>This past weekend, I forego’ed (forewent?) my Saturday trip to the San Mateo CSM Farmers Market and spent the morning pouring over used books at the Friends of the Palo Alto Library’s monthly booksale. As a first timer, I had no idea of the scope of this event, though I knew I needed to get there early. The bargain room opened an hour ahead of the Main Room and in and of itself ended up being a treasure trove at seriously cut rate prices. While most people seemed to make a run at the computer and science books, I wasn’t alone perusing the cookbooks stacks.
The bulk of what the bargain room contained seemed to come from donated estates — in my case, offering up multiple boxes of the little pamphlet cookbooks produced by the Metropolitan Life insurance company, the Dairy Council of California and a cavalcade of cookbooks created by local organizations including recipes from their members interspersed with Cooking Light annuals and microwave cooking books.
That first morning (yes, I went back the next day), I went home with a once waterlogged first edition, third printing of the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook. The book seemed to have had a rough life, its binding taped up with some clear packing tape. It had probably ended up in a box in a garage with a leaky roof, but I decided to take it.
Between the two rooms, my first day finds included the Hungry Man’s Grill Cookbook, a book from the late 50s aimed at teaching your man how to grill; California Fresh, the cookbook of the East Bay Junior League; a couple of Amy Tan books I hadn’t yet read; and Deborah Madison’s The Savory Way.
What was almost more interesting were the bits and bobs stuck in these cookbooks — the Deborah Madison book had an article on the best frozen pizza torn out of a 1992 edition of the San Jose Merc and the Junior League cookbook had a recipe for green beans stuck in it. Who had these books belonged to? And had the owner made the green beans along w/ the salmon in whose page the recipe was stuck?