A Wordless Book
Halloween out of the way, so we can now concentrate on the next big celebration. Soon we will be bombarded with advertisements, writing endless lists, running around in a state of despair, cooking for all & sundry and wish that Xmas had been cancelled. I wanted to catch you before the build-up and the pressure, when you are still relaxed and able to enjoy a spot of shopping to share an idea for a present. A present which I got for my birthday, and to tell you the truth, when I opened the beautiful wrapping, I was a little disappointed. I had been presented with
A Recipe Book Without Words
Since then my feelings have change towards my “social book,” I am not referring to the all-important e-kind; mine is a real, attractive, gorgeous object and I now think it to be a great present. But what is a social book? And more importantly, why would you have the need for one?
Let’s cut it short: address books and guests books are social books; the marketing twist here is to take the idea and extend it to a much larger range and create a pretty book which entices you to write in. Mine makes recording easy with its 6 food themed transparent dividers, the cover and the dividers are plastic splash proof sheets; practical touches are good. The next question, of course, being: “do we still write down our favorite recipes?”
At the end of each section, there are a couple of plastic wallets so that you can display photos or articles which make me think that you might not want to do all this for yourself onl,y but maybe for somebody else and present your book, now with words, to another. The penultimate page is a zipped wallet, I can see the relevance of this for the gardening book, though I am not sure what requires to be zipped in a recipe book. Let’s face it not all good presents are useful, some of the best are entirely useless. Will I use mine? I don’t know. But I like the idea that I now have a beautiful place to write my recipes in.
And if/when I do one of my first recipe will be
Herb Soup
Ingredients:
chives 1 tbs
parsley 50 gm
coriander 50 gm
dill 50 gm
spinach leaves 100 gm
5 spring onions
1 small lettuce
½ tub of cream cheese
1 potato peeled
1 pint of water
bouillon such as Marigold
butter
Method:
Melt the butter in a saucepan, and add the spring onions and the potato and cook for 10 minutes. Add the herbs and sweat them for a minute, too long and they might “disintegrate.” Add the stock, bring to boil and cook for 10 minutes. Liquidise, adding the stock as you do so, to get the right level of thickness. Pour in the saucepan again and add creamed cheese or cream.
My social book comes from Paperchase, a UK-based company, but I read that there is extensive opening programme in the USA, so for anywhere else in the world, keep your eyes peeled or come this way clutching a wish list for a spot of famous London Xmas shopping.
