[Sca-cooks] First cookbooks....

[Kathleen A Roberts]

my mother didn't have cook books other than a few dessert 
ones so i guess i really never used one when i was young. 
 she cooked 'old country' (hungarian) and by the seat of 
her pants.  and sometimes recipe cards written by watching 
her mother and older sisters.  she didn't have much chance 
to teach me much before she passed away when i was 14.

got interested in cooking late compared to you guys.  i 
don't think i used a cookbook until i was 30-ish.  of 
course, life was saved (a bit) by julia child and the 
galloping gourmet on PBS which made me a little too 
adventurous for my dad's liking.

when i got married 24 yrs ago, my husbands grandfather 
gave me a copy of 'the settlement cookbook', which he 
claimed saved his life many a time as a young newlywed.  i 
think i am on my third copy now.  i like the 1950's 
cookbooks, the ones with the pictures of fat laden steaks 
and unnaturally orange sauces described with little 
snippets of doggerel.  lots of good stuff there if you can 
wade through the odd.

my first period cookbook was 'take a thousand eggs or 
more'.  and i am now the happy owner of master huen's 
recipe book.  but i tend to surf for most of my period 
stuff.

my husband and friends say i am an instictive cook, who 
just kind of knows what will work together.  i read 
recipes but rarely work from one other than baked goods 
and lemon curd. which works well with siege cooking. ;)

cailte
learning more all the time...
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"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which 
sustained him through temporary periods of joy."
W. B. Yeats
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Kathleen Roberts
University of New Mexico
Office of Freshman Admissions
Administrative Asst. III
505-925-9590