Friday Show and Tell

TGIF! Welcome to Show and Tell! Every Friday Kelli over a http://kellishouse.blogspot.com/ hosts show and tell. It's alot of fun.

This week I would like to show you some books I have by my very favorite author Della T. Lutes.

I first found these books when I bought The Country Kitchen at a thrift store several years ago. I was hooked after the first chapter! All the books except Gabriels's Search are about the author growing up in Michigan during the 1880's. And all the books center mostly around food and life in the country.


Here is an exerpt from The Country Kitchen about her father's birthday which was January 1st.:
"Times when my father felt most English there would be roast beef, this was not often owing to the fact that beef was not easy to obtain on the first of January. A great pan of beans, baked, nice and white. Pumpkin pies were most in evidence, since this was my fathers favorite - pumpkin custard with thin, golden-brown tegument over the top like cellophane covering for a pixies bed. Yeast bread, salt-risin' bread and "riz" biscuits filling the large, sunny old kitchen with a warm crusty fragrance which, mingled with that of roasting meat and spices released from fruity jars, teased the appetite almost beyound endurance. And into the kettles, timed to the hour of need, went the potatos, onions for creaming and the Hubbard squash for steaming".


Does that not make your mouth water!!! If not, how about this:
"Flanking the caster and adorning the table here and there were dishes of brandied peaches, apply jelly, grape jelly, dill pickles, mixed mustard pickles, and piccalli, all in fancy dishes of glass or majolica."


These books are full of down home, country living and Mrs. Lutes isn't stingy with her food! Throughout the book there are the recipes or "receipts" for many of the dishes written about.

Now you can't just go to the bookstore or library to find these books as the are out of print. But, they can be found time to time on Ebay. They are definitely worth looking for!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weeked!
Linda