duck-shaped pain

You don't see many vegetarian cookbooks that are old -- most I know of date back to the early 1970s at the earliest. I've occasionally run into older, early 20th century vegetarian cookbooks on eBay or used book websites, but most of them have a religious bent to them, usually Seventh Day Adventist. I've never seen any of these in person, so I can't really say what they're like.

I have several cookbooks in my collection that were published around the same time as Meatless Meals. They tend to treat vegetables with the least amount of respect and thought possible -- usually calling for a hearty, lengthy boiling as the preferred method of preparing any vegetable. But Jean Prescott Adams will have none of this. She writes, "A vegetable should never be cooked so long that it becomes a wilted, colorless mass; to serve it so is to acknowledge openly that as far as food knowledge is concerned, one belongs to the age before mineral element and vitamin discovery." So there!

Unlike a few vegetarian cookbooks I can think of [1], this book doesn't have a big long intro section/lecture in the front of it. It just lists vegetables you might like and tells you not to overcook them.

You could probably guess that the book contains a recipe for Nut Loaf, and you would be right. At least it doesn't refer to it as "nutlet", which is an unpardonable sin in my book.

There are quite a few decent-sounding recipes in this book, most of which are desserts (old cookbooks always have the best dessert recipes, which makes up for the fact that almost all the other recipes in them sound vile in some way). There are a few scary ones here and there, though. Like this one -- enjoy...

Prunes and Noodles

• 6 cups cooked noodles

• 1/2 cup bran

• 10 large prunes

• 1 cup white sauce (a butter, flour and milk concoction)

Place cooked noodles in a buttered baking dish, add white sauce and sprinkle bran over the top. Allow to bake in a hot oven until brown. Plump the prunes and warm them in the juice in which they soaked. Add brown sugar or honey if sweetening is desired. Serve a spoonful of the baked noodles and 2 or 3 prunes on a hot plate for individual servings.

You can't beat prunes and bran. I have no idea how you plump a prune, but it must be one of America's truly lost arts.

I was reading about some old books (not an interesting title, by any means), and I came across this description of its condition: "Covers rubbed; end papers foxed; rear hinge starting; contents tight." That sounds almost erotic.

Yesterday, I had a full day of outlet shopping with my mom and my aunt. My mom decided that it had been far too long since she'd been anywhere, so she decided to take us to Silverthorne, about a 3 hour drive from where I live.

I actually bought things, which I didn't think I was going to do. I got vitamins (exciting!), a new pair of wool clogs and some bras.

I never buy shoes or bras. They're both among the few things that I can never bring myself to buy, unless there is much thought and deliberation involved. This is in sharp contrast to something like books, which I acquire in great and frequent amounts.

I have less shoes than just about every other woman I know. I counted them today, and with the two new pairs I've bought in the last few days, I now have a grand total of seven pairs of shoes. I have the Birks, the new wool clogs, the old, decrepit wool clogs, a pair of combat boots, a pair of Generic Black Shoes, a pair of velvet loafers, and a pair of Converse. That's it. Other women in my family make up for it -- my mom and my aunt both have tons of pairs of shoes.

Once I get shoes, I wear them into the ground. The old pair of wool clogs I've had for four years, and they look twice as old as that. There are holes in the wool and other problems -- when you have to superglue parts of your shoes together, it's time to get a new pair.

Bras are worse. I hate to shop for them, I hate to buy them. But you have to, every once in awhile, to keep from busting loose all of a sudden. My big problem is that I hate underwires, but I also hate boring, plain bras, which is a contradiction in terms according to the modern lingerie business. If you hate underwires, you're more or less doomed to boring basic bras.

However, I finally found some I liked, some which weren't exorbitantly priced (my other beef is with how much decent bras cost). One is even velvet, which made me very, very happy.