Just Add Flower

There is something about baking that always used to calm and rejuvenate me.  I've been thumbing through cookbooks looking for inspiration.  This antique cookbook, The New Galt Cookbook belonged to my Grandmother.  It was published in Toronto, Canada in 1898, and may have belonged to my Great Grandmother before her.  It's a "revised edition entirely re-set".  The "old" Galt Cookbook must be ancient.

I love reading the old recipes, printed on time-worn, sepia tone pages.  The cookbook was published long before recipes were presented as a list of ingredients, followed by instructions.  These recipes are written in descriptive paragraphs. Custard Cream.  Boil half a pint of cream with a piece of lemon peel, a stick of cinnamon and eight lumps of white sugar, beat the yolks of four eggs, then mix the eggs and cream very gradually together, simmer it gently on the fire, stirring it until it thickens, but remove it the minute it begins to boil.  That's it.  Besides the quaint reference to "lumps of white sugar", and simmering the cream "gently on the fire", there are measurements such as "cupfuls", "tumblers", "pecks", and "a piece of butter the size of an egg".  There are no oven temperatures, only instructions to bake in a "not too cool oven", or a "moderate oven".  Ovens with temperature gauges had not yet been invented.

I once Googled my own name, to discover that Ruth Adams (no relation) was the first female inventor to be granted a patent in Canada.  In 1855, before Canada was even a country, she invented and was granted a patent under British law for her Reverse Cooking Stove.  Reverse?  Did the Pineapple Upside Down Cake soon follow?

I haven't felt like baking for several months.  My heart just isn't in it.  I open the pantry cupboard, and just stare at the enormous glass jar of organic flour.  I open the fridge and stare at the eggs, as if one of them might hatch open before my eyes.

My recipe for pain and stress relief?  Just add flower!  Flowers and floral photography, are my endorphins - natural pain and stress relievers.  The whole creative process, from concept through to computer is pure bliss.

As I wandered about, gathering props for the photo shoot on lilacs, their intoxicating perfume filled my home with a fragrance as wonderful as fresh baked bread!  I could have photographed for hours, but the lilacs were wilting without water (as a budding floral photographer, I have so much to learn).  The lilacs lasted two days.   Their portraits, preserved on acid-free archival paper, will last at least as long as that old cookbook.

May these sun dappled and sun drenched lilacs brighten your day!

Photographs copyright of Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated
The New Galt Cookbook, by Margaret Taylor and Frances McNaught.
Published by George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto 1898.