elmteacher's Profile

Fake trees! My grandmother (bless her heart) left me four (!) of them when she passed, among other things. I considered "planting" them around her grave since she loved them so much, but in the end I donated them to the Salvation Army.

There is a wonderful book I discovered a few years ago, called "Eat My Words:Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote" by Janet Theophano, Palgrave, 2002. It is not a collection of recipes, but a look at how women have used cookbooks "to assert their individuality, develop their minds, and structure their lives". This is a look at recipe/housekeeping books written from the early 17th century to modern times by women who wrote them, learned from them, and organised their lives or the lives of people they cooked or kept house for. From the intro: "There is much to be learned from reading a cookbook besides how to prepare food...for me, leafing through a cookbook is like peering through a kitchen window. The cookbook, like the diary and the journal, evokes a universe inhabited by women...The stories cookbooks tell are about life and its sustenance in different eras and in different places, they are about enjoyment and desire, family and friendships, stability and change, and the contentment and longings of lives lived in worlds remote from our own". This is a great book for those who love cookbooks (as I do).

I, myself, have my great grandmother's ledger book, chock full of her own recipes, household accountings and medicinal recipes. I treasure it.

I did this to a kitchen floor way back in 1974. It was a three-day project, but worth it, and it held up very well for several years. I moved, so I can't say how much longer it lasted after that.