Cookbookaholic

More Cowbell...

Recently, I took Duncan to a music store to pick up a piece for an instrument. As we were walking in and out of the aisles, I stumbled upon everyone's favorite: cowbell.

Then I found more cowbell...

Then, I found the one I like to call "explore the space:"

Can you see how huge that cowbell is? Look at it compared to the one next to it. And look below...it's so huge, it's horning in on the stuff hanging below it!

And yes, I tapped a few times on the Black Beauty. And honestly, I felt no fear of the reaper...none at all. Duncan was sure embarrassed though....

Rainy Days and Nosy Neighbors

Another quick morning with only three sales on my list. It might turn out to be less because thunderstorms have been rolling through here all night. Even after my alarm went off, I could hear thunder and rain. Just as I was about to give up and go back to bed, the sound tapers off. I get ready and head out the door.

The first sale on the list proclaims itself as more than 12 families at a soccer field. I’m driving by and all I see is an empty soccer field. Oh well…

The next sale is an estate sale. I’m there early but I’m still eighth or so in the line. It’s drizzling a little but I grabbed the lid from a box and that’s my makeshift umbrella. The people running the sale show up and decide to open up early. Yeah!

I make my way around towards the kitchen and find a hallway shelf with cookbooks. That box lid? It’s now filled with cookbooks! I turn to head into the kitchen and notice that table behind me has boxes of cookbooks on the floor. I go through those but I’m thinking my best finds were from the shelf.

Here’s what I snagged:

Nathalie Dupree’s Matters of Taste, Barbara’s Top Recipes (Barbara McKay, WBTV, Charlotte, NC), Tiger-riffic Cook Book (Clemson Athletic Department), Delectable Collectibles (Harrison UMC, Charlotte, NC), You Can Cook for One (or Even Two) (Louise Pickoff), Christ Church Cooks (Episcopal Churchwomen of Christ Church, Charlotte, NC), The Singing Christmas Tree Cookbook (Charlotte, NC), A New Heritage: A Collection of Recipes (New Covenant UMC, Mt. Holly, NC), Mrs. Fields Cookie Favorites (Debbi Fields and Editors of Time-Life Books).

Recipes from the Briar Patch (Briar Creek Road Baptist Church), The Betty Furness Westinghouse Cook Book (Betty Furness), Cooking Maryland Style (Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD), Eudora’s Holiday Cook Book (Eudora Garrison, The Charlotte Observer), Culinary Echoes from Dixie (Kate Brew Vaughn) and The Carolina Housewife or House and Home (A Lady of Charleston—Sarah Rutledge).

Eudora’s Holiday pamphlet…I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen this before. This will find a home near Eudora’s other cookbook.

And I’m so thrilled to see an almost pristine copy of The Carolina Housewife! I’ll have more on this cookbook in another post—but I’m so happy to have this 1963 printing.

So, I’m walking through the rest of the house and something starts to nag at me. Why aren’t there any Betty Feezor’s here? With all the other cookbooks in here, there seems to be enough clues about this lady’s age for me to think a Betty would’ve been in here somewhere. Did someone else walk by and grab them before me? Coulda happened?

I finish going through the rest of the house and finally loop back around to the checkout table. As I’m paying, I ask why there were no Betty Feezor cookbooks. She goes, “Oh I sold them all yesterday.” My gut hit the floor.

I paused and said, “I thought today was the first day for the sale.”

Then she says, “Oh, it is, but the neighbor came over yesterday and bought every single one of them.”

Let me repeat that….every…single…one…of…THEM. Which means there had to have been more than one Betty Feezor. The neighbor swooped in and got them all. Probably a busy body. I bet her name was Gladys Kravitz.

Incredibly disappointing…but I’m trying to take it in stride.

The next sale is open early but I’m not seeing cookbooks. There’s a man who is constantly going in and out of the house. This was his mother’s house and he has driven up from Charleston to get this garage sale going.

The rain kept him from bringing a lot of the items out earlier, so he’s going back and forth as much as possible to bring it out. I ask if he has any cookbooks that he’s planning on bringing out. He says yes and after a few more trips, he hands me a stack. I go through and pick out these:

Sea Island Seasons (Beaufort County Open Land Trust, Beaufort, SC), Hornets Homecooking (Junior League of Charlotte), Tea-Time at the Masters (Junior League of Augusta, Georgia), Catering to Columbia (Gale Rigby Kennedy), Minnie Pearl Cooks (Minnie Pearl a.k.a. Sarah Cannon) and Recollections and Recipes: Who’s That? What’s This? (The Miller Family, Charlotte, NC).

What happened to Tea-Time at the Masters? Look at the warped plastic cover—it looks like it got whacked on the cover with an actual golf ball.

But I’m most happy to see the Minnie Pearl cookbook. Remember that church sale  a while back where I came up a bust inside the gym but snagged a stack of vintage cookbooks as soon as I came down the steps? Well, as I was leaving that sale I spotted another table with a couple of cookbooks. An old lady in front of me spotted a Minnie Pearl cookbook and grabbed it up before I realized it. So, it’s nice to see I have another opportunity to bring Minnie home with me.

This version has a wire spiral spine instead of the plastic spiral spine. I thought I’d flip through it until the man came back out and then I’d pay for the cookbooks. I get as far as the title page and my heart jumps. I see the distinctive look of a Sharpie…say it with me now:

HOW-DEE! This one is actually autographed by Minnie Pearl! Now that’s an amazing find! It may have started off rainy, but this is the best way to end the day.

Last Stop at Kit's

This morning’s first stop is a church sale. Usually, the cookbooks are all picked over by other members of the congregation before the doors even open. But I’m going to give this one a try because today looks like slim pickings.

The church sale begins at 7am so I’ll try to be there a few minutes early. I’m actually out the door a few minutes later than I planned so I’m definitely going to be at the back of the line.

My GPS is guiding me and as I’m getting closer it tells me the church is on the right side of the road. I’m looking so hard and as I get to the end of the route all I’m seeing are houses. Then I look over to my left. How could I miss this? There’s this huge church…on the left. Thanks GPS. I have the voice in a British accent and I've named her Emily. Perhaps Emily is confusing the British vs. American rules of the road? 

As I make it into the parking lot, it’s packed. I find a spot up on an incline and head to the front door. It’s only a few minutes after 7am, put the place already has a ton of people. I see the book section and the cookbooks are all a mess. I see some good ones and start a stack. There’s a guy next to me and I ask him if they opened the doors early. He says yes. Argh! He said he arrived about fifteen minutes early and the doors had already opened.

I think I went into a super focused overdrive and started to stack. I remember thinking I was still able to get some good cookbooks. Here’s what I found:

Southern Living 2007 Annual Recipes, Breakfast in Bed (Jesse Ziff Cool), Stirring Performances (Junior League of Winston-Salem), Bread of Life (Grifton UMC, Grifton, NC), Easy Elegance (River Hills Women’s Club) and Seasoned with Love (Ladies Ministries, Tanglewood Church of God, Kinston, NC).

Culinary Crinkles (The Presbyterian Cookbook, Greenwood, SC), The Lady & Sons, Too! (Paula H. Deen), The Lady & Sons Just Desserts (Paula H. Deen) and Extreme Barbecue (Dan Huntley and Lisa Grace Lednicer).

The Extreme Barbecue cookbook is written by Dan Huntley, a columnist from The Charlotte Observer. Cool! I’ve always wanted a smoker, this may provide a good guide and some recipes along with it. Okay, so upon further reflection—I got some really great cookbooks from there. I may have shown up after the doors were open, but I still came away with a great haul.

The second sale is a bust. The last sale on the list starts about an hour away at 9am. The address looks familiar…really familiar. Then it hits me…it’s Kit’s address. I guess the family had a few more items or just wanted to give it another try since it rained a few weeks ago. Plus, they had opened that other sale earlier than the posted 9am start time. I’ll give it a try.

Very hopeful…but they aren’t ready to go as early today. Ray says that there are still items in the detatched covered garage and this time, some furniture will be available in the house. There’s already a line at the front door. I take my spot around fifth in line. They’ll open the front door, right?

And they don’t! They open up the garage door and the back door to the house. There’s a huge line of people and only the ones who walk up late see the open garage! Now suddenly, we’re the back of the pack!

I head into the house but I’m not interested in the lamps or artwork. I head back to the garage and there’s a table lined with books. And yes, there are more cookbooks! I hold my breath as I start to look through the pile—I'm not the only one flipping through the books.

Here’s what else I’m able to get:

Julia Child’s Menu Cookbook, Family Fare: Food Management and Recipes (U.S. Department of Agriculture), Just for Two: A Handbook of Cookery for the Small Household (Lily Haxworth Wallace) and Mary Hunt’s Salad Bowl.

After I pay and turn to leave, Ray walks up and says that he’s glad to see I found some more of his mother’s cookbooks. He reaches for the red one and asks if I saw the inscription. He opens it up and shows the page to me:

It reads: To the best roommate and to the future best cook! Love, Lake Dec. 4, 1944

Ray says that this cookbook was a gift to Kit from her college roommate. I love the part about “future best cook.” Who knew it would turn out to be her husband, Desi? Hee-hee!

Plus, did you check out that mondo huge Julia Child cookbook? I’m getting closer to having that Julia collection. Nice way to end the day!

 

Moravian Cookie Sheets?

Four sales on the list for this Saturday morning. I can handle four, right? Oddly, I have one sale at 7am, one at 7:30, then a huge break until 9am. Of course, I’ll try to hit the 9am sales a little early—but maybe I have a shot of getting back home before 10. Eva has an estate sale at 9am but the pictures in her email only show a small stack of cookbooks. Knowing that she started the sale Friday morning, those cookbooks are probably long gone…

But on a good note, Mr. Dunc has asked to join me again this morning. I’m getting used to having my buddy there in the passenger seat!

The first sale was a bust for me. On to the 7:30am sale, it’s advertised as a “whole neighborhood” sale but really it’s just four homes on both sides of a street. I hit the side that has three sales on it. The other side has a lot of pink girly things in the driveway and Dunc has proclaimed he will not visit that one. LOL! Well, there’s nothing at any of the three sales for me. Dunc walks away with a long sleeve Motorcross racing mesh shirt and a pair of high-top sneakers that look almost new. And he reports that he spent less than $5 bucks on it all.

Oh well, I’m still empty-handed as I head over to the pink and frilly sale across the street. I actually find a cookbook. One. Oh boy. But here it is…

Mediterranean Country Cuisine (Peter Buhrer). The pictures look amazing and it seems to have been published by The House of Villeroy & Boch, which is fancy pants. Plus, I snagged homemade blueberry and chocolate chip muffins for us from the two little ladies with the pink plastic register. But wow—a whole neighborhood and I only come away with one?

Our next stop is Eva’s estate sale, remember it started on Friday so I’m hoping she’ll open the doors a little early today. We drive up and the door is open! I spy the shelf from the picture and walk straight to what’s left of the small stack of cookbooks—they don’t thrill me so I leave them there. I walk around and see a lot of hand painted and carved wood art pieces. I see this amazing bread box that has punched tin decoration and hand painted artwork—but it’s priced well over forty bucks. That’s out of my price range. I turn and something on the wall catches my eye. It’s a framed Moravian blessing…hey, I’m Moravian!

I ask Eva if the estate sale was for a Moravian family. She said yes and that the lady made tons and tons of Moravian cookies every Christmas. Oh man…I wish I’d known this earlier. I would have put some serious thought into taking a half day off from work to be here on Friday. I wonder if any of that small stack of cookbooks were from the local Moravian churches. I’ll never know! Ahhh!

Anyway, I set out looking at the kitchen gear. I spot some cookie sheets in a stack on the floor. I pick out two thin ones. Up on the counter top, I see two small spatulas and pick them up. I’m trying to select items that I hope she used when making her Moravian cookies. I think I’d like those pieces, even if they’re a small extension of her tradition, to come to my house.

Eva also tells me that the husband was big into woodworking while the wife would finish off the pieces with her amazing hand painted artwork. Walking around the front room, I see a ton of gorgeous artwork and Asian pieces (they must have travelled a lot!) Most of it was well out of my price range, but I did spot this and scooped it up.

It’s an elegant, decoratative egg (almost like a Fabrege egg) made from one piece of wood. I see it’s signed at the bottom with two names so I’m hoping I have a piece of art that both of them brought to life. It’s going on my mantle!

The basement is filled with scraps of wood or pieces that the husband and wife didn’t quite finish. There’s a shelf with books and books on woodworking and woodcarving. Many of them have the familiar spiral spine—so, of course, I was drawn to them! LOL! And then looky what I find:

Friends Sharing (Friends of the Senior Center, Albemarle, NC). How about that? Tucked in all the woodworking manuals and guides, I find a cookbook! Nice little surprise for me!

 

Jackie’s Gift Bag

My mom loves to stamp and make her own greeting cards. It’s been her main hobby for over ten years now. She has one particular friend named Jackie who drives from Myrtle Beach and visits with her almost every week. They have a blast together and make an unbelievable amount of cards with every visit.

During their last visit, Jackie mentioned that she had started reading my blog. Thank you Jackie! And—drumroll please….she dropped off a bag of cookbooks for me! From her very own kitchen, here are Jackie’s cookbooks:

Gooseberry Patch: From Grandma’s Kitchen, Fix & Forget (Current), Duncan Hines Bake Your Best), Hershey’s Chocolate Classics, Pillsbury Lotsa Pasta, Pillsbury Easy Holiday Recipes, Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks Bake-Off: Grand Prize Winners, Pillsbury Christmas Baking, Pillsbury Pasta, Pillsbury Casseroles & Slow Cooker Meals, Duncan Hines Celebrates Baking, Duncan Hines Bake It Easy, Betty Crocker Good & Easy Cooking, Eagle Brand Holiday Treasures, Gold Medal The Best of Holiday Baking, The Pampered Chef Season’s Best Recipe Collection (Spring/Summer 2006), Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (11^th Edition) and Prego Easy Italian Recipes.

Whew! That’s a lot! I spied that Prego cookbook right off the bat. I’ve always loved Prego Fresh Mushroom sauce. Love it! That’s definitely my go-to spaghetti sauce—and I’ll just add in ground beef or meatballs for an amazing pasta dish. (side note: do you remember when Prego made frozen lasagna dinners? Whatever happened to those?) And there’s that Pillsbury Bake-Off Winner cookbook. It’s filled with the Grand Prize winning recipes going all the way back to 1949! I think deep, deep in a pile on a table somewhere, I just might have a really old bake-off contest cookbook.

I’m thrilled that Jackie thought about me and dropped off this amazing gift of her cookbooks. And I’m so glad she and my mom have such great adventures with their cards. Now I get to have my own adventures with these cookbooks! Thanks Jackie!

 

A Rambo By Any Other Name…

Another great Saturday morning with Mr. Duncan tagging along! I’ll be looking for cookbooks while he’s scoping out Nerf guns and footballs.

The first sale is at 7am but we’re out the door a little late. As we arrive, I see some people already leaving…empty handed. Sometimes that’s not a good sign. Either the goods are odd or the goods are too highly priced.

After making it down the driveway, I find these:

Hidden Manna (Windsor Assembly of God Women’s Ministries, Windsor, NC), A Cupboard Full of Love (Chantilly Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC), Treasured Recipes (First Assembly of God, Raleigh, NC), Cookie Cookbook, Recipes to Remember (First Assembly of God, Reidsville, NC), and The Dottie Rambo Cookbook.

I have to be completely honest, when I saw someone named Dottie Rambo…I had to get the cookbook. I had visions of a long lost Stallone cousin who takes no prisoners in the kitchen. Perhaps she chops vegetables with a Bowie knife? Or, she grills steaks over a Molotov cocktail? Nope, it turns out that Dottie is America’s most prolific Gospel songwriter and I’m now going to hell. For Pete’s sake…she’s got June Carter Cash’s Sausage Ball recipe in here. And it’s autographed to boot..

For the next sale, it’s at a house where I’ve been several times before. Their last sale got a snazzy electric keyboard for give buckaroos. This time, I found a Sony PSP for Mr. Colin for only ten bucks. The lady running the sale didn’t have any cookbooks, but her neighbor was there and she said she had a cookbook. The only thing was that it was in a box of other books on her front porch next door. She had plans to consign the box of books but told me  to walk up on her porch and she’d sell me the cookbook.

It felt weird going up the steps onto her porch. What if her husband saw me up there and thought I was robbing them? I look in the box and quickly find the old cookbook she mentioned. And then I hightailed it out of there!

The Settlement Cook Book (Mrs. Simon Kander). Notice the prominent saying at the top of the cover? “The way to a man’s heart…”

Our next sale was small and I was only able to find one cookbook…and it’s Spine-tastic!

Spinetastic Recipes (DePuy AcroMed, Raynham, MA).

My list is finished but on the way home, I spot a sign for an estate sale. It starts at 9am and we’ll arrive a few minutes early. When we arrive at the house, Dunc does not like what he sees. It’s not a bad neighborhood but I understand The door is open and the sale has already started. I tell him I’ll make it quick and he stays put in the car. I walk in and find a stack of cookbooks in the small dining room.

Our Best to You (Idlewild A.R.P. Church, Charlotte), Feeding the Flock (Newell Baptist Church), Recipes from our Kitchen (First Pentecostal Holiness Church, Wilmington, NC), Our Recipes for the “Long Term Care” of Your Appetite (Chesterfield Convalescent Center, Cheraw, SC), Our “Beary” Best Recipes (Newell Baptist Church) and unknown cookbook (Itta Bena, MS).

Beth Merriman’s Cookbook…From Soup to Nuts, Molasses Flavor for Modern Cooks (American Molasses Company), Our Best Cooky Recipes (Martha Logan/Swift Company), Baking Made Easy (Occident Flour, Russel-Miller Milling Co.) and Ronrico Rum’s Break Tradition Party & Drink Guide.

Back to the car and now on our way back home! 

 

eBay Bonanza!

As I was doing a recent eBay search, I came across three amazing cookbook auctions. I say amazing because they were “lots,” which means they are selling a bunch grouped together. Both “lots” had more than ten cookbooks in each sale! And I’ve got my eye on several cookbooks in each auction.

Both auctions already had bidders but they ended very early in the morning so I needed to get up early and try to snipe them. Luckily, I was able to get them! And since both auctions were from the same seller, they shipped all of them in one box.

Here are the ones I was hoping to get and a few that I’m glad to have found:

Friedberg Cook Book (Friedberg Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC), Friedberg Cook Book (Friedberg Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC), Beth Tartan’s Cook Book (Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks), Receipts of Yesteryear 1976-1976 (Forsyth County Extension Homemakers) and What’s Cookin’? (The Woman’s Club, Winston-Salem, NC First Edition, 1948).

And these….

The Cook’s Book (Telephone Pioneers of America, Old North State Chapter No. 79), Your Cook Book (Telephone Pioneers of America Hobby Committee), Coastal Carolina Cooking (Women’s Auxiliary to the Ocean View Memorial Hospital, Myrtle Beach, SC), Favorite Recipes (Fraternity Church of the Brethren, Winston-Salem, NC) and Fine Foods from Fraternity (Young Adult Class, Fraternity Church of the Brethren, Winston-Salem, NC).

And then this looked interesting…

 

The Hand-Me-Down Cookbook (Cherry Parker, Frances Bradsher) And look, it’s autographed!

And then this one…

Pages from Old Salem Cook Book (The Dorcas Co-Workers of The Salem Home)

As you can see, I got some great old Moravian cookbooks to add to my collection. Plus, I got a copy of Beth Tartan’s Cook Book. I haven’t seen too many of those, so I’m glad I was able to snag it. (As an interesting side note, I was going through the Receipts of Yesteryear cookbook and I see that they thank Beth Tartan for reviewing the recipes.) Very exciting! Looks like my early morning sniping brought me an eBay bonanza! 

 

Busy Start to February

It may be February, but I’ve got six sales on my list. Can you believe I even crossed off three other sales? One sale is even just across the border in South Carolina! Most of them are at 9am…including the one in S.C. This is going to one busy morning.

My 7am sale is open early—and it’s a bust. Hmmmm….wonder if one of the 8am sales is open early? Oh boy! The one over in Matthews is already open!!! And as soon as I see all the stuff, it’s gets overwhelming quickly. There is an unending line of tables in the driveway that begins in the garage. I walk by a table and spot a silver cookbook and pick it up. But then I see boxes and boxes of books. And yes, there are cookbooks in several of them.

I’m trying to look quickly and as thoroughly as possible because the garage already has quite a few people digging through the items. I see a lot of hardback books but every once in a while I find a plastic spiral spine sticking out. I grab what I can and here’s what I found:

 Blue Ribbon Recipes: Favorite Recipes from Southern Kitchens, Silver Anniversary Cookbook (Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church (Charlotte, NC), Charleston Receipts (Junior League of Charleston, 1965 printing), and Gather ‘round Our Table: Recipes and Memories from the Doughtie Family and Friends.

 As I’m checking out, the lady handling the money asks if I cook a lot. I tell her that I’m a collector and we get to talking. This sale is from her parent’s home and she lives right next door. She tells me that she had donated a lot of her cookbooks but that she would run over to her house and bring out a few more.

Here’s what she brought out:

Cooking with Class (Charlotte Latin Schools) and Sixth Grade Delights (Clemmons Middle School Sixth Grade, Winston-Salem, NC). She tells me that a student at this school became ill and this cookbook was a fundraiser. I hope it helped.

The next 8am sale is literally so well-hidden that I can’t find it. I drive up and down the street and then give up. Fantastic—I’ve driven all the way from Matthews back into Charlotte for a wild goose chase. That’s probably a good ten minutes of drive time wasted. I decide to just go ahead try the 9am sale down in South Carolina. I’ll arrive just in time but I’ll blow any chances at the other two sales and show up late to those. I’m banking on this one because the ad says they’re “selling Mother’s estate.” That should be good for some cookbooks, right? (sounds of crickets in the distance)

Just as I’m on my way, the low gas light comes one. Great—this’ll add another five minutes or more to the arrival time. Yikes! When I do finally make it to the sale, I see a line of people already waiting…and did I mention it’s raining?

As I walk up to take my place in line, the door opens and people start to file in. We’re all trying to get into what must be the smallest house in the world. I honestly don’t think we’ll all fit in! I slowly follow the line into the kitchen. I spot a stack of books on a shelf, but, of course, the woman in front of me stops right in front of the books. I’m able to lean over, push the top books out of the way and grab these two:

Favorite Recipes (St. Mary’s County Humane Society) and Favorite Recipes (St. Paul UMC). I think I’ve blown any chance for finding any more cookbooks this morning. I took a chance on this sale and royally blew it. I’ll give the other two sale a try…but I’m not holding out much hope.

When I arrive at the next sale, I notice the sign says 8am. I had it on my list for 9am—so I’m more than an hour late! It’s drizzling now but everything is inside a covered garage. It’s an estate sale and there are a ton of really nice decorative items but no cookbooks. I spot this crab (is it brass?) and he looks like a perfect companion to a pewter crab I found at a sale last year. Plus, this one has movable claws and his shell lifts up! There’s even a lovely feather tucked in there.

I’m ready to pay for the brass crab but decide to ask about cookbooks. I’m so glad I did. A few minutes after going inside the house, a lady emerges with a stack of cookbooks. My heart skips a beat when I see the selection! Here they are:

Spartanburg Secrets II (Junior League of Spartanburg, SC), The Asheboro Cook Book (First Methodist Church, Asheboro, NC), A Cook’s Tour of Quantico (Officers’ Wives Garden Club, Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, VA), Recipes (Gretna High School Band, Tea Time in Old Pendleton (The Foundation for Historic Restoration, Pendleton, SC).  

I’m first introduced to Susan, the daughter who tells me about her mother Kit. She tells me that Kit was the consummate Southern lady from Gretna, Virginia who loved everybody and knew no stranger. She was one of eleven children and a product of the Depression. As a result, she usually overbought (buying four heads of lettuce) and made huge casseroles for dinner. Susan said that while cleaning out the house, they found 43 bibles! Now that’s giving The Gideons a run for their money! (Kit had passed away this past June at the age of 85.)

Susan then introduces me to her brother, Ray. He sees the stack of cookbooks and then tells me that their dad was actually the cook for the family—and pretty good at it. His nickname was Desi but they pronounced it "Dee-Zee." The more I hear, the more Kit is sounding like one smart lady to me—let the husband do all the cookingI On the way out, I asked Ray if he had inherited any of his father’s cooking skills but apparently, he hasn’t. Oh well!

What a nice treat for me to learn some family history about Kit and her cookbooks. I’m especially honored that they went inside and brought them out for me. I literally had no hopes for this sale but I ended up with a lovely collection from Kit and Desi.

The last sale of the day catches my eye with a sign on the side of the road. I take a chance and find a garage lined with books and books. They’re not cheap and I’m low on cash so I’m carefully looking through the lines for cookbooks…and interesting ones at that.

Here’s what I find:

The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cook Book, Brennan’s New Orleans Cookbook (Hermann B. Deutsch) and Come for Cocktails, Stay for Supper (Marian Burros and Lois Levine. What’s with that last one? Are you too sloshed from the booze that you have to stick around and eat enough Swedish Meatballs, chicken wings and casserole to sober up? Classy....

The sad thing about this sale was that he had a ton of books. Some were still piled (or dumped?) in boxes out in the driveway—and got thoroughly drenched in the rain. I looked through a couple of boxes and thankfully, no cookbooks were harmed! Only a lot of 70s paperback novels…