Back in April, I covered three of my cookbooks with some fabric from The Range [see here] I have finally got round to labelling the spines. For months I have found myself taking all three books off the shelf in order to find which one is Jamie. This morning I borrowed Bob’s Brother PT80 labelmaker and labelled them.
As with most jobs which you think will take 5 minutes, it took much longer. As he was working at the church and not around to give advice, I had to find and download the instructions from the internet. Eventually I had three labels, all the same length, ready to stick on the spines. Then I found two more cookbooks to cover with the remaining fabric.
Having done all that, and being engrossed in a play on Radio4Extra, I decided to stay in the kitchen and sort out my shopping bags. I found this sorry specimen [below] lurking at the bottom of my MollyTrolley.
It is a Good Housekeeping shopper, which I received as part of a prize for entering a survey about 20 years ago. It was pre-Internet, and I’d filled in a reply-paid questionnaire which fell out of a magazine. I won an apron, a bag, a diary and a GH Christmas book.
As you can see, the bag is incredibly well used. One strap is almost split, the other has already split and been knotted. The bottom of the bag has suffered from many leaking pens! It is no use as a shopper.
This GH Cookbook is even older, and I got it just before I met Bob, back in 1978. I use it every year for my Christmas Cake, and lately have been rediscovering some of the wonderfully retro recipes in it. You can tell times have changed – fresh chillies, couscous and kiwi fruit don’t get a look in!
Despite the stains, I decided to use the GH bag to cover the GH book, and then printed another label.
I’d decided on a fixed length for the labels to give a sense of uniformity.
Now all I need to do is select one of the books and produce something interesting to eat!
I hope they don’t mind my informal approach to name labels!
How do you keep your cookbooks clean?
Which are the favourite ones you refer to time and time again?
Those do look smart!
ReplyDeleteI go back to Nigel Slater, Delia, and the GI diet cookbook, then just occasioanlly I take a look at some nice Canadian books that my daughter sent me.