One of the absolute delights of my childhood was discovering the Anne of Green Gables set of books by Lucy Maud Montgomery. They were my favourite books for years! And to be honest, although I haven’t read one in forever, I still have the entire series and it wouldn’t take much for me to be again drawn into the world of Matthew and Marilla, Diana Barry and Gilbert Blythe and the adorable red-haired, high-spirited feisty girl known as Anne of Green Gables. And that’s Anne with an E and don’t you forget it!
These books taught me so much about the world – about love, about friendship and family, about how it’s okay to be different (and how to embrace that difference). Oh, and how I wasn’t the only person in the world who constantly had to spell their name to people to ensure that they got it right!
So I was overjoyed to find out that there is an Anne of Green Gables Cookbook. And beside myself to be given a free ARC from NetGalley and Race Point Publishing to review! Thank you so much!
First up, this book is gorgeous! The illustrations and the photos are beautiful. And all of the recipes are referenced to the exact place in the books where they occurred..which a pedant like me totally loves!
I choose to make Anne’s Poetical Egg Salad sandwiches. And they were delicious.
OMG…these were so good!
I think sometimes it’s hard when blogging to present something as simple as these sandwiches because…..well…it’s egg salad right and everyone knows how to make that. so why bother? But this is also real food, the kind of food I want to make. Eat. Repeat.
And you can also fancy these up. The version you are looking at has some chives in the mix. It’s great with lettuce in the sandwich. To make it really fancy, a slice of smoked salmon is divine!
I adored this book almost as much as the novels that inspired it!
And as we head into the new year, some rules for living from Miss Anne Shirley:
ON FRIENDS
ON MAKING MISTAKES
ON MAKING AN EFFORT
ON ATTITUDE
ON LOVE
THE FUTURE
And on that note sweet people, I’m going to bid you adieu for 2017.
Thank you for reading, commenting, liking, sharing. You’re the best and most wonderful kindred spirits ever!
And for all of you, all my very, very best for a joyful 2018! May it bring it everything you wish for!
Whilst I love all old cookbooks, there is a special place in my heart for the celebrity cookbook and finding Roberta Ashley’s “Singers and Swingers In The Kitchen” was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Subtitled
“The Scene Makers Cookbook Dozens of Nutty Turned On Easy-To-Prepare Recipes From The Grooviest Gourmets Happening”
Singers and Swingers is a collection of recipes from The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Leonard Nimoy, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli and other icons of the ’60’s “that will keep you grooving with the greatest.”
Life really does not get much better than this!
Front Cover – Singers and Swingers in the KitchenBack Cover – Singers and Swingers In The Kitchen
As teenage columnist for This Week Magazine, Ms Ashley often asked bright young things of the day what their favourite foods were. She advises that many of these dishes were:
“Worked out while they were quietly starving or working in a “pass-the-basket” coffee-house. That means that most of these dishes can be cooked on allowance type money…or very little bread as they say”
Which just makes me love it more…star studded AND thrifty is one of my favourite combinations!
And for those readers who may be new to the kitchen, or hesitant cooks, Ms Ashley offers the following words of encouragement.
“Give it a try, the recipes are mostly easy ones and remember a year ago, Barbra Streisand couldn’t cook at all”
Adorable!
The recipes in the book are mostly solid, with only the occasional piece of WTFery thrown in. If there is a real problem with the book it is that there is a certain degree of repetition in the recipes. Of the 68 main recipes in the book, minced meat features in 11. These include:
Chili Esperanza by The Mamas and The Papas. They liked to eat this with scrambled eggs…the thought of that makes me gag a little. (Then again, maybe they should have stuck to softer types of foods like chili and scrambled eggs and avoided the types of food that can get stuck in your throat like sandwiches.)
Chili for Chums. This is not name checked but to my mind is actually the best of the lot.
Paul Revere was the lead singer of a band called Paul Revere and the Raiders who liked to dress up in period costume and presumably precede all of their gigs by repeatedly shouting “The British are coming, the British are coming”.
Paul Revere 1967
Ah, those crazy days of the ’60’s. I bet he feels a little silly about wearing that costume now….
Then again, maybe not.
Paul Revere 2007
Returning to the prevalence of ground mince, there are also 3 recipes for Sloppy Joe Type Creations:
Sloppy Joe A La Sam The Sham
A Jones Delight by Jack Jones
Snick Snack Hamburgers by Lesly Gore. Lesly Gore was famous for her song “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To”. She must have self catered because these sound repulsive.
Lesly Gore’s Snick Snack Hamburgers
There is an equally revolting concoction called Robb Stew made by one of the three Robb brothers from the band called….you guessed it…The Robbs…They appeared to operate on the principle that if you can’t be original, be consistently unoriginal. Surprisingly, all members of this band were not wiped out by food poisoning in 1968 but 3 of them went on to have illustrious careers in the music industry by founding Robb…I mean…Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles. This studio has produced artists such as The Gogo’s, Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Devo, Public Enemy and Jane’s Addiction to name but a few! Quite possibly this is truly a case of what doesn’t kill you making you stronger.
Robb Stew
There are also 4 instances of minced meat with pasta:
Whilst their recipe does sound delicious, some of those Buckinghams look a little druggy around the eyes if you ask me!
The Buckinghams
Not like these clean living young men from groovy London town!
Rolling Stones 1967
Wow! Look at the young Keith Richards in 1967 (middle row on the right). And look at him now:
Keith Richards 2012
If you ever needed a reason not to take a bucket load of drugs look no further!
The Stone’s recipe is one of the six that contain frankfurters as one of the key ingredients.
Chili Dog Chili by the aforementioned Paul Revere. That man sure did love his chilli!
Golden Joys
Hurry up Casserole
Frankfurter Casserole
Hot Dogs on The Rocks by the Rolling Stones
Frank Pops by The Cyrkle. I have no idea who The Cyrkle were. And if this recipe is anything to go by, I’m not surprised that they have faded into obscurity. Placing battered franks on a stick doesn’t make them more fun, it only adds insult to injury!
The Cyrkle’s Frank Pops
Mind you, the recipe from The Rolling Stones is not up to much either…although…with the right sausage, a proper gourmet one, and proper mash, this could be a perfectly acceptable meal! It can, can’t it? Or have I just been married to an Englishman for too many years?
Hot Dogs on The Rocks
I love a recipe that comes with its own warning! In case you were wondering
“Mick Jagger invented the potatoes and franks; Charlie Watts added the beans”
There is a tone to some of the entries that suggests there may not have been much love lost between Ms Ashley and some of the celebrities. Here is Ashley’s introduction to Liza Minelli’s recipe for Crepes Suzette:
“Liza Minelli is a little girl who’s come a long way despite a terrible handicap”
The part of me that craves gossip and scandal read on with an overly avid “Wow, really? What’s she got?”
The so-called terrible handicap?
Famous parents.
Unless they had different meanings for both the word “terrible” and the word “handicap” back in the late ‘60’s that is a nasty thing to say about someone! Poor old Liza doesn’t even get a proper photo, just a teeny thing on the cover!
Carol Lawrence also gets short shrift (even if she does get a very glamorous photo).
We are told that Carol is:
“Making a rather nice name for herself in Hollywood; not as a star but as a lasagne-maker”
Ouch!
Not really how a Tony Award Winning Actor would want to be known! Mind you, she did go on to write a best-selling cookbook about Italian Cooking so maybe Ashley’s comment is more prescient than catty.
You may have noticed whilst reading this that there have been no pictures of food. That’s because the book doesn’t contain any. This, as with most celebrity cookbooks, is long on celebrity, short on food. That some of the recipes sound super is a bonus. That some of them sound absolutely vile will be the subject of the next post.
In the meantime, put some flowers in your hair, light some incense and groove out to some fabulous sounds of the sixties. It’s what I’ll be doing!
Summer has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere. As I write this it is nudging 40° outside. So, as it is too damn hot to do anything else, I thought I would seek some cooking inspiration from the Hot Weather Cookbook. The book promises:
“Cool easy to prepare meals, featuring luscious fruits, crisp salads, refreshing appetisers, barbecues, light desserts and long, icy drinks”
Bring it on. As I sit here sweltering, I could do with some of those, particularly the long icy drinks! The back blurb further advises that the author Kim MacDonald
“fully understands the problems and potentials of summer food preparation”
As she should, given she has written a book about it. I would expect nothing less. However, the blurb significantly does not claim that Ms MacDonald fully understands the problems and potentials of attention to detail or the problems and potential of colour coordination because there are some shockers in here.
It starts off really well with this lovely artwork. This is not only very pretty but it also has a “Where’s Wally” / hidden object game feel to it. I’ve amused myself for a considerable amount of time locating a garlic crusher, a trident style fork, the ever-present pineapple, a cocktail with an olive in it etc. I’m easily amused. Or possibly delirious. Did I mention how hot it is?
Sadly, the pleasure brought on by that picture doesn’t last long – 14 pages to be exact because that’s when this photo appears.
Did no one involved in this think to take those oranges out of their plastic netting? At first I thought that maybe they couldn’t fully understand the problems of how to photograph a round object without it rolling all over the place. However, other pictures in the book demonstrate that some bright spark realised that oranges can be prevented from rolling by being stacked on top of each other:
Tomato Salad with Orange Segments
Or by being placed in a more appropriate receptacle:
I can only conclude that someone from the art department thought that leaving the oranges in their netting was a creative, citrussy version of fish nets hanging from the ceilings in seafood restaurants. It’s not. It just looks like someone left their shopping on the table.
The styling in this book is BONKERS.
I’ll start with one of the milder examples. I don’t understand why anyone thought this table-cloth would look good with this collection of icy drinks. It clashes with everything else on the page, particularly that purple drink. Although, there’s probably not many places where that drink would fit in. Maybe a circus. One where the clowns kill people.
The next one scares me. There is a distinct “beware of what’s lurking in the dark” vibe. That ivy has a very creepy Evil Dead / Day of The Triffids aura, not to mention the menacing looming shadows. I honestly believe that if you tried to help yourself to some of the Banana Rum Mousse that ivy would wrap itself around your wrist and drag you up the wall kicking and screaming before you could even wonder why the mousse is being served in such inappropriate glasses. And, surely, the only reason for the existence of that tablecloth must be that those colours and swirls do a really good job of hiding the bloodstains left behind by the victims of the evil ivy.
The next photo has an equally hideous tablecloth but there is some internal logic to it. Curry is tropical. Batik is tropical. (But then, to paraphrase my man Martin Lampen, so is dengue fever). You can have too much of a good thing. Which could explain why they chose jonquils for the vase instead of a tropical flower. Personally, I would have gone with a frangipani and a less leery table-cloth but I probably don’t fully understand the problems and potential of theming table coverings and floral arrangements. It’s a good thing Ms MacDonald and team do.
I recently listened to a very entertaining and informative podcast on Stuff To Blow Your Mind about Stendahl Syndrome which is a reaction some people have to great works of art. They can faint, become intensely anxious, or even hallucinate – in short they are utterly overcome by the sheer beauty and magnificence of the works around them. If you want to know more about this fascinating disorder, you read more here.
The reason I mention this is because I had a similar reaction, for the absolute opposite reason, with these next two pictures. Similar in that I started to feel dizzy, headachey and slightly nauseous. Opposite because my reactions were in response to sheer unadulterated ugliness. I honestly felt like these pictures were screaming at me. They not only made my eyes hurt, they made my ears hurt!
I haven’t been able to find existing references to an Anti-Stendahl Syndrome. So, I may have just invented a disorder. Fryer’s Syndrome – what happens when people have an intense physical reaction to something really ugly.
I can’t tell you what appalls me most about this picture of gazpacho. The hideous green tablecloth? The sieved egg yolks that look like maggots? The the ice-cube sitting on the egg? I suspect all of the above. I can tell you it inspired an acute attack of Fryer’s Syndrome. It was however, nothing to the bout of Fryer’s syndrome caused by this:
Oh boy, I don’t even know where to start with this one. I don’t think I can. Being rendered entirely gobsmacked in the face of the fugly must be a symptom of Fryer’s Syndrome.
Ok, I’m now going to try to convince my family that having their previously good name associated with people wanting to throw up in the sight of really ugly stuff is actually a good thing.
OMG…these were so good!
