Recipe time! The start of the holiday season brings on the need to create sweet treats for family and friends. One of my favorite candy recipes is a knock-off of the NUT GOODY recipe from a family owned candy factory in St Paul, Minnesota. If you like flavored fudge and peanuts, you will LOVE this recipe! Great for cookie/candy swap at school, church or work.

 Servings: 150 pieces (1 inch square serving if made on a 10x15" pan)

• 1 (12 oz) pkg. chocolate chips (semi-sweet or your favorite)
  
• 1 (12 oz) pkg. butterscotch chips
• 2 c. creamy peanut butter
• 1 c. butter (unsalted if possible)
  
• 1/3 c. evaporated or 1/2 c. regular milk
• 1/4 c. regular vanilla pudding mix
• 2 lbs. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. maple flavoring
•  2 cups - 1/2 lb. Spanish peanuts, skinned (depending on how crunchy you like your candy)

In double boiler or microwave, melt chips, peanut butter and chocolate. Spread half of the melted chocolate mixture in a foil-lined buttered 10 1/2 x 15 1/2 inch jelly roll pan. Refrigerate or freeze until set (about 30 minutes in freezer). Reserve remaining chocolate mixture in double boiler.

In heavy saucepan, combine butter, milk and pudding mix. Bring to boil over low heat and cook 1 minute. Remove and let cool. Using a mixer, blend in powdered sugar and flavoring until creamy. Spread mixture over chilled chocolate. Stir Spanish peanuts into remaining chocolate mixture and spread over top. Refrigerate for 3 hours. Peel off foil and cut into 1 inch squares. Keep refrigerated.  

This candy won't last long!  Feel free to tweak this recipe to taste...

Estate Sale Jackpot

When I scan the paper or web sites for estate sales, rummage sales, etc. I look for the keyword: COOKBOOKS. I don't need any more in my collection, but I have to look. Well, I got around to checking for sales a bit late one day, but found a professionally run estate sale that listed 100's of cookbks. What?! An abbreviation?! Oh well. Have 90 minutes before the sale ends.

Arrived to find a large folding table filled with cookbooks, and a few that I didn't have. Felt a bit disappointed that I hadn't seen the ad earlier in the day. Was beginning to get the cookbooks written up to check out, and the clerk asked if I had been in the basement to see the other cookbooks. Headed downstairs, and found myself in heaven! There weren't 100's of cookbooks--there were 1000's! A room FULL of bookcases FULL of books! Heaven with a view!

Better news! Only a few others going through the cookbooks. The woman who collected this treasure of recipes had excellent taste, and had them arranged them by category. Spent as much time as the clerk would give me that first day, came back the next day for a few hours and even the last day where I picked up a few more. Would have given my eye teeth to have that collection. Just wanted to thank this woman for being "one of us" in her love of all things COOKBOOKS!

Annual Cookbooks Best Deal for the Buck

If you have a favorite food magazine, no doubt you have seen their ANNUAL cookbook. It is usually a hard cover cookbook with ALL the recipes they published in the previous year's magazine without all the ads. So, it's up to you to decide what type of recipes you like and level of skill as a cook or time you have to create great dishes!

What makes these cookbooks a great deal is that they were usually available for retail sale around $30, but with a little searching on the web, you can get them for about $10 including shipping! Better yet, find a "lot" of cookbooks to save on shipping. Check eBay and Google shopping to find the best deals!

Some of the cookbook annuals to look for (in no particular order):  Southern Living, Pillsbury, Martha Stewart,  Quick Cooking (From Taste of Home), Taste of Home, Weight Watchers, Better Homes & Gardens, Cooks Illustrated (the hardest to find in the second tier market for a good price), Food & Wine, Eat Up and Slim Down, Cooking Light and a few more! Many go back decades!

Bang for the buck, one of the best collection of recipes you will add to your cookbook library is an annual cookbook. 

An example of Cooking Light:  http://justask.ecrater.com/p/5186952/lot-annual-cookbook-cooking-light

Great "from scratch" recipes from older cookbooks!

In part, due to the economy, people are once again discovering a room in their home----the kitchen. Using the stove and oven and even stocking the fridge with food that is meant to be made into meals rather than let it turn into a science project by letting it go bad. More families are turning cooking into a necessity and realizing that it could also become a fun hobby. Cooking and baking is a skill that you will enjoy for the rest of your life and create memories for your family that could last for generations to come!

With the deluge of "Food Network" cookbooks, that at best have only a handful of recipes that you would make, it's time to think outside the box and find old fashioned recipes -- those classic comfort food recipes that you want to make over and over again that are basic home recipes.

Look no further than your mother's or grandmother's kitchen and their comb bound or wire spiral community or church cookbooks. Most of these cookbooks were created to fund a project or cause. And they have been creating this glimpse into the art of cooking for well over 60 years, but some of the best church and community cookbooks came into their own in the 1950's and 1960's and even a few in the 21st century.

Depending on were you are in the country, your state could be lucky enough to add "ethnic" recipes to their collection--such as Swedish and Norwegian here in Minnesota, Cajun in Louisiana, etc. The church and community cookbooks keep those hard to find heritage recipes alive and remembered (and made) by generation after generation for decades if the recipe books stay with their families.

Why are these cookbooks so good? Well, the cooks that contributed their recipes sent in only the best and their names were attached to each recipe. In fact, in older cookbooks, it was suggested that you contact the cook if you had problems.

The recipe was basic, simple and all "from scratch" cooking so there were no pre-packaged foods. It feed the family week after week and you looked forward to a meal that was made with love. Hot dishes (casseroles everywhere else in the world except Minnesota) usually combined meat, potatoes and vegetables so you had a 'stick to your ribs' meals!

This time of year, people start their quest to find the recipe book that has their Aunt Mary's cake recipe in a church cookbook from the 60's to be given as a gift. Fortunately, eBay will help the seeker find a hard to find cookbook, either by checking the list of (on average) 85,000 cookbooks listed at any given time or better still, posting to "want it now" where 100's of people check out who wants what and can recover that food memory. Even eCrater (where I have my store) has over 11,000 cookbooks. If all else fails, check Google shopping--if you give enough information you could find what you are looking to cherish for years to come.

So if you can find your favorite community cookbook, keep it safe and look for another copy because it could turn into something that you want to pass down to the next generation!

Learn to find great cookbooks and enjoy the surprises and treasures they hold.

Well, there hasn't been that much to write about, so I kept collecting cookbooks. Most from church sales, garage and estate sales. Even used book stores need to be checked out! 

The one thing I can count on are annual church sales and a large, favorite church just had theirs. Arrived 10 minutes before the doors opened, but ended up at the end of a line that had more than 300 people ahead of me! (Note to everyone: Get in  line early.)  Knew right where the cookbooks were displayed and raced to get there before too many others did. Good! Only four others were flipping through the cookbooks. With over 200 cookbooks I'm bound to get a few good ones. Looks like someone gave up their church and community cookbook collection--my favorite! But things have changed in the world of book buying. With aps for reading ISBN numbers, dealers rifle through stacks with their phones reading bar codes to snag the good books. They don't know what they are missing! So I am picking out the spiral bound cookbooks--just looking at the title and the city and state they came from, but not checking for much more. When you are in a herd of cookbook enthusiasts, you have to make a split second decision. Some things are no-brainers, like a 1963 McCall's Step-by-Step cookbook--1st Edition, or a 1st edition Junior League cookbook that I've never seen before. But not too many of those. Well, I'm up to about 30 cookbooks and go through the cookbooks again just before check-out to make sure they don't smell of smoke and aren't too damaged.

Got home and started going through my newly acquired treasures and the first one was a community in Kansas celebrating their town's 100 anniversary. Nice cookbook--well put together with a cookbook publisher. Then I noticed that there was a gift inscription written on the blank side of the title page: "Congratulations.... (I'm leaving the name of the city out because there are only about 130 people in the town) Kansas Keep on cooking and writing recipes it's a great hobby! (Signed) Julia Child.

What? Well a week before this, a friend showed my her signed cookbook from Julia Child and it was the same signature. WOW. This ranks right up there with Martha Stewart following ME on Twitter! It was amazing to me that first, the town sent Julia Child the cookbook and even more amazing is that she sent it back with a wonderful note. So, just how many OTHER community cookbook editors were smart enough to send their cookbook to Julia Child to read--and lucky enough to have her send back a note. I think that this stays in my collection. I would be nice for the next caretaker of this book to be just as surprised and grateful to Julia for being America's Chef. Thanks, Julia and thanks to someone who tool the trouble to have this happen....what a sweet treat.