The Best of Seasons w. Tuscan Bean Soup, Sour Cream Apple Pie, Guacamole & more -- Vintage Cookbook TBT

Vintage Cookbook: The Best of Seasons, Judy Schultz

Publication Details: Red Deer College Press, 1989

Published in 1989 this cookbook had a clever gimmick in its format that replaced the usual sections based around courses or ingredients. The Best of Seasons is organized around the months of the year with recipes that the author, Judy Schultz, felt suited the season.

Judy Schultz was the food and wine editor of the Edmonton Journal at the time and worked as a writer for it for over 25 years. She puts her food knowledge to work here with a really diverse collection of recipes that have influences from many different styles and regions of cuisine.

The cookbook, of course, reflects the tastes of the era with such dishes as Iced Pear-Celery Soup and Salmon with Star Fruit. There are also lots of variations on classics and some innovative ideas. I hope to adapt a couple of the recipes in the near future.

Each month's section ended with a "Fast Track Menu" which are meant to be quick and easy meals. We have included the October one, Popovers with Fresh Herbs.

We are also profiling at least one recipe from each month. There is Pistachio Pasta for January, for example, or Hot Hot Barbecue Sauce for June, which she felt at the time was the best BBQ sauce in the world! The recipe for November we are sharing is Green Chili Spoon Bread.

Since we have a long history of including onion soup and mincemeat recipes you will find one each of those as well.

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A Taste of London in Food and in Pictures w. Potted Cheese, Yorkshire Pudding, Chelsea Buns and more -- Vintage Cookbook TBT

Vintage Cookbook: A Taste of London in Food and in Pictures, Theodora Fitzgibbon


Publication Details: Pan, 1976

A Taste of London in Food and in Pictures is as much a social history and vintage photography collection as it is a cookbook. This should, I suspect, make it rather appealing to many readers of The Left Chapter and it is well worth seeking out a used copy.

The book gives a variety of classic and traditional British recipes each of which is accompanied by a photo and text that either details the photo or provides background about the dish in question. Altogether it is fascinating culinary portrait of a London past. A London almost of fable as this is the London, good and bad, of Dickens and Sherlock Holmes.

There is much I had to leave out here, such as recipes for Bubble and Squeak, Crumpets, and Pigeon Pie. It was hard to pare it down but I chose some for their historic resonance such as Roast Beef with Yorkshire Pudding, and others for their novelty such as Stuffed Roast Veal with Anchovy Sauce.

You can look forward to some adaptations of lamb and beef recipes from this cookbook that we are not including here but will be sharing shortly.

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 See also: The Pauper's Cookbook: A Cookbook for the People from the 1970's U.K.

See also: Mary Poppins in the Kitchen w. Dundee Cake, Welsh Rarebit, Yorkshire Pudding & more! -- Vintage Cookbook TBT

Waterloo County Cookbook with Mincemeat, Roasted Pig Tails & more! Vintage Cookbook Throwback Thursday

Vintage Cookbook: Waterloo County Cookbook, Marcella Wittig Calarco

Publication Details: Twin City Printing, 1980

I have a tremendous fondness for the Waterloo County Cookbook despite its relatively bare-bones presentation and lack of illustrations. It is representative of a style of folksy and down-to-earth community oriented cookbooks that were far more common a generation ago and that act as a snapshot of a place and time.

This particular cookbook is about a community in Ontario, the Kitchener-Waterloo community, and reflects the Central European and German backgrounds with which the region was and has been associated.

Broken into a variety of sections, where the cookbook truly stands out is in the section about "Waterloo County Specialties" that includes instructions for making Sauerkraut in five-gallon tubs at home!

Here we share some bread recipes, as well as some classics like Mincemeat and Cabbage Rolls, as well as some forgotten classics like Roasted Pig Tails.

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