Selfsufficientish.com

"delicious Low-cost dishes for the cook on a budget" so sayeth the by-line on the cover. I have an alternate one:"Low cost dishes for the family with no taste buds". Evidently the author one Gail Duff has also written a vegetarian book and I think she should have taken more of a vegetarian route with this one (published 1979.. you have been warned) because she seems intent on doing unspeakable things with offal and any other cheap cut of meat which dares to look at her sideways. such recipes as Hot kidneys in tomato juice sit alongside soup recipes such as curried Fenugreek sprout soup and gherkin soup (both made with wholemeal flour) quick pickled herrings which you boil in vinegar and if it is a special occasion you put on a bed of lettuce.. one assumes that if it is not you simply plonk it on a plate and growl, "that's yer lot".
I collect naff cookbooks and generally within their pages I find a recipe which has some merits. In this book I am really pressed to find one I would make at all. Even the desserts are simply stodgy fruit based offerings. If you simply want to feed your family then you could make up recipes which are more appealling and tastier than the one in this book, even if you only just passed home ec. and haven't lifted a spoon since. If you want tasty, healthy well presented food try a different book.

So you didnt like it them Jessiebean???
I was looking a ta book in a shop the other day called "grandmas favourite recipes" (or something like that) and it had things like chilli beef stirfry, and various other things with ingredients my gran would not have recognised!!
I thought it would have the old favourites like cobblers and pies?? The grandma must be of a "younger" generation!

battybird wrote:So you didnt like it them Jessiebean???
I was looking a ta book in a shop the other day called "grandmas favourite recipes" (or something like that) and it had things like chilli beef stirfry, and various other things with ingredients my gran would not have recognised!!
I thought it would have the old favourites like cobblers and pies?? The grandma must be of a "younger" generation!

Was my opinion too obvious? Maybe the Gran in the book was a sort of Chinese Gran? you should see my "Mrs Beetons Cakes and Baking" which has various frosting and chocolate chip cookies in it... not the sort fare from late Victorian London when she was alive!(Mind you some of the recipes are quite good)