You know, I had just finished looking over my collection of Savannah-area cookbooks and thought to myself: You don’t need any more copies of The Savannah Cook Book by Harriet Ross Colquitt. I’ve got both hardback and plastic spiral spine copies. Plenty! Plenty of copies that I’ve picked up over the years.
And for some reason, the very next thing I did was a search on eBay….and what did I find? A true first edition, first printing hardback from 1933 that was signed by Harriet Ross Colquitt herself.
WHAAAAA??????
It took a while, but I finally managed to get the funds to purchase it…and it arrived today.
Can you imagine? A signed copy from almost 100 years ago! I mean, 87 years actually, but still!
Not only was it signed, but there was a wonderful inscription to the book’s owner, which I’m assuming is a cousin to Mrs. Colquitt. It reads:
“Don’t forget while you are hobnobbing with artists that your cousin is a cook.”
Harriet Ross Colquitt July 1933
That one line hit a personal note with me. My grandmother was a cook…not a chef, but a cook. She grew up poor in a small town and cooked for families and churches, worked as a lunch lady at the local high school and then drove to the “big city” to work in the kitchen at a local BBQ restaurant. She learned to cook to survive and provide for her family. And as I was moving to briefly live in New York after college, she relayed a similar sentiment.
It was a light-hearted “don’t forget your roots” sentiment but also a knowing that her hard-lived and fought struggles were finally resulting in a world of opportunities for a grandchild.
This copy of The Savannah Cook Book is, without a doubt, a treasure by itself; but I’m appreciating this particular copy as a grateful granddaughter of a hard-working cook.