Our Wartime Kitchen Garden

Tom Jerrold

Description

“Our Wartime Kitchen Garden” is a 1917 guide to kitchen gardening and cooking on a budget. Written during World War II, it is aims to provide simple instructions and fantastic money-saving tips for surviving during food shortages and rationing. Cover-to-cover with ingenious ideas, this vintage cookbook will appeal to modern readers with an interest in saving money or being more self-sufficient when it comes to food preparation. Contents include: “Vegetables and Animal Diet”, “Asparagus”, “Culinary Preparation”, “Beans”, “ Culinary Preparation”, “Brassica”, “Culinary Preparation”, “Beetroot”, “Culinary Preparation”, “Carrot”, “Culinary Preparation”, “Celery”, “Culinary Preparation”, “Watercress”, “Culinary Preparation”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on growing vegetables at home.

Sujets

• Market garden

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528761826
• Langue: English

Extrait

OUR WAR-TIME KITCHEN GARDEN
THE PLANTS WE GROW AND HOW WE COOK THEM
BY
TOM JERROLD
1917
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Vegetable Growing at Home
(Kitchen Garden)
Whether you have a massive plot, or just a few planters, growing vegetables is satisfying as well as healthy. It also has a long history, dating back to French Renaissance potagers and Victorian Kitchen gardens. Kitchen gardens in turn have emerged from the Cottage Garden , the earliest of which were much more practical than their modem descendants. These were working class gardens, with an emphasis on vegetables and herbs, along with some fruit trees, perhaps a beehive and even livestock, with flowers only used to fill any spaces in-between. The traditional potager / kitchen garden, also known in Scotland as a kailyaird , is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden, possessing a different history as well as design, from traditional family farm plots.
The kitchen garden may serve as the central feature of an ornamental, all-season landscape, or it may be little more than a humble vegetable plot. It is a source of herbs, vegetables and fruits, but it is often also a structured garden space, sometimes incorporating beautiful geometric designs. The historical design precedent is from the Gardens of the French Renaissance and Baroque Garden la fran aise eras, where flowers (edible and non-edible) and herbs were planted alongside vegetables to enhance the garden s beauty. More common in the UK however, are simpler vegetable gardens (also known as patches or plots), which exist purely to grow vegetables - aside from any aesthetic purpose. It will typically include a compost heap and several plots of divided areas of land, intended to grow one or two types of plant in each plot. These plots are ordinarily divided into rows, with an assortment of vegetables grown in the different lines.
With worsening economic conditions and increased interest in organic and sustainable living, many people are turning to vegetable gardening as a supplement to their family s diet. Food grown in the back yard consumes little if any fuel for shipping or maintenance, and the grower can be sure of what exactly was used to grow it. Such means of organic gardening have become increasingly popular for the modern home gardener, and fit in with broader trends towards sustainability and permaculture. Through each person using the land and resources available to them, the home vegetable-grower has perhaps unwittingly become a part of this movement; a branch of ecological design and engineering, that develops sustainable, self-maintaining agricultural systems. The term originally referred to permanent agriculture but was expanded to stand also for permanent culture , as it was seen that social aspects were integral to a truly sustainable system.
Permaculture s core tenets revolve around care for the earth, care for the people and return of surplus; a key element is maximising useful connections between the various components, and synergy of the final design. This may sound hard to achieve, but by making and storing one s own foodstuffs, this helps to minimise waste, human labour and energy input - you have already started! Frequently, when growing vegetables in the domestic gardens, herb gardens will play a large part; they are normally purely functional, although many also arrange and clip the plants into ornamental patterns. Such herbs are used to flavour food in cooking, though they may also be used in other ways, such as discouraging pests, providing pleasant scents, or serving medicinal purposes (such as a physic garden), among others. Many herbs also grow well in pots / containers, giving the kitchen gardener the added benefit of mobility. Mint is an especially good example of a herb advisable to keep in a container - or its roots take over the whole garden.
Some of the easiest vegetables to grow are French beans; easy to sow and don t need support, so are easy to tend. Peas too are fantastic, as well as being fun to harvest for children. Beetroots, courgettes and lettuces are also good vegetables for beginners. The widespread uses, practical as well as edible, make vegetables a perfect thing to grow at home; and dependent on location and climate - they can be very low-maintenance crops. Even though technically a fruit, growing one s own fresh, juicy tomatoes is one of the great pleasures of summer gardening, and if the gardener doesn t have much room, hanging baskets are a good solution. The types, methods and approaches to growing vegetables are myriad, and far too numerous to be discussed in any detail here in this introduction, but there are always easy ways to get started for the complete novice. We hope that the reader is inspired by this book on vegetables and kitchen gardens - and is encouraged to start, or continue their own cultivations. Good Luck!
By the Same Author
THE GARDEN THAT PAID THE RENT
Fcap. 8vo., illustrated cover, IS . net.
HOUSEHOLD HORTICULTURE
Illustrated. Post 8vo. IS . net.
In introducing under a new title this second and enlarged edition of TOM JERROLD S well-known book, the publishers feel that they cannot do better than print verbatim the Author s original Preface, which could scarcely be more apposite to the present occasion had it been written for the first time to-day .
PREFACE.
I N joining together practical directions for growing and for cooking the more ordinary vegetable products of Our Kitchen Garden, we hope to give an impetus to the more general use of a cheap, nutritious, and tasty portion of daily alimentation which has everything to recommend it.
Our common vegetables are easily grown and cheap, and were they consumed in treble quantity, our fields could still send forth an ample supply; their cultivation is under ordinary circumstances remunerative, often highly so, and offers an almost unlimited field for the enterprise and talents of the cultivator, who in this branch of his business need have no fear of competition from the less heavily handicapped farmers of the Far West.
Although we have no desire to see the nation become entirely vegetarian, we still hope, not only to popularise the ordinary vegetables of our markets, but to introduce among the people at large some of the daintier products of the soil; feeling convinced that they have only to become known to be appreciated-only to be appreciated to become less expensive.
TOM JERROLD.
B ROMLEY , K ENT .
CONTENTS.
V EGETABLE AND A NIMAL D IET
A SPARAGUS
Culinary Preparation
B EANS
Culinary Preparation
B RASSICA
Culinary Preparation
B EETROOT
Culinary Preparation
C ARROT
Culinary Preparation
C ELERY
Culinary Preparation
W ATERCRESS
Culinary Preparation
C UCUMBER
Culinary Preparation
H ORSERADISH
Culinary Preparation
L ETTUCE
Culinary Preparation
L EEKS
Culinary Preparation
M USHROOM
Culinary Preparation
O NION
Culinary Preparation
P ARSNIP
Culinary Preparation
P OTATO
Culinary Preparation
P EA
Culinary Preparation
R ADISH
Culinary Preparation
R HUBARB
Culinary Preparation
S EAKALE
Culinary Preparation
S PINACH
Culinary Preparation
S WEET H ERBS
Culinary Preparation
T URNIP
Culinary Preparation
V EGETABLE M ARROW
Culinary Preparation
T OMATOES
Culinary Preparation
S ALSIFY AND S CORZONERA
Culinary Preparation
A RTICHOKES
Culinary Preparation
E NDIVE
Culinary Preparation
G ARLIC
E SCHALOT
C HIVES
G REEN H ARICOTS
A PPENDIX
OUR KITCHEN GARDEN.
VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL DIET.
B Y many persons the roast beef of Old England has for so many years been looked upon as one of the bulwarks of our superiority over Continental nations, that any suggestion that we might be as valiant, as self-reliant, as pugnacious-in fact, as bull-dogged-a nation, without as with it, is scouted by all who are staunch believers that British beef and British beer are the true foundations of British pluck. If their theory be the correct one, the often talked-about degeneration of the nation is easily accounted for.
Since the days when apprentices trusted to their strong right arms and heavy cudgels to enforce their right, beef has been gradually but surely rising in price; therefore the masses of the people have been forced to live upon very reduced quantities: and should meat rise in price in the future in the same ratio as it has done during the past few years, not only the poorer classes but the large middle class will have to forego their beef, and we may find the great deer parks of our aristocracy turned into grazing grounds for oxen, and a baron of beef looked upon as a more recherch dish than a haunch of venison. But while our butchers shops are still garnished with immense legs and mighty sirloins; while the poor may still buy now and again a scrag of mutton or some scraps of beef bone and fat, and flatter themselves they are having a meat dinner; it behoves us to consider whether we should not be as great, as good, and as strong with a less quantity of animal food, and whether-by individual good management in the economy of cooking-we could not contrive to reduce the price of that flesh meat which must be considered as a necessary part of our daily food.