I own about 800 cookbooks. I have not looked through all of the books that I own, and I know that I may never. But I love my collection, and I want to share it in some way. Maybe I can unleash some of what's in them to people. That's the librarian in me. I love to share information and to be in the company of people who love books.Let me tell you how I acquired a large part of my collection.
In the spring last year, when my kids were really little, I asked my husband if he wouldn't mind taking the tykes to New Mexico for a few days so I could catch up on work to prepare for our always-busy summers. He was all for it, darling that he is. We packed everyone up and I drove them to the Omaha airport, about an hour from here.
After they were safely on their way, I decided to knock around in the Old Market, eat at La Buvette (lucky me, they had mussels that day) and then go to Jackson Street Books, a huge used book store. As usual, I made a bee line for their cookbook collection. There were so many that I didn't have, and wanted. That day, I got the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, which has since become one of my favorite books in any genre (this will place me just so, but give me Alice over Gertrude any day).
After I chose 10 or 12 books to buy, I made my way to the front of the store where one of the proprietors, Amanda, was commiserating with a somewhat desperate-seeming homeless guy, offering him a small bit of cash and escorting him back out into the beautiful spring day. When it was my turn to pay for the books I had chosen, she sharply instructed that the book I was about to pick up, that was lying near the front desk, was already claimed, so I quickly put it down.
As she was tallying my selections, she commented that I was getting some really classic cookbooks. I explained that I am a cookbook collector, that I had nearly 500 cookbooks. "Ah," she mused, "well, then, you may be interested in knowing about a huge cookbook collection that is available in Kansas." I was curious, of course. She explained that she had just visited a woman in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas, who owned thousands of cookbooks and no longer wanted them. "I took all the good ones, though, you know." "Of course," I assented, but felt challenged that, maybe, "no, you did not." "But," she continued, "there may be a few that would interest you." So I took the Kansas woman's name and number and hoped that I would actually have the nerve to call her before my family arrived home, and would be caught up again in the swirl of life that overtakes you when you have wee ones in your midst.
So I did it. I called the lady and told her that Amanda at Jackson Street gave me her name and that I was a librarian who collected cookbooks, and would she be willing to have me drive down and maybe take some of those books off her hands? She was very matter of fact, told me that her husband had collected all of these books and that he had died recently and that she didn't want them anymore. It was his hobby, she said, to go to yard sales, library sales, and such, and just buy every last cookbook. I made arrangements to go visit her the next week.
I arrived in one of the smallest, most dilapidated towns I had ever seen (and, as a once-voracious traveler, this was saying a lot) and found her modest house--one of the few with the paint intact--and met her outside. She invited me into her smoky, paneled home, with ancient yellow, large-flowered wallpaper in the kitchen, and gave me some cranberry juice as she told me again about her husband and his books. She was sizing me up big time, and was clearly worried that I might try to swindle her in some way. I tried to stay relaxed, knowing that my intention was to help her in any way that was also expedient for me, and that there would be no swindling from me.
She took me to the barn-sized garage and there, stacked up to the ceiling, were so many boxes of books, I could hardly believe my eyes. No way did Amanda go through all of these boxes, I thought; there are bound to be some gems in here. I spent about 8 or 10 hours there, going through boxes, and organizing them a bit as I went. I found so many that I wanted.
There were lots from the 60s, 70s and 80s, mostly; some from the 50s and some from the 90s. I found Julia Child, Escoffier reprints, Elizabeth David, Michael Field, Time-Life of every stripe, baking books, Junior League, diet cookbooks, Graham Kerr, Nika Hazelton, etc. It was astounding.For all of those hours, the woman stayed with me and we chatted as I pawed through most of the boxes. She told me how her husband had been an engineer and had worked on space shuttle projects, how she had never worked after they had gotten married, and that they had no children. She said that she had a nephew in Florida, and he was her only real remaining relative. Near the end of the day, she became very sad and said that she was having a hard time holding it all together thinking about how much her husband loved these books and how much she missed him. I stopped what I was doing and, as tenderly as I could in such an odd circumstance, told her that my heart went out to her, and that I so appreciated her considering sharing his collection with someone who loves cookbooks as much as he did. I assured her that the books would be going to a loving home, and that I would catalog them and use them.
We negotiated a price and I drove through the fiercest wind to get home in the almost-dark. I arrived home with just a couple hundred books. My husband and kids were still up when I got home and we had such fun going through all the boxes, smoky-smelling though the books were at first. My husband is a collector at heart, and was so excited about my growing book collection. He encouraged me to go back twice more and I ended up getting over 300 books total from my now-friend, the lady in northern Kansas who lives in the tiniest town, truly off the beaten path.I want to harvest some of the great things in my books, so this blog will be about cookbooks. I have cataloged the bulk of my collection, which you can see online at Sue's book catalog. Search on cooking.
Thanks for reading.
