Easy Cooking for One or Two

by Louise Davies, Illlustrated (Illustrator)

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

Published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of what was a very useful series published by Penguin. That said, it is of course very dated now. My copy belonged to my grandmother and contains a couple of recipes she or her sister has written out for the other one to use. The book was written primarily for the over 60s and is aimed at people with perhaps not that much experience of cooking who find themselves having to learn in later life - I am guessing it was largely aimed at widowers or perhaps people who used to eat their main meal in a works canteen during the day and found themselves a bit lost in retirement. Anyone could use this book, though, and it really does contain some very simple things which someone on their own could do, also bearing in mind the smaller quantities needed. Some surprises: my memory of the 1960s includes a lot of rose hip syrup, recommended here for vitamin C but in a way that suggests that would be unfamiliar to a lot of people (and it is not so easy to track down today, either); no mention at all of salt content, which obviously was not considered a problem at the time, so a lot of the recommendations are quite salty (cheese, bacon, marmite); the author clearly does not assume that everyone has a fridge; some ingredients which were common enough in 1972 are no longer available; the "spaghetti bolognese"recipe is weird. A modern version of this would be good, as it is very clearly written and the author has experience of the social and economic problems of the elderly, which haven't changed all that much, and the need to produce scaled down versions of recipes so that people on their own don't end up eating the same thing every day for a week. I'm going to try one or two things, including my grandmother's (only it will have to be adapted as you can't get many varieties of Campbell's condensed soup any more - a staple in lots of older recipes!) Apart from the lack of salt awareness, it is quite good at explaining how to get a balanced diet with enough food from different groups. The author was a specialist in a Geriatric Nutrition Unit.