Husband made roasted pork belly with mustard bbq sauce and an apple, cranberry, pecan side salad. Sooo yummy.
Then he ended it with crème brûlée. I didn’t think to take a pic of that before digging in. The crème brûlée wasn’t as good as usual because he had to use vanilla extract instead of vanilla beans. Still delicious but with vanilla beans it’s heaven.
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My goodness that looks and sounds wonderful.
Now all I can think about is this. 
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Roasted pumpkin seeds tonight in butter, allspice, cinnamon, a bit of ginger, sugar, and of course kosher salt, roasted for a couple hours in a 250 degree oven… They came out good!
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I do ours in oil, sea salt, chilli flakes and whatever spices take my fancy that day but the chilli flakes are not optional in our house!
They take minutes to roast though for me rather than hours.
This year we didn’t have any of the orange pumpkins because there were none in the shops as 2020 continues to wreck your plans.
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Beer battered cod and tater tots and steamed mixed veggies. The batter could have been crunchier, I think I pulled the strips too soon, but the fish was cooked all the way through. Mom loaded hers with tarter sauce-not sure how much of the fish she could taste…
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My love for okonomiyaki knows no bounds - was glad someone else was similarly inspired to waffle one! I bet it would be delicious.
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Baking cookies. Oat, walnut, chocolate chip cookies. The recipe calls them Washington cookies and comes from an old, slender cookbook called Make It Now, Bake It Later.
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I love that kind of shit. Looks like it was reprinted in 2004, and old copies of either are still floating around for various prices.
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Made okonomiyaki in the waffle maker. A waffle shape was not conducive to topping with pork or accoutrements on the top.
It sort of worked for seafood version. My wife was not happy about the deviation from her beloved Kansai region cuisine.
On the upside it’s really easy to make on an electric griddle.
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Favorite old school cook book?
Mine is Mary Margaret McBride’s Encyclopedia of Cooking. Long out of print, but once given away in 12 volumes at super markets. Every $10 or something you spent got you a coupon, each coupon could be exchanged for one of 12 volumes. One of the only things I know about my great grandmother was that she spent years collecting one. The other two things are that she was “stern” and “Bavarian”, my grandfather didn’t talk much about his childhood and the only thing he cared for on the subject were this cook book and his brother. I don’t think he had an easy time of it.
Solid recipes. I’ve come to find out Mary Margaret McBride was a bad ass. One of America’s first female broadcasters, bit of an LGBT figure as well.
And seriously solid recipes, a lot, a lot, a lot of my “family” recipes are from this. My mother has my stern Bavarian great grandmother’s copy, but there are several copies floating around the family. Looks like old copies of the 12 volume set have come down significantly in price. Believe the much cheaper and more common 1 volume edition is identical.
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I grew up with Cookery the Australian Way which was (and still may be) the standard high school text book for home economics in Australia. While the recipes are always basic, each edition is a record of our food history and you can track evolving tastes - my 1979 edition is way more Anglo-Saxon than the current edition (but has our family definitive recipes for scones and sponges).
After that it’s Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion and anything by Madhur Jaffrey or Yottam Ottolenghi.
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Old Home Ec texts tend to be awesome on this front. Thanks, I’ve not heard of Cookery the Australian Way. Seems a bit like Aussie Joy of Cooking with the regular updates. It seems like most nations have something like this, it’s a curious bit of nation building for a lot of places.
For the other ones I dunno if books from the 00’s and late 90’s count as “old school”, but maybe I’m old. I do have a copy of An Invitation to Indian Cooking on the shelf I think, and that both counts and is awesome.
ETA: Counts as old school or not thanks for any and all favorites.
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Not my favorite, but in case you didn’t see this upthread:
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I cook out of dozens of old cookbooks, and people keep giving me random ones as gifts. One of my favorites is The American Woman’s Cookbook, which I was delighted to see is on archive.org!
ETA: the online version doesn’t have the illustrations in horrifying color, so some of the weirdness is lost there, but they do have the chapters on “Entertaining Without a Maid” and “Food for Invalids”, which explain a lot about 1939.
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Both of those chapters make really good band names!
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i’ve got a combination history/cookbook called the delectable past which surveys cookbooks and recipes through history. i’ve made several of the recipes and all have been pretty good.
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OMG yes! My mother had The American Woman’s Cookbook. As a child I was absolutely entranced and transfixed by the photos (above) of the petis fours on the endpapers! It was like a vision into some other world. I kept very few things from the house after my mother died, and I had hoped that my eldest sibling (a collector of cookbooks, as well as many other kinds of books) had kept that cookbook, but she didn’t and has no recollection of it even. I had looked for it online at some point, with no success. It’s a treat to see that photo (and the rest of the cookbook) again, @marence!
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The husband just mentioned petit fours yesterday - he thinks I should try it, a la GBBO technical challenge - get the recipe, get the ingredients and equipment together, and just do it. Hey, I can use the American Woman’s recipe!
I have a long track record of making delicious bakery. I also have a long record of making the ugliest rustic pastries. I think any attempts at prettiness in tiny form are doomed to fail spectactularly.
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I hope to see photos here!
I tried to make an apple pie “artistic” last night as a distraction from the election. Dough crows flying to a dead tree. I’ll try to find a photo, but I fear it’s obvious that bourbon was involved…
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Bourbon in an apple pie? Sounds scrumptious!
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