The Tale of Two Cookbooks

Forty-five years ago, some dear soul, I'm not sure who, gave us a Better Homes and Garden cookbook for a wedding present. It was a Godsend because I had no idea how to cook. My mother, bless her heart, taught me everything but that. It wasn't because she wasn't a good cook, she just didn't want me messing up her kitchen. SOooo...I depended completely on my brand spankin' new Better Homes and Garden cookbook to help me prepare every meal. Who knows what my new husband would have had to eat, those first few years of our marriage, had it not been for that thoughtful wedding gift. In that book, I found some honest to goodness recipes and followed them to the letter, over and over, day after day, year after year. As the years went by, other cookbooks and recipes came and went, but there were still the BH&G old time favorites that remained at the forefront of my menus. As the cookbook became tattered and torn from years of much use, some of those recipes became faded and splotched so that they were unable to read,(I did memorize a few ) others totally disappeared as they tore loose from the binder that held them together. Not only pages but the front and back covers were gone. See What I mean?

So when I saw a vintage 1965 BH&G cookbook, just like mine on E-Bay, I knew I had to have it. I asked my son, who is experienced at E-Bay auctions to bid on it for me, he did and he won the bid. THE COOKBOOK WAS MINE!

When it arrived in the mail, I was so excited. It was like being reacquainted with an old friend.

I immediately reintroduced the old stand-bys into my daily meal planning It is so nice now to look up a recipe in the index and know that the page it's on will be there.

But somehow I can't seem to part with the old cover less, food-splattered, page-missing cookbook that taught me all I know about cooking.