[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":11},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-post-mrs-beeton":3},{"_type":4,"body":5,"bodyHtml":6,"excerpt":5,"featuredImage":5,"publishedAt":7,"slug":8,"tags":9,"title":10},"blogPost",null,"\u003Cimg src=\"https://images.jabberworks.co.uk/lj/mrs_beeton1-4470c0d1ae.jpg\">\\r\n\\r\nThe other day I was having my morning coffee in a cafe that had copies of \u003Ci>Psychology\u003C/i> magazine lying around, and I found a photo of \u003Ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Beeton\">Mrs Beeton\u003C/a>, one of history's most famous cookery writers. I'm impressed by this \u003Ca href=\"http://www.fashion-era.com/images/xmas/xmas_food_recipes/beeton_puds_1890s.jpg\">colour plate from her famous cookbook\u003C/a>, I must track down the whole volume and have a good look at the illustrations. \\r\n\\r\n\u003C!--more Here's where I whitter on for a bit about cooking-->\\r\n\\r\nWhen I moved in with Stuart, I think he had four cookbooks: two from his mum that were unchanged Victorian recipes, a slow cooker book, and Delia's \u003Ci>One is Fun\u003C/i> book with recipes that he doubled when we were dating. Now we have about twenty cookbooks, but I still mostly only use about three of them. My favourite one \u003Ca href=\"http://ellenlindner.livejournal.com/\" class=\"lj-user\">ellenlindner\u003C/a> recommended to me, and which unfortunately is out of print, \u003Ci>Cooking like Mummyji: real British Asian cooking\u003C/i> by \u003Ca href=\"http://www.vickybhogal.com\">Vicky Bhogal\u003C/a>. (You can pick it up used for a mere 75 quid on Amazon.) But I see she has some new books out, so I might have to investigate. \\r\n\\r\nI mostly learned how to cook from \u003Ca href=\"www.deliaonline.com\">Delia Smith\u003C/a>. My mother is a brilliant cook (and even better now than she used to be), but she was always so good that I unhelpfully let her get on with it, and just stirred the occasional sauce or ferried dishes and coffees back and forth at one of her zillion dinner parties. When I left home at 17, I only knew how to burn omlettes and eggy toast, so my Moscow flatmates and later Stuart had to endure a lot of my experimentation. I once managed to bake cinnamon rolls in a saucepan in a Russian oven with no temperature markings, from a used \u003Ci>Better Homes & Gardens\u003C/i> cookbook I managed to pick up in an English language bookshop... I was well proud of those.","2009-06-16T23:19:00.000Z","mrs-beeton",[],"mrs beeton",1776628732778]