I have recently moved into a smaller home where Ben and I can continue living independently in our old age.  (87 yrs)  This means giving up a lot of our possessions, but not the memories associated with them.

I have been looking through some old cookbooks.  I used to have a collection of about  50 books and probably I used each book for about three or four favorite recipes.  Now, thru the Internet I can get a choice of hundreds of recipes and print the one I want.  What a wonderful help in my old age that allows me to give away things or delete them (a new meaning to that word since the computer has come into my life.) I wish all things that are useless and out of date were so easy to get rid of.  (Hey, I think I have changed my mind about that comment as I may be easily deleted.)
 
Some favorite cookbooks from long ago I have kept.  Now it is time for another deletion, but I have to peruse all these things before I toss them.  I admit I put them in a pile and when it comes time to delete I can't do it as easily as on the computer.
 
For instance I am looking at a cook book  from the Boston Cooking School printed in 1923.that was my mothers .  She fed her family of 6 boys and two girls from this book.
 
I will choose something from it to make for dinner before I delete it.  The front piece I love.  Here it says "Cooking means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba.  It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices and all that is healing and sweet in the groves and savory in meats.  It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances.  It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting;  it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies -- loaf givers."  Ruskin.  Isn't this beautiful?
 
Now for some recipes from this book.
 
Shall we have roast venison tonight?  No, I don't think so.  How about dove pie made with 6 fat doves, dressed?  Not tonight.  I could substitute  Quail Pie.  I skipped over Kidney Stew without reading it.  The very name turns me off.  I have never been served fried cucumbers either.  Now, I've settled on a dish and it's called Ringtumtiddy.  I'll send the recipe to anyone who wants it.  You'll need a bottle of beer to make it.
 
My mother actually cooked from this book.  Also I recall when my mother told us she was going to serve for dinner some Birdseye Vegetables that had been frozen for years.  Birdseye frozen food was just becoming available in the market.  Who had ever heard of frozen food lockers then.  I came from a family of picky-eaters and we were afraid to try such a thing as frozen food.  Remember, we got our food out of the ice box and the ice was delivered daily.  We hung a sign out the window with the markings of 10 cent, 25 cents, 50 cents and if you were rich or your mother was going to make home made ice cream the sign said $1.00.  The ice man had tongs and carried it in the house and put it in the ice box.  We were always remonstrated not to use the ice to scrape snowballs.  It was too expensive and if we were not careful in its use our food would spoil.  What a luxury was the ice box to my mother who recalled getting the food from a storage basket hung in the well.  She and my grandmother canned or dried all our food.  We also had a root cellar.  Oh, those cabbages that appeared on our weekly supper menu!
 
Now it is supper time.  Ben always ask why I say supper.  It is the Eastern tradition, I suppose.  I don't have the quails ready so it is hamburgers on the grill for us tonight.