In the mid 1970's when I was first married I had a copy of the Pauper's Cook Book by Jocasta Innes & Delia Smith's Frugal Food. I still had both the books 25 years later but lost them when I moved house 4 times in 10 months during my divorce.
In 1986 Shirley Goode was on TV in The Goode Kitchen Shirley still writes a blog today http://shirleygoode.blogspot.co.uk/, I have 2 of her books and I think there was a third. In 1989 Bernadine Lawrence released The Benefit Book or How to feed your family for £4 a day.
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| I don't use the books so much now, not because they aren't useful, but because after 20 odd years I make the dishes without referring to the recipe books. I still regularly make the Bacon, onion & potato hotpot from The Paupers Cook Book & I still cook a lamb & cabbage dish from Delia's book. I'm not convinced that all the recipes in The Benefit Book had been tested, some were not successful, but then most of the Jamie Oliver recipes I've tried have failed. I always found Shirley Goode's recipes very successful & I found her chapters on how to price meals to be invaluable. For an assortment of reasons I've been poor or frugal for long periods of time since I moved into a bedsit at 15 in the 1960's. It has made me grateful that now I am warm as I was cold & went hungry in my first bedsit! I couldn't afford to put money in the meter to run the electric fire or to buy covers for my bed or enough food for a week, I eventually realised that it was cheaper to put the gas oven on to cook something & sit beside the oven. I took to making a huge bread pudding every Saturday that lasted most of the week when a friends mum gave me a huge drum of dried fruit. |
3 comments:
Lamb is horribly expensive here in Canada. I wait until one of our grocery stores has it's buy one get one free offers. I refuse to pay $18 for a small rack or packet of chops.
They only do this event 2 or 3 time a year and that's when I buy the limit.
Shirley Goode also wrote "Goode for One" and "More for Your Money" and I still have my copies. I still have my Pauper's Cookbook and the onion, bacon and potato hotpot is still one of our favourites. I keep meaning to try it in the slowcooker as it takes long, slow cooking to bring out the flavours. Great books that taught me so much.
I have all those books too. We were frugal then as well.
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