SAXTON B. LITTLE FREE LIBRARY
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Keeping you up-to-date on what's happening at your library. We invite you to join in the conversation!
MAY 31, 2009
Mile High Bologna Pie

 Hard to believe it but that's truly a recipe in the cookbook "America's Best Lost Recipes". I found this gem in an article in the May 2nd edition of The Wall Street Journal (Culture -- Social Studies: A Recipe for Escapism --- Cookbook sales are up, yet many of the latest offerings are highly impractical by Laura Miller). You too can read this hilarious walk down cookbook lane by clicking on the title link or visiting www.iconn.org and searching the Wall Street Journal Database. Can't find it, I'd be happy to email it to you.

The article points out that while cookbooks ought to be dead, people are buying them more than ever. I have to confess that I have a shelf full of cookbooks that have rarely translated into any kind of meal. So why do I continue to buy them? Myself, I like to look through them, looking for inspiration on new ways to cook the same old. And many of them have wonderful stories to tell, histories of by-gone days and comfort foods.

If you've been following this blog you know I've made an effort to thin out my bookshelves but my cookbooks have been hard to part with. I gave away The Best Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars I & II, realizing I wasn't going to use that spam recipe and that I no longer needed the recipes for onion dip or green bean casserole. Another to hit the Friends Book sale was Looneyspoons: Low-fat Food Made Fun!. How's that for an oxymoron!
 

It's not all show. I do have three cookbooks that I actually use. The first two I got as shower gifts over 39 years ago. They are Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (really quite old as evidenced by the picture above) and Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, a, well, culinary gem. The third is a more recent purchase, How to Cook Everything ~ Mark Bittman, that really does help when the need to know arises. Some others that I can't bear to part with come from my deceased mother-in-law's collection. There's an old polish cookbook, a Saint Louis Cookbook and one that features blue ribbon recipes from the county fair. I guess I'm hanging on to these for purely sentimental reasons and will probably pass them on to my granddaughter one day.

 
               

Cookbooks in the library are under the subject cookery and are located beginning 641.5. 

So fess up? What's cooking on your shelves?


 


 

Add a comment  (5 comments) posted by CarolK

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Comments

bas bleu said, on Jun. 1 at 4:27PM
I will never part with the Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cookbook, given to me by my godmother fifty years ago. The photos of 1950s kids and kitschy recipes are priceless. I also have an old cookbook of my grandmother's that measures flour in "teacups" and lard in "pieces the size of a walnut."

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CarolK said, on Jun. 1 at 7:16PM
bas bleu, can you share a kitschy recipe fro Bette Homes and Garden Junior Cookbook? Both your treasures sound like gems!

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CarolK said, on Jun. 1 at 7:17PM
I forgot to mention one of my favorite places to search for old cookbooks on the web, or in person if and when I get to New York...Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. Cookbooks are definetly her specialty. bonnieslotnickcookbooks.com And don't forget our Friends Book Sales from some great cookbook finds!

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bas bleu said, on Jun. 2 at 1:49PM
OK, CarolK, here is an example of a kitschy recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cookbook. It is a molded salad. I think those types of salads were quite popular in the '50s. Plus, being a kids' cookbook, they probably were looking for recipes that didn't involve sharp knives, hot stoves, etc. I will copy the exact wording so you get the full flavor (pun intended) of the recipe. Sorry you can't see the photos! Grape Surprise Salad Surprise! It's a pear half posing as a bunch of grapes - but nobody minds being fooled like this! Grape-cluster salads take a while to do, but your guests will rave over them! Here's how: You'll need: 1 3-ounce package cream cheese, 2 tablespoons milk, 1 cup Tokay grapes, lettuce leaves, 6 canned pear halves. Take out: Small bowl, fork, measuring spoons and cup, table knife, salad plates 1. Place cream cheese in bowl. Mash with fork. Stir in milk. Beat until mixture is smooth. 2. Pull grapes off stems. Wash. Cut in half. Take out the seeds. (I don't think they had seedless grapes back in the '50s.) 3. Wash, dry lettuce. Place on 6 plates. Put pear, round side up, on each 4. Spread cream cheese all over outside of the pear. Pear will be completely covered. 5. Stick grape halves all over pear. Now pears look like grape clusters. (And no one seemed to care what they must have tasted like!!)

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bas bleu said, on Jun. 2 at 1:52PM
When I submitted the above recipe, the software program must have taken out all of the formatting I did...it's more difficult to read with the headings, ingredients, steps, etc., all jumbled together...sorry!

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