12/5/09

COOKING OUTSIDE at any age. MUD PIES FOR ALL!


Keeping with the image from yesterday I give you one of the photos that was not used on the cover of the infamous cookbook Cooking Outside: 101 Ways to Create Mud Pies which was a national bestseller in the early 20th century. I believe this is the same book that so inspired Martha Stewart to try catering. 

mud pies_tatteredandlost
Click on image to see it larger.

This must have been quite a photo shoot. A rather warm day so the mud kept drying and cracking. Thus the bucket in front of the table where water was kept so that our little cooks could reinvigorate their tasty morsels for the camera. I believe that might be their editor zipping off on the left in search of flowers to festoon the poppyseed cake.

For anyone who didn't make mud pies for tea when they were little I'm deeply sorry for that gap in your childhood. However, have I got a book for you! 

Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls by Marjorie 
Winslow. I've put a link in the left column to used copies of the book at Amazon.

"For forty years, Mud Pies and Other Recipes has been the consummate cookbook for dolls, using only the finest ingredients found outside. All of the perennial doll favorites are here, including Dandelion SoufflĂ©, Wood Chip Dip, and, of course, Mud Pies. 

This special 40th anniversary hardcover edition now includes a Tea Party in the menu section, so that dolls with discriminating palates will be prepared for every social occasion. Erik Blegvad's classically fetching illustrations provide the perfect dressing for Marjorie Winslow's outdoor cookbook for dolls." (SOURCE: Amazon)

I know I'd be proud to have it on my shelf...even with the muddy fingerprints and grass stains. Not something you'd say about most cookbooks.

6 comments:

  1. Tea time with my sisters under the cherry trees and mud pies garnished with beautiful flowers.
    Good memories.

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  2. Yes, it was so much nicer to share the buffet with family and friends. Dolls worked nicely, but always required cleaning. Family cleaned themselves and gave animated reactions, unlike the dolls who never seemed to be truly in the spirit of the occasion.

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  3. I'll bet my older sister would have made me eat some. I won't tell her I said that though because she will deny it.

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  4. I remember making very elaborate pies and cakes an so wishing I could eat them. Don't recall actually ever eating any dirt.

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  5. Have a look at "Maw Broon's But n Ben cookbook". I have a copy and I love it. Same sort of idea, I think.

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  6. Rosie, thanks for book tip. This sounds like one my father and uncle would enjoy. Would take them back to childhood with all the thick brogues around the table to say nothing of my great-grandfather speaking Gaelic. This looks like fun!

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