"vintage cooking" news and stories

I picked this cookbook up at a thrift store when I was around nine years old. I had always loved things from other eras and when you coupled that with my desire to help my mom in the kitchen, I knew that this book had to be mine. Printed in 1947, Fun With Cooking by Mae Blacker Freeman, is full of kid-friendly, appealingly vintage-y recipes.

I made the Baking Powder Biscuits (page 36) and Butterscotch Squares (page 56) whenever my parents would give me kitchen access. I remember one day in particular when my mom let me make the Tuna Casserole on page 28. I was so excited, especially since it is one of those recipes that calls for crushed potato chips on top. This is a great book if you've got a kid around who wants to help in the kitchen and likes to know how things were done before they were born.

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It's the end of the week, and I'm feeling sort of creatively tapped out. My energy to try out new recipes is depleted and all I really want to do is crawl over to my couch with a bowl of popcorn (tossed with a little Bragg's liquid aminos) and watch the the Dr. Who DVD that arrived yesterday in the mail.

In a last-ditch effort to rewhet my culinary curiosity I picked up my grandmother's recipe box and started to flip through it, hoping for some inspiration. The card you see above grabbed my interest and the signs of gustatory exhaustion started to fade. You see, last Monday, as I was wandering through the aisles of Reading Terminal Market, the persimmons caught my eye. Even though they are decidedly not local, they called out, asking me buy some and bring them home. I remember frequently seeing persimmons on my grandma Bunny's kitchen counter when I was a kid and I still conjure the tactile memory of how they felt when they were good and ripe.

So I have some persimmons and a recipe to go along with them, and the world doesn't seem so bleak. Dr. Who will just have to wait until I'm finished baking.

So now