As many of you are well aware I have collected a fairly staggering amount of cookbooks and recipe pamphlets over the years. Constant trips to flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores and auctions will do that to a person.Unfortunately, since our move back in 2005 most of the cookbooks – which had been on display in a bookcase in our dining room – have remained in storage. Why? Well, the dining room in our new house is, in a word, cavernous. It flows right into the living room, basically giving us a bowling alley-esque 40' x 16' to work with.
In other words, the rooms go largely unused and will remain that way until we: a) figure out what the heck to do with them; and, b) decide on some furnishings and a way to break up the enormous space.
Actually, after reading the latest post over at the awesome junk collecting blog Swapatorium maybe it's better that all my old recipe pamphlets and cookbooks are not easily at hand. Because I might be tempted to try something like their recent 'Triple Threat' of retro recipes including Clam-Corn Griddle Cakes (why not call 'em Clamcakes?), a Frank-Kraut Dinner (featuring that ol' retro fave Condensed Cheddar Cheese Soup), and the egg-tastic Savory Scotch Meat Loaves. And you know what? I might need some scotch in order to try those.
4 comments:
OMG that frank-n-kraut casserole looks like everything I had imagined a hot dog could be!!!
I... I think I love you LOL
On a more serious note, I love those old cookbooks. My former landlady in Cali (she's now outside of Tulsa, yearning to move back) gave me some of hers before her big move. Even better, I have found, via thrift stores all over central Maryland, all 12 volumes of the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery (1966). You can't find it for less than $75 today - one complete set cost almost $400! But through diligent thrift shop hunting years ago, I found the whole set for about $15. And then when I lost one recently, I picked up a replacement at the Book Thing for nothing!
Wow, that Frankencasserole looks a lot like what I'll be having today...we are off to the annual Cannstatter Volk Vest in the great Northeast and it's beer and brats, baby! I'm watching my diet, so I hope they have Morningstar brats but we'll have to see. Might have to bite the bullet and have a treat! And then tomorrow, it's Uncle Dewey's Day at Mom and Dad's. We always begin and end the summer that way. Again, hopefully Uncle Dewey's got the Boca Ribs a-smokin'. :-) Hope you guys have a fun day at the state fair and a glorious weekend! It's GORGEOUS here and we don't even have a weather machine, so I can't imagine how nice it is on ICR today!
OMG! I think you just got a book project out of this! Seriously - last year a woman wrote the book "Julie and Julia", where she documented trying to make every dish in Julia Childs' "The Art of French Cooking", why not this? Lots of books have been published showing retro food photos, but no one has every tried to actually eat the stuff! Think about it... and you could weave in the whole thing about raising your little one as well.
As far as home decor, ever think about getting a classic piece of kitchen furniture - the Hoosier - and displaying the cookbooks on that?
John: Glad to see I'm not the only old cookbook fanatic out there. Usually I spend next to nothing on them and had been stocking up buying giant lots of them on eBay. My one time I went crazy, though, we were at an auction and I ended up spending $125 on a handcrafted box filled with recipe books, hand-written recipes and newspaper clippings.
Lehigh: I'm so very curious about Uncle Dewey's. The only times we've been by there it was closed. We'll have to make plans to come up there some time next summer and do the Dew.
Aj: Hmmm, that's quite an idea you've put in my head. Maybe *that* is the framework I've been in search of for the upcoming THG book.
Post a Comment