Bootcamp: Living on a Little by Caroline French Benton

 

Living on a Little by Caroline French Benton was my first selection for reading for this Bootcamp session.  I initially took it up because I was just about to start Bootcamp when I found the book again, after mislaying it some months ago.  I found it on the very bottom of my magazine basket next to my chair.

Carolyn had mentioned the book to me about a year ago and shared little bits of it after she'd found it on a free library.  She'd shared the link with me, and I kept meaning to go read more of it but then I opened my mail one day and I had hard copy print as a gift from Carolyn.  I put it in my basket intending to start it right away, then misplaced it.  It was purely coincidental that I found it again when I was ready to begin this year's session of Bootcamp.   So, I took it up right away.

Y'all really should read this little book!  Yes, it's old fashioned in many ways but it's full of good plain common sense money saving tips for any kitchen.  The book is written as a story of a married sister training her younger sister who is engaged to be married.  The sister spends a year with her sister and learns to cook, manage her home and kitchen, wait table and clean.   The book focuses hardest on the home economy.

Written at the turn of the 1900's, though I can't tell you just when since my copy has no copyright dates, the book reminded me strongly of others of similar ilk written in nearly the same time frame including my favorite old cookbook, The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook.  This cookbook was first published in 1910, I believe and the recipes within are very much like those that Mary teaches to Dolly.  In fact, I am inspired to take up that cookbook as part of this year's bootcamp simply because it is so relative to what I have just read.  Now I know for sure that the cookbook is true to the era in which it was first written...and I can safely say that it's just as relative all these many years later as I have used many recipes in that book over and over again for the past 50 years of my own housekeeping.

I learned a great deal from this little book, not just about the origins of my favorite cookbook but also about a few kitchen economies that I don't practice but could definitely learn to follow and use routinely.  

As I came near the end of the book, I recalled a quote I shared him some months ago which I'd read in an M.F.K. Fisher book about her aunt sitting with young wives during the first WWI listening to them talk over how to make cakes with only one egg, how to save fat, etc. and the aunt had dryly noted that what they called rationing she used to call 'good economy' when she was a young married wife and had been practicing it all her life.

This book has set the tone for what this year's Bootcamp will look like, that's for sure!  

 I have chosen a book written by Emilie Loring under a pseudonym regarding her vacation without a maid and how meals were gotten together, as well as some of the older Grace Livingston Hill books in which homemaking is the focused area.  I also have an M.F.K. Fisher book I haven't yet read that I think will fit well in this Bootcamp session.

Benton wrote several other books, all meant as tutorials of sorts and a few of them are available in print form from Amazon.  Others you might well find on the Guggenheim Library site.   Do check it out!

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