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?
SAXTON B. LITTLE FREE LIBRARY
