert Carrier magazine collection last year - 9 binders of them. The recipes go from the insane to the ludicrous although there are some that are quite helpful....

[Hilary B]

I rarely cook precisely to a recipe (in fact, other than baking, I rarely measure precisely anyway) but I cook new meals very often. Buying ingredients 'because that is the recipe' is for special occasions. Mostly I buy what is affordable (Waitrose staff always call me over if they have something that MUST be sold!) and adapt recipes to suit. If I had a pound for every time I've looked at a recipe and thought "Hmmm, I haven't got any X (or "I don't like X) I'll try it with Y" I'd be comfortably off!

[Alice]

Yes, there's quite a bit of madness going about.
On a pack of Tesco's finest lean mince it says
SUITABLE FOR USE IN RECIPES.
Off to cook it - without a recipe.