The “Quick, Thrifty Cooking” cookbook is the 1980′s Reader’s Digest Book. It doesn’t have an author, but it was published by Reader’s Digest Sydney and the ISBN is 0 949819 80 8 if that helps?

I have one of my nan’s books from the 30′s – cooking for the new-fangled radiation (electric) oven. Some of the recipes (like lambs head soup) are so different from what we eat now. It also has some handwritten recipes in it! CWA books are also great, but I don’t have any. I grew up in the country where the CWA was a bigger deal than in the cities or on the coast, and I too like the connectedness to past (and my more rural) traditions.

Melissa

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. If I don’t get back on your site before Friday I also wish you a Happy New Year. Thank you for all your hard work putting together your blog all year. I thought for a while I had to have a website to post a comment, so had not left you any comments, but wanted to let you know that I have been reading along for quite a while now, visiting your blog most days and have recently subscribed to receive updates to my email just to see what you are writing about.

I have a question about the Quick Thrifty cooking book – is it a Reader’s Digest publication from around mid 1980s? I will look out for it, as I collect books from thrift stores and second hand bookshops. If you can tell me the author that would be great. I love the old CWA books. I also have an ancient “Selected recipes from The Leader” book (published for 1’6) it also had a folded up recipe page from a magazine still in it dated 1935. My husband’s old aunt left me her P.W.M.U book printed in 1929. It was hers as a young woman! I LOVE old recipe books with thrifty recipes in them Mostly I love their sense of history and the connectedness I feel to former generations who loved to cook simple and fresh produce from them.

Kind regards
Kaye