Scrapbooks

I went to an interesting exhibition of scrapbooks, mainly old but some new, at the Central Library recently and was prompted to get out some in my own little collection. The first one is a recipe scrapbook I compiled in the 1960s using recipes in the Herald and Star and the Woman's weekly by such foodies of the day as Mary Anne and Tui Flower. I remember making the hot potato salad with frankfurters for a party with university friends, I took the same dish to a work do in the 1990s and made it again recently for a birthday buffet. In the 70s I added some new recipes and stuck in recipes I had enjoyed at friends' houses in the days when entertaining meant a dinner party. There is beetroot and apple salad, Syrian fruit salad and glazed ham (serves 10-12!!). I never made that I must admit, not feeling up to catering for the multitudes. The next little book down is mainly handwritten recipes in 2 different handwriting. The book belonged to my aunt Dorothy but I think my grandmother wrote in most of the recipes for staples such as shortbread, orange tea cake, ginger crunch and blackcurrant jam which includes raspberries as well. Sounds delicious and I am sorry that my blackcurrant jam always comes out of a jar from the supermarket. Although the little book has sections for fish, vegetables, entrees etc only recipes for cakes and biscuits were written in. That's what women used recipes for - for the other things they would have used their imagination to a large extent. I know my mother did. Here again I have appropriated the unused pages for my own recipes and stuck in a few from magazines. I was delighted to find a recipe for apricot and bran loaf which I made in 1974 when I was living in Hamilton. I will make it again soon with some plump bright orange dried apricots from Central Otago, I have in the cupboard. The next scrapbook is one I made in the 1980s or 1990s after a bookmaking course at Art Station. At this time I had saved all Eli's initial artwork from the time she was a toddler. At the same time motherhood had sparked my own creative juices and I was making things which complemented hers. So I interleaved pages of her art with blank pages for photos, woven or dyed samples, strands of coloured handspun yarn and the like. The page I have open shows some of the yarn and part of a painting by E. The last scrapbook is a travel one from the early 1970s. The trip was by car to Scandinavia right up to Finland. I bought some of this lovely cutlery which I still use, in Copenhagen. I loved the natural scenery in Scandinavia, especialy the trees and lakes but also the decorative arts, the architecture, folk music and food, frightfully expensive I remember. The book is handmade and bound in red cloth by Karin, a librarian in Wolfsburg with whom I worked. She was a very creative person and made beautiful things over the years some of which I ws lucky to receive as presents - a batik angel which goes up on the wall at Christmas time and cane coasters, a polished wood paperknife are some that spring to mind. But I digress. I will stop here as the paragraphing is not working on this post so I apologize for the mass of text .