COOKING BY THE BOOK


I have loved cooking since I was little, thanks to my Mum, who stood me on top of a chair to reach bench height and put an electric mixer in my hand. Since then I have felt well at home in a pantry. Perhaps a little too much time in the pantry, at times.

I'm lucky to have access to a Book Club at work where I can get recipe books at 50% below retail, so my recipe book collection has started to take fine shape. Whilst I love flicking through my recipe books, I think it's good to have your own collection of tried, tested and personally approved recipes. A fail-safe recipe book, I guess. I started my first collection in 1997 (14 years old) but it was time to upgrade my books. First, here's a look at the original article...




This time around I decided to make one book for Sweets and one for Savoury. I didn't really have a plan of attack for decorating the books, I just pulled down my 'craft box' (my girly mish-mash of paper, ribbons, glitter, stencils, stamps, stickers, paints, brushes, pencils, glue, beads, that random feather I might one day need, etc.) to see what would happen.

Have you heard of The Commonsense Cookery Book? You might even have a copy. It's kind of like the Cooking Bible for all things "commonsense" (starting at how to boil an egg) which ironically, I guess are not really commonsense, otherwise they wouldn't need to put them in a book. Anywho, here you see three generations of women's copies. The first being my Gymea Nanna's, the second being my Mum's, and the last, embarrassingly pristine version is mine,  given to me by my Aunty Wendy.


I don't know when the very first edition was published but my Nanna's is a 1941 copy. It's very interesting because as well as the recipes, it contains lots of amusing housewife product advertisements, good for a laugh!

In making my new recipe collection books, I decided to cover the outsides in pages from Nanna's book. Food is such a family thing. I loved my Nanna's cooking. So I'm happy to have something of hers embedded in my new books. To think that she would have been 20 years old when she owned this book, in her kitchen and cooking out of the pages, is pretty cool. Well without further ado, here are the finished products.






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