I think I have finally recovered from all the dinner parties, cooking  and house guests from the last 10 days.  I love my friends who come to stay with us, what I don’t like so much is my absolute inability to say:  No I will not have another drink and I will not stay up until 4 am again!  It was the holidays, and I was trying to be a good host 🙂

My friend and Urbanfoodguy reader Chris introduced me to a British cook who had her own very successful show: Fanny Cradock.   I’d never heard of before and immediately starting watching old Fanny Cradock videos on YouTube and went down the rabbit hole.

The most fascinating video I found was a documentary called: The Way We Cooked. Below is the first episode there are 7 they aren’t long and I found them very interesting and educational – it’s amazing how far we have come in our understanding and sensibilities about food and cooking:

(Before I found the above documentary about the reigning King and Queen of cooking shows: Fanny Cradock and Graham Kerr (aka the Galloping Gourmet) I watched an episode of Fanny making christmas cake. I have to say I was rather horrified. She looks like a 1950’s past her prime starlet who has morphing into a psychotic clown (what is up with the pasty white make up and those eye brows?)  My first impression about her was that she was a total monster.  I figured I was missing something.  In this video of her making Christmas cakes you have to watch for the spatula moment, I’m so glad I didn’t work for her!

The documentary does a good job of understanding the appeal of these two very opposite personalities.

As regular readers know I was a huge fan of the Galloping Gourmet when I was a little boy. One of the chef’s interviewed talks specifically about the appeal the show at with children, and what an impact it made, so much so some of them grew up to become chefs, or….Food Bloggers 😉

Here is a great example of classic Galloping Gourmet:

I hope you all had a fun, food filled and festive New Years even and that you have happy, healthy, prosperous new year filled with loved ones and of course good food!