Tuesday 4 August 2020

Goode Cooks

I grabbed a couple of old cookbooks to read on holiday. I have had these for years. I'd watched Shirley cooking on the BBC when the girls were tiny. Always incredibly frugal - and fond of making a meal for 4 for next to nothing - but sometimes a little strange in her approach.
I have heard her described as "The Jack Monroe of her day" - and in some ways she was. She began being super thrifty when the money ran out, and she had to produce family meals from what was in the cupboard.
She had a chatty down-to-earth style, and occasionally produced some very bizarre dishes in an attempt to cut costs [but who am I to comment - 'bizarre' and 'chatty' are adjectives frequently applied to me and my cooking]
Rereading the books I concluded that they are very much 'of their time'
  1. There's no mention of broccoli, pitta bread, wraps, couscous or blueberries.
  2. She makes bread- but using a packet mix
  3. She makes her own soft margarine by cubing a block of hard marg and beating the cubes with warm water till soft.
  4. She makes cream by melting butter and gelatine in milk and liquidising it, but uses a lot of 'synthetic non-dairy' cream on the grounds that it is cheaper, and if well flavoured,nobody will know!
  5. She makes next to no references to a vegetarian diet
Those foodstuffs in point 1 are easily available and most people are used to eating them. These days most people I know who want 'interesting' bread either buy it ready-made, or make their own from scratch. 'Soft' spreads are inexpensive and available in many variations- why make your own? ditto cream. Her ideal meal seems to be meat and two veg with a cheap carb laden pud to follow
Having said all that, I did find her recipes a useful starting point when our girls were tiny and our income was the same. She costs everything to the last penny. In 1987 she set herself a challenge of feeding herself for 4 weeks on a weekly budget of £15 [this is set out in Goode For One] I found it interesting to compare prices then and now. 
Her basic shopping list was divided into 4 - meats/fruit&veg/dairy/groceries. She allowed herself £3.75 for each section. I've meticulously worked out the change in prices now - and although £15 then is equivalent to about £45 now - three times as much ,the price of her foods has only doubled. So food prices in relative terms appear to have fallen. Some things have gone up a tea, coffee, fish - whilst a can of beans, an iceberg lettuce, sunflower oil and rice, cost about the same. Milk has not increased much in price- look at the struggles of our dairy farmers to keep going when the supermarkets pay them the minimum.
But having said all that, these are useful basic cookbooks for someone attempting to be thrifty, fond of a trad 'British' diet. I am not planning to keep them - they are very much the worse for wear - all the pages are there, but some are loose., and I have written a few notes in the margins.
Shirley wrote a blog from 2006 till her death in 2015. It is still online - but sadly it doesn't have any sort of index which makes it hard to track down her best recipes. But if a couple of you would like these little gems I will happily post the books to you. Comment below and at the end of the week I'll draw the winners' names out of my sunhat!

16 comments:

  1. I have never come across Shirley Goode even though I was bringing up a young family in the 1980s on a low income. Maybe it’s because we didn’t own a television for many years.
    Rose Elliott’s bean book was my mainstay for inexpensive recipes.

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    1. REs book was one I borrowed from the library - published in 1979 and then reprinted in a new format 20 years later - perhaps it's due for another revival now?

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  2. You'll have probably guessed I already have those (well one of them) but also have another called "A Goode Year" and one she wrote with someone else called "More for your Money" My copies are also falling to pieces and I've not looked at them for years.

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    1. I remember A Goode Year, but not More For Your Money

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  3. I used to follow shirleys blog I loved it I used to have one of her books so I would love to be considered for these please

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  4. I used Shirley Goode's books years ago and, like you, I still have them. I seem to remember a recipe for honey substitute using water, honey and parsley. Yes, some things were more than a little bizarre but others still stand the test of time.

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  5. I used to follow shirleys blog I loved it and I did have one of her books which sadly got lost so I would love to be considered for these please

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  6. When I was at school doing Home Economics I had to produce a meal for four people at the cost of 50p. Which I did.

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    1. You're still a very thrifty lady Pauline!

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  7. I'm not familiar with her either. We watched 'Farmhouse Kitchen',when daytime telly was a real novelty, I still have those books. Then Delia came along. I wasn't introduced to broccoli until 1975 when I met my prospective husband and his Mum used to cook it for the family and soft spreads weren't around then either, 'Stork' margarine was the cheap alternative to butter and used a lot in baking. Vegetarian diets became more popular from the '70's with the advent of the wholefood health shops and eateries (the oldest one in Edinburgh is not resuming business because of Covid which is so sad after being there for almost 60 years). ps I'm getting rid of some of my own cookbooks so no need to put me in the hat!

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    1. I need to cull my cookbook collection. But I never find it easy to get rid of books!

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  8. I loved Shirley and followed her blog for years. Her tastes and recipes did change over time - she always meant to do a recipe index but never got around to it. I still dip into her old blog now and again as I just loved her chatty style.

    She is actually responsible for my online "name" - my name is actually Maggie but she kept getting me mixed up with other "Margarets" so somehow I ended up being "Margie from Toronto" as I didn't like to correct her. :-)

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    1. She was always very good about replying to people's comments. Much better than I am

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  9. I learnt a lot from Shirley in the early eighties when I was feeding five of us on half a shoestring. I followed her blog too. I also borrowed Rose Elliot's book regularly. Seems like there are a lot of us who thought alike back in the day : )

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  10. I'm not entering the give away, but, just wanted to say that old cookbooks are fun to read through! I'm also trying to recall when I first had broccoli - it wasn't a vegetable I grew up eating. :)

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  11. I've got Shirley Goode's books and Rose Elliot's although I am not a vegetarian but as I suffer from gout I need to check vegetarian food.

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