WWII Home Front Reading: Some Recommendations

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A couple blog readers asked me to share some of my favorite books about home front living during WWII.

Unfortunately, most of my knowledge of American home front living and cooking has come from talking to the WWII generation themselves or from reading sidelines in old recipe cookbooks and such as it seems like America just really isn't too heavily invested in the WWII home front like some others are (although the Great Depression does have some interesting books available about it).  So, I decided after some thinking to focus this post on the WWII home front in Great Britain as the books available about that area are definitely prolific and a lot of them are really fascinating to read.  And a lot of lessons can be learned from them.  If, and when, I get a good list of US based WWII books going I'll do another post on those, but for now here's some of my favorite books about WWII and home front living on the British front.

Warning:  Some of these are repeats that I've mentioned on the blog before, but it just shows you how much I do appreciate said books.

1.  Ration Book Cookery: Recipes and History (Cooking Through the Ages)

When you get this book in the mail you'll feel a bit jipped looking at it.  It's small.  In both size and thickness.  When I got my copy in I really had my doubts about if there would be enough information to justify what the book had cost me.

I was pleasantly surprised.

While small, this book packs quite a knowledge punch.  It goes through why the rationing system was introduced in Britain, what went on ration and when, how it affected people and cooking and what a typical week of rations were that the British people had to deal with (which wasn't much).

It's also packed with recipes in it's small pages, which are not only fun to read, but you can make them if you get adventurous.  I made a recipe in the book for "raspberry snow" which turned out to be interesting...not delicious but interesting (like many war time recipes blandness can be a problem due to lack of ingredients).

This would be a great book if you wanted some of the basics of home front living with rationing during WWII in Britain and all it entailed.  A great "get your feet wet" type of book.

2.  Make Do and Mend: Keeping Family and Home Afloat on War Rations

This book actually helped to inspire the name of the blog here and where I got the scans and tutorial for how to darn socks.

"Make Do and Mend" was a slogan the British pushed hard during WWII as items like clothing, shoes and the like just plain weren't available and if they were available you ended up with whatever size you could get your hands on.  So, mending and patching worn out clothing and household items just became second nature to people.

This book isn't a book per se.  It's a collection of some of the pamphlets put out during the war by the British government.  You will get to meet "Mrs. Sew and Sew" and have her teach you how to recycle a sheet for more uses when the middle of it wears out, how to put patches on a dress where it commonly wears so that you still look stylish even with patches on your clothes, how to wash rayon without wrecking it, etc.

For anyone interested in "bone saw" type of mending (as the Ministry wasn't really worried about making darns look pretty so much as making them functional) or just interested in reading historical documents as they were produced, this is a great book to get!

3.  Eating for Victory: Healthy Home Front Cooking on War Rations

This is much the same as the previous book, except this one is a collection of pamphlets put out by the Ministry of Food with different recipes, explaining why some foods are important for good health, recommendations on how to not waste anything, how to cook with dried eggs (anyone who keeps dried eggs for food storage would probably appreciate those types of recipes as it also shows you how to make do with VERY few eggs), etc.  It gives advice on how to cut down on fuel consumption when cooking, gives different menus for different meals that you can make in one pot by steaming and getting creative, etc.

I really like this book and "Make Do and Mend", but this one not so much for the recipes (although, I've tried a few and they weren't bad or anything), but because I love reading through the reprints of the pamphlets and the advice and such on making do with what little rations they had.

4.  The Wartime Kitchen and Garden

I just recently received this book and I LOVE it!  Not so much for the kitchen front things in the book, although those stories are utterly fascinating to read as well, but I loved having a book that covered the garden area of the WWII home front as "Digging for Victory" was a HUUUUUGGGEEE part of the home front in Britain during the war.  It was fascinating reading about how gardeners got the most out of their plots, how they made it all work with having very little available due to shortages.

Don't get me wrong.  The kitchen front stories in this book are really fascinating to read as well.  Reading about how being a single person on rations...well big families certainly were better off with the rationing system then single people let's just put it that way.  Also reading some of the stories of how meat that we don't really think of buying today over here, such as rabbit or pigeon, became much needed sources of meat for the people in Britain during the war.

There are a few recipes in this book, but it's definitely not a cookbook.  Still, definitely a book worth getting and reading if nothing else.

5.   Victory Cookbook: Nostalgic Food and Facts from 1940-1954

Now THIS!  This is a cookbook!  Marguerite Patten did an excellent job with this book, which is actually a collection of three of her books in one (be sure to buy the British edition versus the American edition or you can get stiffed one book...I just ordered one from the UK when I purchased mine).  I love experimenting with recipes out of this book and plan to experiment with many more.

The best part about this book is that Marguerite gives both British and American units for things like temperatures of an oven.  Instead of just seeing, "A moderate oven" she gives you what the temperature should actually be so you aren't guessing.

Throughout the book, as well, she gives a lot of stories of life on the home front during the war, including some of her personal experiences as she went around giving cooking classes with the Ministry of Food (parsley honey?  Yeah, she came up with that invention.  Neat huh?).  The book has some great photos, goes through cooking for one up to large crowds of people and follows how cooking changed throughout the entire span of food rationing during WWII.  I find this book utterly fascinating and from the sheer amount of bookmarks in said book in the photo up top you can tell how much I read through it *laugh*.

6.  Wartime Farm

 Before you read this book, first go to You Tube and watch the series "Wartime Farm" so you can get to know the people who wrote the book and you'll have a great mental dialog going for each character in your head as you read the book.

This is another great book that covers WWII home front living, but this time from the perspective of what it was like living between two forces, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food as you were trying to run a farm well enough that you could keep the government out of the day to day operations of your farm.

In the series it goes through a year with Peter, Alex and Ruth who voluntarily run a farm like it would have been run during WWII.  They deal with the Black Out (making sure all lights couldn't show outside of your home and alert German bombers to the locations of populated areas), rationing  and everything that people had to deal with on the home front, and at the same time run a farm that was being called upon to rip up tons of land to plant cereal crops to feed a country that would starve if farmers couldn't make the land produce what it wasn't even meant to produce.

The book expands on the TV series, going into more detail about the three went through.  Ruth shares rationing recipes and what she thought of them, Peter shares his favorite ways to preserve pork, Alex shares his knowledge of how agriculture changed during the war and afterwards.

I love this book, I really do.  I loved the series "Wartime Farm" and this book goes into just that much more detail that I find it's one of my favorite books at the moment.  Them talking about the ins and outs of running the equipment, what it was like putting together a rather sparse Christmas for a bunch of people, but doing so successfully (Ruth even shares the entire menu for their Christmas celebration).    Ruth talking about Peter's darning and about how she really got a kick out of how much pride he took taking care of his clothing himself and how crude it really was.  Just the little looks into each person's character and the ins and outs of day to day living during their experiences there.  Honestly, if you enjoy the series, I'd definitely suggest getting the book.  You won't be sorry!

7. The 1940's House

This is another one where you should look up the series online and watch it first before you decide if you want to get the book.

I saw the series "The 1940's House" and loved it, so when I saw that there was a companion book online I immediately bought it.

The best part of this book is not only do you get a lot of history packed into the volume, a lot of it is covered in the series, but you get a more in-depth historical journey in the book, but you also get a lot better look into the 1940's family in the book.  You discover that Ben decided to make a swear box while at the 1940's house to take his entire family for all he could get out of them as he knew that his mom and his grandmother living under the same roof would produce a lot of revenue for him (and from what the book says he actually did succeed in this plan) and other little stories that you don't get in the series.

Perhaps the best personal thing you get with the book, though, is a more in depth look at what Lynn went through during her time in the 1940's house via the journal that she kept meticulously while there so that the family would have a good day to day record of what happened while they were in the 1940's.  I find it especially amusing to read her accounts of wanting to throttle her husband as rationing starts to really tighten up what was available for them and, of course, Michael (her husband) using the opportunity to become a male chauvinist for the nine weeks they were in the 1940's.

I loved the historical accounts of what happened in London and West Wickam during the Blitz and the war period, how badly black out effected accident rates and other day to day hardships people had to deal with.  And I loved the additional pictures you get with the book too, which gives you more of a peak into what the family went through as they sat in the Anderson shelter and things.

Anyway, this is another book that if you like the series the book is definitely a must read/get book as you won't regret having it for sure!

So, there you are folks.  My recommendations on books if you want to discover more about home front living on the British front during WWII from city living (The 1940's House), to cooking (Victory Cookbook), to what they were getting for advice and information from a very controlling government (Make Do and Mend, Eating For Victory) to the gardening front (Wartime Kitchen and Garden) to the countryside and the farms (Wartime Farm).

I hope I might have inspired you to read a couple of the books as I really do think that there are a LOT of lessons we can learn in our lives today from reading about that period in history.  How to make do with perhaps ingredients we normally wouldn't consider working with, a "can do" attitude that anyone could consider inspiring in the face of really terrible hardships, always giving to others whenever possible through service or in whatever way you can, and, of course, "waste not, want not".

Definitely some lessons that are as prominent today as they were then.

What I'm Reading in 2015: October and November

Well, I promised that I'd get to sharing what I read in October and November of this year.  If you aren't into non-fiction types of books this is going to be pretty boring for you to read, but this is what I'm into reading right now.

First up is...

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham

I bought this book a while ago at a used store with the intent to read it and see if there was any knowledge to be gleaned from it.  And I finally sat down to read it recently.

I have to say I was impressed with how much this book covers.  It gives you different methods for raised beds, different things to plant, how to raise chickens and how to dress them and a lot of other things.

It gives you different ideas on planting from seeds and what is the best method to use to get good results.  I have to say that their opinions reflected my own on some methods, so I'm looking forward to trying the methods that he says works better than the ones I've tried. 

It gives you a good idea how to do a self sufficient lifestyle on very little land.  I found a lot of knowledge I could use to make my garden grow better this summer, so I consider this book a definite win on the book finds list.

Next up is a very special book, to me.

Encyclopedia of Needlework by Therese De Dillmont 

This book fell into my possession when my dad passed away four years ago.  I had gone back for the funeral and to help my step-mom as much as I could bring the house into some semblance of order (my dad was a hoarder).  While going through one room of many that was wall to wall books, I found this book while cleaning out piles of others.

The book looked old, so I flipped open the cover and found something very special inside.  My great-grandmother's signature with the date 1902 in it.

I was thrilled to be in possession of a book that belonged to a member of my dad's family as my dad's family wasn't big on passing down heirlooms from generation to generation.  So, I grabbed the book with the intent to read it completely one day.

The book, however, was delicate;  the cover was falling off, the outer binding was coming off and there were several beginning pages that had fallen out of the book.  So, I put it aside with some other old books where nothing would happen to it and just dusted it from time to time.

Until last month, where I saw it on the shelf and was curious to see if there was new things to learn in it's pages.  So one careful page turn at a time, I read through the book.

And I learned a lot, actually.  The book covers tons of things, including macrame and all forms of needlework.  It really is the most comprehensive book I've ever seen on the subject.

There is a newer version of the book available (at the above link) on Amazon, but I guess the digital free version of the book doesn't include illustrations, which you DEFINITELY need for some of the tutorials on some of the techniques.  The book even covers knitting, crocheting and many other really useful things.  And in a very tiny (for my particular edition) book.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is wanting to learn needlework of any type as it's the most comprehensive book I've ever read on the subject (and I own a couple comprehensive books on the subject).

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  If you order through these links I'll just get a small amount of money from Amazon for helping them advertise the products.  You won't be charged any extra for your purchases through these links.  If you order through said links, thank you :).

What I'm Reading in 2015: August and September

And I will start out with a big old "Oops!" that I never got around to posting up what I was reading last month.  It's been busy around here and then on top of that I've been reading through so many books that it's been hard to keep track of them all.  I can safely say that I think my brain got a lot of wrinkles the last couple of months, though *laugh*.

The first book is the book I finally got to read from cover to cover this month...

 Ration Book Cookery: Recipes and History (Cooking Through the Ages)

This book is small (I mean literally, it's like five inches tall by five inches wide), but it's actually jammed with quite a bit of information and recipes.

 I've got a few rationing cookbooks in my collection (this one too is British in origin), but the thing that stands out with this one, to me, is PICTURES (in color no less in some cases)!  Sure, some of the dishes aren't that appetizing looking, but when you are looking at recipes for mock goose and things I was really intrigued with what they would come out looking like.

I bought this book on kind of a whim as I was pretty much getting any book on rationing I could get my hands on and this book doesn't disappoint.  It has a timeline of rationing in Britain, old vintage product pictures and advertisements and even propaganda posters from the Ministry of Food.  There's even cooking times for how long to cook food in a hay box (it's like a thermal cooker made with hay, a box and a pillowcase).

If you are interested in rationing, how it worked in Britain, how people coped and cooked with rationing in place, even how it effected the battlefront, this is a great book to start with as it jams a LOT of information into a small package.

And now, on the lighter side of things, is a book I've read a lot this month as it is the highlight of my daughter's bedtime since I got the book for her....

 Splendiferous Christmas (Fancy Nancy)

This is, by far my daughter's favorite book series, ever (mind you I haven't started reading her Harry Potter yet *laugh*).  This series follows Nancy Clancy, who likes to be fancy in everything she does.  This includes speaking as many French words as she can (because French, as we all know, makes things more fancy), dressing up in frills and baubles and doing everything she can to live fancy (including walking around in ballet slippers or running her own spa).

These books are great.  They not only have expanded my daughter's vocabulary (for instance in this book the word pleading is used and Nancy explains what pleading means in a cute way), but it also is giving her a limited French vocabulary.  The artwork in these books is really nice and VERY detailed for children's books (for instance the cover you are looking at is a good sum up of what the artwork is like in the rest of the book).  The writer really captures what it is like being a little girl in her writings, which makes it a really fun read as well.

This book follows Nancy and her family (she has a little sister and her mom and dad) as they find a Christmas tree, wait and wait for her grandpa to show up so they can decorate the tree, a small childhood tragedy occurs and how it is fixed and leads to a very merry Christmas indeed.

I'd definitely recommend this series of books.  I've never run into a bad one yet, and we so far have about five in our collection on top of the ones my daughter has pulled out of her school library (thank goodness for Swagbucks to help me buy all of those).

What I'm Reading in 2015, July: Something From the Oven

I was going to do this last night, but I am seriously tired and having a kind of a hard time of it this week, so I waited and decided to do this one a day late.

So, without further ado, the book I read in July was...

Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950's America by Laura Shapiro


What is the book about?  Well, here's a synopsis from the back of the book itself...

"In this captivating blend of culinary history and popular culture, the award-winning author of Perfection Salad shows us what happened when the food industry elbowed its way into the kitchen after World War II, brandishing canned hamburgers, frozen baked beans, and instant piecrusts. Big Business waged an all-out campaign to win the allegiance of American housewives, but most women were suspicious of the new foods—and the make-believe cooking they entailed. With sharp insight and good humor, Laura Shapiro shows how the ensuing battle helped shape the way we eat today, and how the clash in the kitchen reverberated elsewhere in the house as women struggled with marriage, work, and domesticity. This unconventional history overturns our notions about the ’50s and offers new thinking on some of its fascinating figures, including Poppy Cannon, Shirley Jackson, Julia Child, and Betty Friedan."

I found this book utterly fascinating.  It was extremely interesting to read about food culture post WWII;  finding out how our culture of processed foods got started and how hard it was to sell the average American housewife on processed anything and how the food industry would not quit no matter the amount of times they failed.  They were determined to sell convenience and make a cash cow for themselves for years to come.  And once the processed food culture took hold, they got what they wanted, in spades.

As a woman who does use convenience foods from time to time but actually does enjoy cooking and doing domestic-y things, I was amazed how hard the women in this country battled convenience foods and how long it took for the food industry to brain wash people into thinking they needed convenience foods in their lives.

After a long, long battle with women in particular the thing that made convenience food culture take off was, I think, one of the main problems with our society today.  They sold the idea that we as a populace had no time.  No time to deal with a crying baby, no time to breathe let alone cook.  That feeling of rush and panic and exhaustion has taken hold in our society so heavily that I don't know if we could uproot it if we tried.  And we can thank the food industry for starting it.

I liked reading about cooks I never knew existed such as Poppy Cannon (who wrote a book called, "The Can Opener Cookbook").  Cooks that the author mentioned while talking about those cooks gave me about five books that I've added to my Amazon "read this" wish list.

By the time I got done with the book I was educated, entertained and had a deep seated want to go back in time and punch the food industry in the nose for really helping to give us the problems with high blood pressure and other health problems due to the high levels of stress that we've entrenched ourselves in.  Not that I don't appreciate convenience foods, don't get me wrong.  I really do like going into the store and being able to pick up things like cake mixes and such, but the feeling of ineptitude that the food industry promoted in people, telling them that they couldn't cook without processed help...it just burns me for some reason.

Either way, though, I highly recommend this book.  It was a lot of fun to read, a fascinating look at food history post WWII, not to mention food marketing and a nice condensed biography of some of the best cooks of that time (including Julia Child). 

What I'm Reading In 2015, June (Late): Preserve It!

And oops!  It's been a long week here and I completely spaced that it was July (which is sad since tomorrow is the 4th and all).  But, I figure better late than never, so without further ado the book I read in June was...

 Preserve It! by DK Publishing

I found the book at the used store and got all kinds of excited as I love ANY book that centers around preservation of food.  Seriously, I could read a book on the history of pasteurization I bet.  Sad, I know.

The book promoted that it covered canning, bottling (what I was actually the most excited about as I'd read a bit about "bottling" of fruits in my WWII books), curing, drying, etc.  So, I figured I could find some cool stuff in the book.

Sadly, I didn't find much.  It's not that there weren't some neat recipes in the book.  I got the book months ago, in fact and got my recipe for making candied peel out of it (which I'm still munching on from time to time).  No, the biggest problem was the fact that this was written for overseas audiences.

The canning process for jam making was...well weird compared to what I'm used to.  I remember my mom used to make jam with wax disks when I was a child, but there's some weird processes going on with the recipes (like letting the jam sit for a while before you seal it) that I had a hard time wrapping my head around.  For one thing the book has you making your own pectin out of apple peels, which is great if you have bushels of apples, but for those of us, like me, who have to buy pectin at the store the measurements in the recipes are going to be way off.

Here in America we have mason jars with two piece canning lids.  There's a inner circle that sits on top of the jar with a sealing compound around the edge and there's a seal "tester" in the middle of the circle that sucks down with a "ping" when the jar vacuum seals.  Then you have an outer ring that you screw down onto the jar to hold the lid with the sealing compound in place so that the heat from canning can melt the sealing compound, the jar can release the air it needs and then it will vacuum seal properly.  The methods they used in the "Preserve It" book were well...different.

And then there is our safety standards for doing things over here that the book didn't need to adhere to because it was written in a different country.  Like preserving fresh mushrooms in oil and just letting it steep at room temperature.  In America that's considered a big no-no as is preserving fresh garlic in oil as botulism can survive in the water contained with fresh ingredients like that.  So, I got kind of nervous that the book was being sold over here without some type of warning that safety standards differ from country to country and such because some of the recipes just out and out made me nervous.

There are some good recipes in the book, do NOT get me wrong, but the processes in the book, I think, at least over here should be greatly ignored and just everything pretty much should be stored in the fridge.  It seems safer to me.  But, I'm also a safety nut when it comes to canned goods now that I know more than when I first started out years ago, so be your own judge.

The photography in the book is top notch, though and some of the recipes are (I hope anyway *laugh*) safe by American standards.  Like the candied peel recipe I mentioned earlier.  I made a batch and it came out very well and I've been eating pieces on and off as snacks and plan to help flavor cakes and other desserts with the peel later on as well.

So, overall, if you are looking for a canning book that explains things and adheres to American food safety standards, get the Ball Book of Home Preserving (speaking of, I want to get their newest addition SO bad as it has like 75 new recipes in it!) and get this one to look at and get ideas, but don't get it and think of it as a preserving bible.  Because for Americans...it isn't.

Enjoy!

What I'm Reading in 2015, May: The Secret Garden and The Gathering Place

And so, another month in 2015 is over and it is time to share what I read this month.  I actually read several books this month, so I thought I'd share a few of them.

First up is...

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I had gotten this book free from our local school on the last day of school and thought I'd be able to read it to my daughter as a summer reading project.  Never having read the book myself, and having only seen about 2 minutes total of the movie version of the book in my time, I was intrigued with the premise of the story and really looked forward to reading it to my daughter.

The premise of the book, in case you are unfamiliar with it (as I was) is a girl by the name of Mary loses her entire family to typhus in India and moves in with her uncle back in England.  Her uncle lives on a lonely moor and doesn't know what to do with an orphaned child that looked ill and thin and so he basically let the servants take care of her.  Since she had nothing to do in the way of toys, the girl who was supposed to watch over her basically tells her to start playing outside or she was going to go batty.  So, Mary heeds her advice and starts playing outside.

In the course of starting to gain some health from the fresh air, Mary learns of a garden that had been locked for 10 years, since the death of her uncle's wife.  Mary, never being denied much of anything, decides she has to look for the garden and so she looks with the help of a robin who has befriended her.

She finally finds the garden and gains access, but doesn't know much about gardening beyond instincts, so she tries the best she can to get the garden growing again.  And then she meets Dickon, her servant Martha's brother.  Dickon is a boy who loves nature and all things animal and plant, so he knows immediately how to help her bring the garden back to life.

Things are starting to take off in the garden when Mary then learns another secret of the estate.  Her invalid cousin, Colin.  Colin's story is somewhat complicated, but basically what it boiled down to is that nothing is physically wrong with Colin, but he'd been told something was wrong with him for so long that he'd started to believe it.  Mary befriends Colin and then finally lets Colin in on the secret of the garden and Colin joins the rag tag group in the garden.

Finally, one day the head gardener peaks over the wall and sees the children in the garden and so Ben Weatherstaff joins the group.

Overall, I found the book entertaining, although I think it might offend some modern sensibilities in people when they read about young children running around outside all day, rain or shine, without adult supervision or even an adult that really cares much.  There's even a part of the book when Mary's uncle comes back to the estate and admits to her that he had forgotten all about her.

My biggest problem with reading the book to my daughter was the Yorkshire accents the characters speak in.  I was KINDA able to do a facsimile of a Yorkshire accent (I THINK), but my daughter just got confused repeatedly about what the characters were saying and would get frustrated with the story very quickly.  So, we finally called it quits on the book until she is a bit older.

I will keep the book around, though, for when she gets older as I do think she'll enjoy the book as she already has an interest in gardening and growing things.  I think she'll enjoy the book a lot when the language "barrier" isn't so frustrating to her.

Next up on my reading list this month was...

The Gatherhing Place by Graham Kerr

Okay, confession time.  I LOVE Graham Kerr.  I've loved him since he was "The Galloping Gourmet" making me laugh on weekends when my dad and I would watch his reruns.  I now avidly watch episodes of his shows on You Tube and I own no less than five Graham Kerr cookbooks (and you can actually get a look at the Galloping Gourmet kitchen scale I own as it's part of my blog banner).

So, when I saw "The Gathering Place" I HAD to add it to my collection.  And I'm so happy I did.

This is a cookbook that is half cookbook and half storybook, but the storybook end of the book will take you on a wonderful mental vacation around the world.  The book is all about Graham Kerr and his wife as they travel all over the world and the dishes that he made inspired by those places.

The nicest part of the book, for me, is the point of the book.  Which is he wanted to write a book about cuisine from different parts of the world so that you could have interesting meals to cook for family and friends when they'd come over for dinner and eat at your family table, or gathering place.  He gives ideas for different ways to do get togethers with friends and family at the beginning of the book.  And then throughout the book he gives you wonderfully vivid recollections of his travels to the point that you really can picture that you are there, which is a double bonus for someone like me who has never traveled outside of her home country.

I have to say that the recipes, well, they're a bit rich for my blood on the ingredients end of things (as in cost), but I did find a lot of inspiration to make some of my own special meals for my family using some ideas I gleaned from his travels.

And the icing on the cake, for me, was when I opened my used book to find this...

So, yeah, I didn't stand in line for hours to get the autograph, but you know what?  I don't care!  I have a Graham Kerr autographed book!!!  Eeeee!!!!

So, final opinions?  "The Secret Garden" is a classic, so I'm not sure how much I can really add to that, other than it might be confusing for you to read to young children, especially if you can't do a Yorkshire accent worth a darn, but it is worth having on your shelf, especially if you are trying to inspire your kids to play outside more or get them more of an interest in gardening.

And "The Gathering Place" was, as usual with a Graham Kerr book, vastly entertaining to read.  Graham Kerr's writing style is much like his TV personality;  very engaging, funny and witty.

So, really, I can't recommend his books enough, period, but this is yet another one I was happy to add to my cookbook collection.

What I'm Reading in 2015, April: Victory Cookbook

I forgot to do this yesterday as I've been kind of busy lately, so, without further ado, here's the book I read in April!

Victory Cookbook:  Nostalgic Food and Facts From 1940 - 1954 by Marguerite Patten, OBE

This is a book I bought last year sometime and had skimmed it a lot, but had never read it cover to cover.  I figured April was a great opportunity to do this.

This, by far, is one of my favorite books period at the moment.  Victory Cookbook is actually a collection of three of Ms. Patten's books, "We'll Eat Again", "The Victory Cookbook" and "The Post-War Kitchen" The books follow Britain through the Second World War with rationing, after the war when women were starting to work more outside the home and rationing was still in effect and the post war kitchen which goes year by year from the end of the war until rationing ends.  Be sure, if you buy this book to get the British version of the book as the American version only includes two of the books (I linked to the British version).

This book is at once fascinating and inspiring.  You think you are hard up for money?  You should get these books.  When you read this book the first thing that really starts to hit home is how bad rationing in Britain really was.  Ever wanted to know about 100 different ways to mix mashed potatoes to make different dishes, including how to make a mock cream with them?  This book is for you.

I really find the books inspiring reading about the social history behind the recipes, what rationing involved and, with all of that, there are still TONS of recipes in this book, which is even better to me.

I've made some of the recipes from this book and I have to say that everything I've made has been really good.  Some of it surprises you when you look down at a basic pastry recipe made with no fat or mashed potatoes as a base and go, "Um, am I nuts for doing this?" only to find that the pastry actually does turn out in the end.  The ingenuity of the Ministry of Food to feed a population when there wasn't a lot of food to be had, as well as the ingenuity of the women in that period who had to cook with next to nothing available, is just utterly fascinating to me and a constant source of inspiration in my day to day domestic life.  And those women were dealing with no food being available and no soap or other things while their communities were being bombed and they were working long hours in factories and such to take over when the men were overseas at war.  I'm always amazed how much they did and how they managed to do it.

I would recommend this book to anyone who needs some inspiration in their day to day cooking as well as to anyone who wants to read more about the social history of Britain during WWII.  I majorly enjoyed this book and will continue to enjoy it for years to come.

What I'm Reading in 2015, March: Han Solo and the Lost Legacy

You know on one hand I can't believe that March is nearly gone, but on the other hand it can't leave soon enough as far as I'm concerned.  What a month!

Anyway, I know the two people who actually read these "What I'm Reading" posts might care enough to read through this one too, so without further ado the book I read in March was...

Han Solo and the Lost Legacy by Brian Daley

Ha!  I know!  Not exactly what you'd expect with the other things I've been reading huh?

Well, this book has quite a history (and funny story) behind it.

You see, "Han Solo and the Lost Legacy" is book 3 of a Han Solo Trilogy by Brian Daley.  I'd read the first two books years ago ("Han Solo's Revenge" and "Han Solo at Star's End").  Read:  Before children.

I was really looking forward to reading this book.  Then I had my daughter and my son 18 months later.  My daughter never slept, my son was even worse and wouldn't let me put him down and then when he was old enough he started eating paper (it's part of his autism), so books for a long while got put on the back burner.

I think I tried to start this book about 15 times over the last 8 years.  Something always stopped me from getting more than 10 pages in before I had to stop, put it aside and forget about it for a while.  Finally, this month I was able to pick it up and read it during therapies.  And I got to read it ALL THE WAY THROUGH!!!

You can not believe how thrilled I am to finally have read this book.  I think I had the beginning memorized by the time it was all said and done, but to find out how the book progressed and ended?  Was by far one of the highlights of my year so far *laugh*.

Anyway, a bit about the book.

This is a GREAT trilogy to get for the Han Solo fan in your life.  I have never read anyone who was able to peg Han Solo's character, and Chewie's for that matter, down so well in writing (and in my younger days I read a lot of different ones).

I really enjoyed the first two books, where if you read this book cold you'll notice characters that are held over from the first two books you won't recognize (but you could still follow the book relatively well).  But this book, this book was the best of the three (how often have you EVER been able to say that of a trilogy?) and was just perfect in the way the plot went down and wrapped up at the end (I really don't want to spoil it for you as the ending will really nail Han's luck and make you realize how great these books really are).

And before you wonder, yes, this book wraps up with the beginning of the series of events that leads into Star Wars for Han, but in such a way you'll walk away laughing.  And putting the book into your pile of "keepers" to reread for years to come.

What I consider to be the best part of all of this is if you want to buy these, while they are out of print they are still cheap (.01 on Amazon for the paperbacks), so you won't have to worry about breaking the bank to read them.

Seriously, if you have a child who is a Star Wars fan or know someone who is a fan of the original movies?  Get these books.  You will not be disappointed!

What I'm Reading in 2015, February: The 1940's House

Ahh, reading.  It puts wrinkles in your brain you know.  And unlike the fine lines that are slowly creeping into my face, these wrinkles will keep your brain sharp and help you expand your brain power.  That's a good kind of wrinkle if ever there was one!

I know people are just waiting with baited breath to see what book I'm reviewing this month ;).

Well,this month's selection is...

The 1940's House  by Juliet Gardiner.


The 1940's house is actually a companion book to the PBS special that aired back in, I think it was 2000 (actually mine is an ex-library copy which I thought was kind of neat).  A real life family was taken out of their modern lifestyle, planted in a house that had been recreated in the late 1930's down to every detail and then the family was thrown into the world of the outbreak of WWII through V-E Day.  They lived out everything in that period of time condensed down into a 9 week stay in the 1940's House.  That meant dealing with things like washing laundry by hand, dealing with rationing and dealing with being hungry, working and volunteering outside the home (as women were expected to do during those times), dealing with black out and all the while having to run out to a bomb shelter in the back yard when "air raid" sirens started blaring through the house.

Oddly enough I read the companion book to this series before I even saw it.  I ran across the book when researching rationing during WWI and WWII and ordered it, intrigued.  After I received the book I realized that it was actually a series and really wanted to see it after reading the book.

I found that the series isn't easy to find as it is so old now that it no longer exists on You Tube or obvious sources (my best guess, although things like the 1900 House you can still find easily...go figure), so it took a while to find a place where I could watch it.  I've now both seen the series in it's entirety and read the book and I have to say that I really enjoyed the book more.

Not that I didn't enjoy the series, but the book goes into so much more detail.  It goes into the history of what actually happened during WWII in the civilian world, especially in Britain (where the 1940's House was filmed) and also goes into way more detail about things the modern family in the series experienced and lived during their nine week stay in the past.

You really come away, after reading the book and watching the series, with a sense of gratitude for what we have today and that we haven't had a war like WWII since it occurred.  The amount of shortages worldwide, the loss of life involved, the sheer scope of what happened...it really hits home when you read something like this and really does make you realize how lucky we are today.  That we have a roof over our head that isn't in danger from bombs dropping 24/7.  That we haven't had to live hungry for five years straight during a war and that our food hasn't had to be rationed for longer than that (rationing in Britain wasn't over until the mid 50's).

I've really become kind of a social history nut for WWII and really have found a major sense of pride in my side of the species on what women did during those dark times to make the home fires continue burning.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is the least bit interested in this period in history.  Very good read and lots of great information.

What I'm Reading in 2015, January: Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping

I've never been the type of person to set much store in New Year's resolutions.  I know it sounds cynical, but I always feel like if you make New Year's resolutions, you are setting yourself up to fail.  Because people always make "those" resolutions.  You know, "I'm going to lose 20 pounds this year", "I'm going to run 20 marathons", things like that.  Goals like that, to me, aren't really realistic and by about, oh March, the majority of people who buy those expensive gym memberships in January are then staring at the gym card stuck to the fridge while digging into a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

To me, a big reason that these goals fail is because they are BIG goals.  I mean losing 20 pounds, heck even 10, isn't as easy as those gym commercials make it out to be and people get discouraged quickly when they realize that reaching the goals they set just isn't going to happen quickly.

So, when this New Year rolled around I made the following resolutions:

1.  Instead of dreading the entire year, I would only dread one day at a time (thank you, Charlie Brown, for that bit of wisdom).

2.  I would read more good old fashioned BOOKS.

See, I'm kind of a research nerd, but I do so primarily online.  I'm not sure why I do that, but I just do.  And I've noticed that while reading and being able to find stuff online is great there are two major problems with it.  One, if I read on an electronic device too close to bed (which is the only time I really find time to read), it effects my sleep patterns.  And two, if I read it online it doesn't absorb into my brain the way reading from a good, old fashioned, page turning book.  I think a portion of that is because I'm a slow reader, but I absorb what I read and with books I can page back a few pages and start a part over again if I didn't get it all absorbed into my head the first time.  And bookmarks are wonderful things (so says the masses of bookmarks sticking out of every book I own *laugh*).

So, during this year, and hopefully ones in the future, I figured I'd share what book I read this month (one book a month is my goal), just because it's fun and might turn you onto something you might not think of reading otherwise.

And so we come to the book for January, which is...

 Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping: Timeless Wisdom and Practical Advice, by Miriam Lukken .

When times starting getting scary tight for us last year, I discovered a few new obsessions.  One was the social history of how those on the home front during WWI and WWII survived during hard times of rationing and also I became obsessed with the science of Home Economics.

See, the last Home Ec course I took was back in junior high that was worth anything and my Home Economics teacher was awesome and taught us a lot, but she never went over things like housekeeping and the best way to keep things clean that had been clean the day before (with an autistic son, my home always looks like a tornado hit it no matter how much I clean it seems, so I really wanted to get my housekeeping skills more organized).

And this was a book that taught some home economics in a fun way.  The book is "written" by Mrs. Dunwoody, a Southern widow who starts writing the book in 1866 for her children and she dishes out wisdom with Southern style. 

I found the book charming and for a book that is 220 pages of reading length long (the ending pages have pages to start your own notes to make your own book of knowledge and such) I actually read the book in about a day, which is impressive for me.  It covers pretty much everything from how to do a house cleaning schedule, to how to entertain for a large crowd of people, different recipes...even how to treat snake bite and how to white wash your walls come spring (course, the author points out when outdated techniques are probably NOT a good idea to use and what modern equivalents to put in instead).

I run an allergy friendly food blog in some of my spare time, so I got the book as soon as I saw recipes would be involved.  Oddly enough, the recipes didn't even come close to blowing my socks off, but I still greatly enjoyed the book.  The book is thorough and by the time you get done reading it, you'll be inspired to at least clean and organize SOMETHING in your home.  Doesn't that make it worth getting just for that?  I was inspired to rearrange my hallway pantry (used to be a hallway closet) to fit things better and redid my china cabinet so it was attractive looking and I was finally happy with how it was organized.  For the first time in three years (my "china cabinet" doubles as a medicine cabinet because my son can't open it and just holds a bunch of sundry items and such that I've collected. Oh and some herbs that I use for making skin creams.  And other stuff.  So yeah, getting all that to co-mingle was impressive).

I bought the print version of this book as one of my Christmas gifts to me (har), but you can buy it on Kindle if you prefer your books in e-format.  But, I definitely recommend making it part of your homekeeping library (if you have one...I'm just starting mine, but am proudly including this one).