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?