A little more rootling and a Simple tea

I have been rootling around in the Lounge again today and have managed to get partially to my book case from which I freed a few of my books.  I have not seen these for an awful long time.

These books I have had for some considerable time.  The first one is called The Harvest Pantry by Barbara Beckett ISBN 1-86373-507-0. I had difficulty in getting hold of this book as it was quite a rare one when I was looking and in some instances the price was about £60!  In the end I managed to get hold of this particular copy for about £10.  Very lucky I was too. 

In effect it is a companion book for another book I bought called Creating Gourmet Gifts ISBN 1-86373-246-2 with lots of useful recipes being available in both books to create a useful and interesting Pantry.  I bought the Creating Gourmet Gifts book from the predecessor of "The Works", shop in Peterborough well over 20 years ago.  It is a book that I have gone back to time and time again especially when in full throes for preserving and canning and also putting different speciality items on the Pantry shelf when I can afford to do so.

The Third book is called Country Harvest by Linda Burgess and Rosamond Richardson ISBN 0-85223-891-6.  This one is a really beautiful book with lots of beautiful colour plates (this is quite a large book) and some very different and useful recipes. Recipes for preserving, baking, bottling, wine making with lots of other goodies to boot.  I am going to re-acquaint myself with all books over the next few days - I am tired at the moment and so am going to sit and peruse and re-acquaint myself with some of the recipes, which I believe could be relevant to some of the preserves I already have on the Pantry shelf.

I tend to be very eclectic with my book choices.  A lot I have been able to buy from new from reduced book stores or second-hand or more book stores online, which I have found to be very useful over the years.  There are some of each of the above books on Abe Books, World  of Books at the moment.  I think Abe Books is the cheaper of the two sites. Just type in the name of the writer or even type the word "Preserves" in and see what comes up.

Needless to say I have an awful lot of books both to read for pleasure and for practicality like crafts, cooking, wine making etc.

Tea tonight has been sausage, egg and baked beans.  Nursery food but has gone down a treat on this cold day.  I forgot to take photos.  It has done the job though.

There are still more books to go.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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