FTM Cookbook - Pages 15 through 36
FTM Cookbook - Pages 37 through 58
FTM Cookbook - Pages 59 through 80
FTM Cookbook - Pages 81 through end
Zipfile of complete FTM Cookbook (7.3 MB)
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Why did we need a cookbook? Here is why. Look at this picture of poor Elder Nielsen after he ate the very first meal Elder Larsen ever prepared in his life! This simple meal in Dec 1975 in Pau took me two hours to prepare and it was horrible. I certainly should have listened to my mother and tried to learn to cook before leaving on my mission, but nope. My senior companion, Elder Carter, did his best to give me some pointers and help me buy the food, but when it came down to it I was totally unprepared and everyone suffered. Oh, if only I had had the FTM Cookbook given to me when arriving in France I would have been so much better off! |
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Remember what French groceries looked like? I took this picture of a week's worth of groceries in Limoges in early 1977. Elder Aamodt and I were zone leaders of the Angouleme Zone and lived in a two man apartment. I think the address was 24 rue Justin Ninard. I figured that someday I'd want to remember what groceries looked like. I just didn't think it would be for something like this webpage! |
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Recollections on Making the FTM Cookbook Ah, the fabulous "France Toulouse Mission Cookbook"! It somehow seems fitting that in November 2005, almost 30 years from when I first typed the master copy of the cookbook, that I should be scanning it to make it available to missionaries through our website. My copy is somewhat worse for the wear as the scans will show. I'd like to share my recollections of this whole project. How did I get involved? Well, my first city was Pau and I was junior companion to Pau Zone Leader Elder Randy Bennett. In April 1976 we both transferred from Pau to Toulouse at the same time. Elder Bennett's new assignment was Assistant to the President. I became a senior companion after only being in France for 4 months and I was terrified. My junior companion was Elder David C Bates, straight from the LTM. (Does anyone know where Elder Bates is?) As I recall, upon returning to our apartment after a very long day of tracting there was a note from the President's Assistants Elders Chilton and Bennett directing me and Elder Bates to go to the mission office the next day. Had we done something wrong? What was going to happen? It turns out that there was a special project that needed to be done. I don't know for sure, but I think Elder Bennett may have suggested to President Broschinsky that Elder Bates and I might be helpful on this special project. We were asked to work on the FTM Cookbook project for a few hours each day. Elder Bates did all the art work in the cookbook and I typed the master copy. I don't remember the actual sequence of events. I think I was called into the office to serve as Mission Member Recorder after a few weeks of working on the project because I remember being in the office when the project was finished. The "Printer/Commissarian" was the Elder who ran the printing press that was used to publish all the Challenge Newsletters and all other mass correspondance from the mission office. We normally used a less sturdy printing "plate". There was a machine somewhat like a photocopy machine that the original would go on. It would somehow be transferred to this "plate" that could be used to print a small number of decent looking copies. The cookbook was about 110 pages total and we knew it wouldn't look very good using those low run plates. There was a somewhat costly machine that could make metal plates that could be used to print hundreds of good copies. The problem was that we would never need such a machine after this project. I don't remember how it was all worked out, but someone contacted the company that had sold us the printing press and pled our case. They had a demo machine in their sales office. We begged to be able to use that machine to make metal plates of the cookbook master copy. We were given permission as long as we purchased the 60 or so metal plates that we would need. I don't remember if Elder Paul Peaden or Elder Steve Snow was the "Printer/Commissarian" at the time, but off we went to struggle through making the plates. There were several defective ones that we had to repeat. Once we had the plates we printed up 250 or so copies of the cookbook. The press must have been running continuously to get this done. Once the pages were printed they needed to be cut in half down the middle on a paper cutter; lots of manual steps. There was a series of zone conferences coming up and Sister Broschinsky really wanted to have the cookbook available to give out. How do you collate 250 books of 110 pages each? I remember that the stack for each page of the cookbook was about 10 inches high. We positioned all those stacks of pages around the mission office in sequence. The whole staff participated in collating the books. We would start with the front cover and walk around the office picking up each page in turn until finally picking up the back cover. Then the book was taken to the paper punch where every page was manually punched and the metal rings put in. This seemed to go on for hours and hours and it was very late when the project was finally done, the night before the first zone conference was scheduled to begin. The Broschinskys were very happy to have this long awaited project completed. I'm not sure if it was during this project or another one later on, but I remember President Broschinsky brought us a special treat. They had picked up some cans of A&W Root Beer I think in Paris when they went there for some training meeting. I remember President Broschinsky bringing those cans in and giving each of us one. That can of root beer tasted so good! (Of course, French people could never understand how we could stand to drink that ghastly stuff!) |
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Recollections from others on the FTM Cookbook 20 Nov 2005 - Soeur (Dilley) Mackey What a delight! It seems to me that my companions and I used that cook book just about every single day of my mission, for ideas for breakfast through dinner. Since then it has been misplaced somewhere through the course of major moves, but to this day I've wished at times that I could remember how we made something that was in that cookbook. I've told my kids about making homemade yougurt every week and they thought I was nuts! Going through those pages was just as much fun as looking at old pictures. What a great idea. Thank you! Yogurt! We had yogurt with our cooked oatmeal, with Cream of Wheat, with pancakes, with breakfast cake (like Elder Larsen) and with granola. Oh yes, and we made our own granola with oats and raisins. We ate yogurt with jam, with fresh fruit, or just plain by itself. Soeur Dawson and I learned how to make brownies in a frying pan with a lid. We were so used to eating yogurt with just about everything, we tried it with brownies as well. Maybe it's an acquired taste, but when nobody is looking to make disgusted faces at me, I'll still put a glop of vanilla yogurt on my brownies! Yum. |