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.
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