> wrote in message
...

Lots of obits. Check Google News, too.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...te +patten+99

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...n-dies-aged-99

Cookery writer Marguerite Patten, the author of more than 170 books, has
died aged 99, her family said.

Patten was famed for her no-nonsense approach to home economics, and was
employed by the Ministry of Food during the second world war to advise
Britons on how to make the most of their rations.

She was the host of the BBC's Kitchen Front, offering up recipes using
powdered egg and spam for Britain during the blitz.

She made her first television appearance in 1947 and was a regular guest on
both Masterchef and Ready Steady Cook in later years.
ADVERTISING

Despite being given a CBE for services to cookery, and having sold 17
million copies of her books, Patten always refused to call herself a
"celebrity chef".

"I am not," she told the Telegraph, in one of her last interviews. "To the
day I die I will be a home economist."...

(snip)


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/wo...t-99.html?_r=0

By William Grimes


Marguerite Patten, a home economist who told ration-pinched British families
how to make a satisfying meal out of nothing during World War II, and later
became one of the country's first television chefs and the author of more
than 170 cookbooks aimed at average Britons, died on June 4 in Richmond,
Surrey. She was 99.

Her death was announced by her family.

Known as the queen of ration-book cuisine, Ms. Patten worked in the advice
division of the Ministry of Food, which was created in 1939 to oversee food
distribution during the war.

She went to markets, hospitals and factory canteens, offering tips and
giving demonstrations on how to make something out of virtually nothing,
with wartime creations like "mock cream" and "mock duck." She also dispensed
advice and recipes on "The Kitchen Front," a morning radio program on the
BBC.

In the austerity years after the war, with rationing still in force, Ms.
Patten continued to help British housewives desperate to put a meal on the
table, introducing them to the pleasures of Spam and other exotica. When
rationing came to an end in 1954, she incorporated new ingredients like
olive oil and avocados into sensible, low-cost dishes that required a
minimum of effort and time, primarily through her cookbooks, which sold some
17 million copies all told...

(snip)



Lenona.

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First time I ever hear SPAM referred to as "exotica". And probably the
last.