{"id":2005,"date":"2018-04-29T17:18:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T17:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/?p=2005"},"modified":"2018-04-29T17:18:05","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T17:18:05","slug":"from-dust-to-delicacies-modern-swedish-cookbook-by-anna-olsson-coombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/from-dust-to-delicacies-modern-swedish-cookbook-by-anna-olsson-coombs\/","title":{"rendered":"From Dust to Delicacies, Modern Swedish Cookbook by Anna Olsson Coombs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern Swedish Cookbook<\/em> by Anna Olsson Coombs<\/h4>\n

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Has the sound of rattling while riding on an elevator ever comforted you? Yeah, me either. \u201cDing\u201d and the doors finally slide open. I survived my journey thus far in Gorgas library. After wandering around on a different floor that I have never ventured to, I find myself digging through the shelves that the curriculum desk referred me to for my scavenger hunt of a Swedish cookbook in this overwhelming \u201cTX\u201d section. The last thing that I would ever expect would be finding a diamond in the rough that changed the way I looked at Swedish cuisine and the people who craft it forever.<\/p>\n

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I opened the book to see the old fashioned \u201creturn by this date\u201d stamp on the front. To my surprise, the first time that this book was due to be returned was November 4th<\/sup>, 1959\u2026 1959!? My parents wouldn\u2019t even be born for ten years after that. \u201cModern\u201d isn\u2019t the first word that comes to mind when I discovered this.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo My American Husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

There it is, the personal dedication that I search for in books to give me that warm fuzzy feeling. I loved that this book already has a meaningful touch to it. Not only was this a Swedish cookbook, the author was trying to infuse cultures together for her husband by showing the importance of the recipes to come.<\/p>\n

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Flipping ahead in the next pages, I wouldn\u2019t believe that I had more to be surprised about from such a simple book on the outside. This book was checked out at the University for the first time in 1959, but it was published in 1947. I was definitely feeling cosmic and thrifty for choosing such an old book. I often find myself thinking about all the different people who have checked out the same book as me, especially one this old.<\/p>\n

After my shock had subsided, I begin to browse the introduction. The introduction describes the recipes to come as \u201cenchanted memories\u201d. Cooking is a very important part of my family\u2019s heritage as we pass down recipes in a family cookbook, but referring to them as \u201cenchanted\u201d portrays just how much this cookbook means to the Anna Olsson Coombs. From her description of how this introduction and the way she describes the recipes that will be written give this cookbook another personal touch that sets it aside from other recipe collections. Anna Olsson Coombs concluded her introduction by expressing that she wished to use her Swedish housewife skills with the simplistic American cuisine to transfer a collection of Swedish dishes to her loving American home. This introduction allows me as a reader to understand the love and dedication made to making this book. Each recipe is from a family recipe and made accessible.<\/p>\n

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The rest of the cookbook is set up into sections of Swedish food staples, of course not forgetting the oh-so-important smorgasbord section. Each section has a simple introduction to the staple, giving some of Anna Olsson Coomb\u2019s wit and experience with each to go along with it. I particularly loved that the book was organized like this, given that I am known to be overly organized and neat. It made it conveniently easy to find a recipe consisting of particular ingredients due to the categorization of Swedish foods<\/p>\n

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What made these organized sections even more unique was the way that Coombs stuck to her goal of making these recipes simplistic for the everyday house wife. The ingredient lists stayed low and were many things that most people keep stocked in their pantry. Although times have changed and the housewife role has evolved, simplistic recipes are still things any busy family member can appreciate. They say that life moves fast in America, and Coombs does a job at slowing life down by presenting easy recipes to make without stress and also being able to experience a new culture\u2019s meals without traveling to a fancy restaurant. Even though this cookbook was written during a postwar era to make housewife\u2019s feel they can provide an adequate meal to families without too much fuss, it still relates to the way life works today.<\/p>\n

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So why this book? Why the dustiest book on the shelf with the most meaningless outside? The answer is simple. This book has a rich history. Not only is it seventy years old, it contains recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation. Each recipe has a personal touch knowing that the author wrote it to her husband out of love for her passion of cooking and devotion to him and combining their two cultures. I hope that one day, my ancestors are passing down the family recipes that I currently withhold. For now, I might not have created a cookbook that will be sitting on the shelves of Gorgas Library in seventy years. Even if this is the case, I appreciate cooking at the joy that recipes bring to families and the memories that they make. This book celebrates the fusion of two cultures, and I can\u2019t wait to show it to my cook-loving grandmothers my discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern Swedish Cookbook by Anna Olsson Coombs   Has the sound of rattling while riding on an elevator ever comforted you? Yeah, me either. \u201cDing\u201d and the doors finally slide open. I survived my journey thus far in Gorgas library. After wandering around on a different floor that I have never ventured to, I find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[35,4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2017,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/globalfoodways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}