Cookbookaholic

By Appointment Only

I’ve got a short list of sales today. Why so short? I’ve been having an issue with my car and it’s just better to keep the list as short as possible. If I make more than four or five stops, the car has trouble staying on. If I’m not careful, once I try to shift it into gear it’ll cut off. It’s as if the car wants to stay in idle. Lots of stress…

I had an extra note for an estate sale that was by appointment only. This sale did have cookbooks, but it started on Friday. Maybe I can call the number and get in today if the other sales don’t pan out?

Well…an hour later and it turns out the other sales really didn’t pan out. I pull out my phone and give the number a call. The estate sale is being handled by Tom. You may remember the sale where he decided to keep the Betty Feezor cookbooks for himself?  

This is a sale that had cookbooks listed…there was even a photo of a shelf of cookbooks! Okay, so the estate sale started on Friday. The selection will probably be picked over, but right now there’s no other option. He gives me the address and tells me to come by the sale in about an hour. When I arrive, I pull into the parking lot of an older, upscale retirement apartment complex. It’s only about four stories, but it still looks very impressive. When I go inside, it’s almost like I’ve stepped into a time machine.

The décor is retro cool, upscale and tranquil…lots of pastel colors. The only weird thing is that when I walk down the carpeted hallway, I can feel the aging, sagging wood flooring underneath. Maybe I’m just a fat ass, but I can almost feel the age of this building.

I make it to the apartment and there are already about 10 people inside. I look around but don’t see the shelf of cookbooks. Then, as I walk around the living room, I see bookshelves in the closet. I step inside and find the cookbooks. There are definitely a few less than the original picture, but I start a stack. Here’s what I found:

Food for Thought (Shiloh Baptist Church, Monroe, NC), Bells Best (Telephone Pioneers of America, Mississippi Chapter No. 36), Carolina Cooking (Telephone Pioneers of America, North Carolina Chapter No. 35), Cooking with Love (Kay Peek Boone and Kathy Boone Pratt), Shared Secrets From Our Kitchen (Social Committee, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Charlotte, NC), What’s Been Cookin’ at Pleasant Grove for the Past 100 Years (Pleasant Grove UMC, Charlotte, NC),Our Favorite Recipes (The Young at Heart Club, Idlewild Baptist Chruch, Charlotte, NC), Delightfully Southern (Compiled by Dot Gibson), Mission in the Kitchen(Girls in Action, First Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC) and Glenelle’s Requested Recipes (Mozelle Williams, Lake Junaluska, NC).

How ‘bout that FBI cookbook?! We’ve had some recent excitement here in Charlotte with that whole Paula Broadwell situation. I wonder if the FBI leaves behind a complimentary copy of that cookbook after they serve a warrant and search a home? I know I’d appreciate that!

I’m glad I had taken the time to write down Tom’s phone number. If not, I would’ve had a pretty disappointing morning. Now, I just wish that I’d called and had an earlier appointment… 

Catch Up: Middle of Nowhere Estate Sale

I have only one sale on my list today! Fellow cookbookaholic, Beryl, who also handles estate sales is holding one in a very small, rural town about thirty minutes Northwest of my house. She had cookbooks listed, so you know I’m going to be there. And by gosh, I’m heading out early and will attempt to be first in line.

I show up about an hour early and I see a car already there. They have their brake lights on and then they move on. I guess they didn’t want to wait? That’s good for me, so I park and head up to the front door…and wait.

Another car parks and a lady walks up to the front porch. She asks when the sale begins and I tell her at 8am. She backs up and says she’ll return in a few minutes.

Time creeps by really, really slowly. And by the time Beryl opens up the door at 8am on the dot, I’m still the only one there for the sale. Looks like it’s gonna be a private sale, just for me!

Beryl points me to the kitchen where I find a bookshelf with some cookbooks. I don’t want to say they’ve been picked over, but…..it looks like there used to be more on those two shelves.

I grab the good of what’s left. Here’s what I found:

Cajun-Creole Cooking (Terry Thompson), Market to Market (The Service League of Hickory, NC), The Peach Sampler(compiled by Eliza Mears Horton) andLancaster County Amish Cookbook (collected and received by Sallie Y. Lapp and Sylvia Y. Miller). I’m most excited about the Market to Market cookbook because this one is a first printing. Other copies I’ve found have been third printing. Good score!

Sweet Tooth: Down-Home Meals & Blue Ribbon Desserts (Sarah Ann Spaugh), Waldensian Cookery (???) and Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls.

A few more people have trickled in and I look around the rest of the house. I find a couple pieces of framed art and a nice candy dish on a pedestal. I dig through a box of old issues of Southern Living and grab a few.

It looks like I’m ready to check out but I take one more swing through the kitchen. I never went through the kitchen gadgets. I find a clear plastic circular thingamadoogie that claims to be a no-mess pie crust maker. Sold!

And what luck..I find the most awesome chips and dip tray ever. It even plays a festive tune! 

 

This will come in handy next Cinco de Mayo!

Third Time's the Charm

So, I missed out on Bell's estate sale for the main house. I was spending that weekend taking care of my mom while she started to recover from a recent fall. But it looks like Bell has enough left over to have a second round.

I’m remembering back to the photos that accompanied the original email. There was a nice pie safe (probably gone) but there weren’t any pictures of cookbooks. I wonder if any are still there but won’t be surprised if they’re gone. My theory was that the mother-in-law kept all her good cookbooks in the house—and this sale will probably be the last remnants of knick-knacks.

I show up a few minutes early and I’m the first one there. Bell sees me and tells me to come on in the front door. As soon as I get inside, I spot the pie safe is still there. What? I notice the living room is pretty full with a sofa, two recliners, framed art and lots of items are still throughout the house. Bell tells me the cookbooks are in the kitchen.

I see an old metal cabinet with bookshelves filled with glasses. I see kitchen items on the table and the countertops but where are the cookbooks? Then, I get a little curious and open the door of the metal cabinet.

Okay, there are a lot of cookbooks still in here. If this is what’s left, how many were in there to begin? Think about that later. Now, it’s time to get down to business and go through all of them.

Here are the ones I got:

Our Daily Bread (Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC), From the Goodness of Our Kitchen (Carmel Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC), Trinity Treats (Trinity Episcopal Church, Pinopolis, SC), The Stuffed Cougar (Patron’s Association of The Collegiate Schools, Richmond, VA) and Simply the Best…From Our Kitchens to Yours (Buckhead Broker Realtors, Atlanta, GA).

The Toronto Star Cookbook (Jim White), Recipes from Historic North Mecklenburg (Huntersville Woman’s Club, Huntersville, NC), The Bachelor’s Cookbook (Gil, Rees & Mark Gibson), Dinner Bell from the Brushies (Brushy Mountain Volunteer Fire Department, North Wilkesboro, NC) and Gifts and Garlands and Gingerbread (Junior Service League of Eden, NC).

The real find here is the Gifts and Garlands and Gingerbread cookbook from the Junior Service League of Eden. I’ve send the second volume of this cookbook, but never the original volume. This is a great find for my collection.

The only thing is the mark at the very top. Looks like she bought it at a thrift store and they wrote the price on the paper cover in grease pencil. She may have tried to wet the cover to try and remove it. Now there’s a blue smudge and damaged paper as well as grease pencil marks. It’s been such a hard cookbook to find, I think I can overlook it, don’t you think?

I found these two small cookbooks and picked them up as well:

Scottish Country Recipes (compiled by Johanna Mathie) and The Nutty Little Cookbook (Women’s Symphony Guild, Florence, SC).

And whattya know? That Nutty Little Cookbook is from my hometown! How cool is that? Glad I looked a little more closely and grabbed that one.

After I pay for the cookbooks, I sit down with Bell and Betty, to talk more about the mother-in-law. Maude was her name and she had lived in this house for almost fifty years. Her cousin, Margaret, (Betty’s mother) had lived near each other for all of their lives. When they were both widowed, they moved in together in Maude’s house. Bell tells me that Margaret bought all the cookbooks…and when she bought one, she had to buy them all!

“Margaret was a cook, loved recipe books and to try new recipes,” Bell told me. “She made pound cakes and sold them and made the best potato salad.”

Betty chimed in and talked about how Margaret would love to create recipes as well. “She would come up with a recipe for Cauliflower Soup just because she loved cauliflower.” And apparently, people loved her cooking.

I’m surprised we don’t have cookbook of all those recipes from Margaret. Sounds like it would have been a good one! So glad to finally get inside Bell’s mother-in-law’s home! How amazing that some really great finds were still there waiting on me.

Coach Purses Behind Me

I've got only one garage sale on my list this morning and it’s taking me far, far out of my usual range. Harrisburg is a big drive for me so I’m hoping the listing for cookbooks is significant and not a few pamphlets.

I’m the first to arrive and I spot a large white bookshelf at the entrance to the garage. I see a few cookbooks on one of the shelves but there are a ton of boxes on the ground.

John, the guy running the sale, is busy picking up boxes, opening them up and putting the cookbooks on the shelves. Others are starting to show up and he's got much more setting up to do. I tell him I’m there for the cookbooks and then start helping him put them on the shelves. Of course, I’m taking a look at them first!

He says there are more than ten boxes of cookbooks that need to be unpacked and I’ve already got a nice little stack that I’ve started for myself. Soon after, his wife, Wendy, comes out and sees that I’m helping with the unpacking. As a reward she tells me, I get a free cookbook!

As we talk, it turns out that Wendy is the cookbookaholic of the family. She tells me that she probably has around 2,000 or more cookbooks in her collection. I ask her how she has amassed so many. She and John are originally from Massachusetts and have moved frequently because of his job. They’ve lived in Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri and now North Carolina.

They’re moving out a lot of items. I see a snow blower, tv cabinet and a table full of faux Coach purses. Coach purses? I’m keeping an eye on the table behind me, but as soon as I spot one that I like, someone else waltzes up and picks it off the table. I need to just stick with the bounty of cookbooks in front of me….

Wendy tells me that this is the smallest house they’ve owned and they’re getting rid of a lot of items. This is smaller? Let me tell you that this house is about three times the size of mine! I ask her if that’s the reason she’s getting rid of all the cookbooks. She says yes, that it’s mostly because they’re running out of room, but also because she can find so many recipes on the internet. Lately, she’s noticed that she goes online more often than flipping through the cookbooks.

That is a great way to find a recipe quickly. But it’s also a fantastic situation for me to scoop up some cookbooks…. Here’s the A-mazing stack I brought home:

How to Cook Everything (Mark Bittman), Cake Love: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch (Warren Brown), The Cake Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum), The Pie and Pastry Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum).

Start with Appetizers, End with Desserts (JC Penney Associates), The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook (Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins with Sarah Leah Chase),Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Pastry and The Cake Mix Doctor (Anne Byrn).

Country Living’s Handmade Halloween, Rao’s Cookbook (Frank Pellegrino), The Pressured Cook (Lorna Sass) and My Family’s Favorites (Mary Beth Roe).

Fried Chicken: The World’s Best Recipes (Damon Lee Fowler), The Cornbread Gospels (Crescent Dragonwagon) and Fried & True: Crispy and Delicious Dishes from Appetizers to Desserts (Rick Rodgers).

And I thought these were cute:

Eckert Family Cook Book (The Eckert Family, Belleville, IL) and Apple Cakes for Coffee Breaks (Brookfield Orchards, Inc., North Brookfield, MA). Looks like someone already used that one on the right during a coffee break!

Aren’t those a ton of great cookbooks? I can make cakes and pastries until the cows come home. Glad this sale paid off because it was the only one on the list! And I blew through my entire budget—no leftover dough for a Coach purse. Oh well.

I wish Wendy, John and the rest of the family well and hope they love their new home in North Carolina. I wonder if they got an offer on that snow blower?

Bell’s Estate Sale

I finally got the email from Bell. They’ve sold all the items from the backyard shed and now it’s time for the estate sale in the main house. Only, here’s the deal. My mom fell and broke several of her toes. She’s had my brother looking after her for the past week and now it’s my turn to help her out.

I’ll have to travel down and spend the weekend with her so Bell’s estate sale isn’t going to happen for me. Oh well. 

What are the Odds?

What a terrible morning for sales. I’m coming up empty and ready to give this one last sale a shot.

I see some bookshelves with glass vases and some other knick-knacks but then I looked more closely. A box on the driveway actually had some cookbooks! And these were some nice ones, too.

I grabbed a few and then looked around some more. Those shelves with the glass vases? As I’m looking from the top and scanning down, on the shelf right at my eye level is a kitchen torch kit! What are the odds? Last week, I got the crème brulee cookbook and a bunch of ramekins. Now, I’ve got a real professional looking torch, plus—a butane torch and what looks to be a refill taped to the side. At least, I think that’s a refill?

As I tell the lady running the sale about how amazing it is to find the mini-torch, we begin talking. Her name is Betty and she’s a chef, fellow cookbookaholic and a vegetarian. She works locally for a company called the Compass Group and has worked at several cafes over the years. She’s originally from Los Angeles and told me a story of how she spent a few hours waiting in line at a bookstore in Glendale to get an autograph from Julia Child. How awesome is that?! Somewhere in that house, she’s got an autographed Julia Child cookbook. Jealous!

Then we get to talking about other autographed cookbooks and I told her about the autographed Edna Lewis cookbook I found a few weeks back. She thought she might have Edna’s first cookbook in her collection. Nice!! I hope she remembers me if she ever decides to sell it.

What a fantastic way to end my morning. And seriously, what are the odds that I’d find the mini-torch for the crème brulee the very next Saturday?

Wanna see the cookbooks?

The Tra Vigne Cookbook: Seasons in the California Wine Country (Michael Chiarello with Penelope Wisner) and Gourmet LA (Junior League of Los Angeles, CA).

Recipes of All Nations (Countess Morphy) and Creole Feast: 15 Master Chefs of New Orleans Reveal Their Secrets (Nathaniel Burton and Rudy Lombard). 

The Creme Brulee Sale

I’m hoping this one will be worth it. I’m a little further south than I usually go. When I get there, a nice sofa is out in the driveway and two small children are playing. I look into the garage and see that most of the items are set up in tables and on bookshelves.

There’s already an older gentleman looking through the books on the shelf. I do spot a familiar face on a book cover, so I hope that he flips through the cookbooks and moves on quickly. After a few uncomfortable minutes, he moves to the next bookshelf and starts looking at the chips & dip platter. I take that opportunity to swoop in and start grabbing and stacking.

Okay, so this is a decent stack for a morning that had a slow start. I go to check out and begin talking to the young couple having the sale. I tell them how happy I am to have found these cookbooks and ask if they had any with a plastic spiral spine. The husband says that they only have one and he could never part with it because it had been his mother’s cookbook. That’s absolutely understandable.

He can’t remember the name of the cookbook and goes inside to get it. I take this opportunity to begin checkout. As the lady is going through the stack she notices that I have a small crème brulee cookbook. She pauses to say how much she loves that dessert. Then asks if I saw all the ramekins she had for sale on another table. She suggested a lower price on all the ramekins as a set and I took her up on the offer.

Then her husband comes back out and shows me the cookbook. It’s a copy of Charlotte Cooks Again from the Junior League of Charlotte. Yes, that’s a great cookbook and he should definitely keep his mother’s copy. But if he ever wants to sell it, he knows who to call….

Wanna see the stack?

Paula Deen’s The Deen Family Cookbook (Paula Deen, Melissa Clark), Beyond Grits and Gravy: The South’s All-Time Favorite Recipes (Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley), Cooking School Secrets for the Real World (Linda Carucci), Cooking with Class (Charlotte Latin School, Charlotte, NC) and Elegantly Easy Crème Brulee & Other Custard Desserts (Debbie Puente).

And here are the lovely ramekins just waiting on some crème brulee!

Now all I need is to find that kitchen torch my mom gave me a while back. Awww man...I think those ramekins may be waiting a while longer….