No one wants their last words to be "Oh my God! The old gypsy woman was right..."
It’s strange how a memory from childhood can take hold of you and not let go. One that has “plagued” me for quite a few years is the taste and smell of fresh hot oatmeal with a very dark, almost black, molasses sugar on it. That sugar more or less disappeared from store shelves in BC here somewhere in the late fifties or early sixties as the big supermarkets took over and homogenized the selection. About 20 years ago I found some in a natural foods store but then it disappeared as well, I guess not enough demand or it didn’t meet Health Canada’s food guides.
By sheer happenstance I found a satisfactory substitute two weeks ago when I was out a Diane’s for the weekend. Now Salmo is a small town, and I do mean small. The main drag is allof two short blocks long and that’s it, two hotels with bars, hardware store, two grocery stores, a restaurant, second hand store, cold beer and wine store, and liquor store pretty much sums up the town (and two of those are on another street a block up). We were in the funky grocery store in town, lots of odd stuff there and the place in town for organics and as I walked by one of the end-of-aisle displays I noticed this sugar and immediately snapped it up. It’s marvelous and best of all it’s completely natural - that is no GMO and it is not simply refined white sugar with molasses added - this is the real thing and is pure heaven.
I have been searching for the 1953 edition of “Robin Hood Prize Winning Recipes” for a couple of years. I ‘googled’ the title and found your blog entry from September 2004 about your recipe shelf and collection. I also have a very well-used copy of the 1953 edition (from my mom who worked at Robin Hood Mills in the early 1950’s) but I have somehow managed to lose one double-sided page - pages 49 & 50 - which includes the recipe for Yorkshire Pudding. Any chance you would be willing to scan/PDF & send by e-mail? This would be a huge help! Thanks!
Leslie Young 
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11:14 am 5/4/2006
Hi Leslie - wow it took me a while to track down the entry you werer referring to :-). Unfortunately at the time that post was made there were 3 different Doug’s posting here - myself the ownerof the blog and two others who left comments. The one who mentioned that cookbook was not me but another who appears to no longer be on line (may have passed away as he was HIV pos for almost 2 decades) as I have been unable to reach him for sometime now. If I do get hold of him I’ll ask about that recipe for you and next time I’m in Vancouver I’ll check my Mom’s collection that would be about the year of her copy. That however won’t be until late summer at the earliest.
Doug Alder 
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1:12 pm 5/4/2006