Sunday, July 23, 2006

Before that rock hit

I had just come home from dropping my daughter off at work (her boyfriend had borrowed her car) and stopping at one garage sale when that damned rock hit my car. I had spent a grand total of $1 on 2 cookbooks at the sale. I love to cook. I love making up menus and finding new recipes to try. So many recipes, so little time. But I think I only have a few cookbooks that I paid full price for on my shelf. One is by Paula Dean, another by Giada DeLaurentis. Others are regional cookbooks from places I've visited. A few came from garage sales. I use the "Food Network" ones frequently. But I have found with the other books I have that I only pick out about 10% of the recipes. To me that is like paying $10 for something and only using $1 worth of it. Same goes for magazines. This is why I love to buy cookbooks really, really cheap at garage sales. For 50 cents or a dollar, even if I only use a handful of recipes, it's a bargain. And a whole book is cheaper than a magazine! Yesterday's books included a 'make ahead' cookbook. I actually made a blueberry coffee cake. You're supposed to make 2 and freeze one, but I didn't have enough sugar for two. It came out really good. I also made two tuna-fish sandwiches. One I ate before heading to work, the other I froze. You use sour cream instead of mayo, and it tasted pretty good. I'm going to keep the sandwich in the fridge a few days before trying it. If I remember, I'll post whether it was good or not. The second one is a brand-name cookbook. I see lots of things to try in there.

5 comments:

Stephanie Appleton said...

Great idea about looking for them at garage sales. I also love new recipes. I don't buy too many cookbooks though. I use allrecipes.com a lot!

Mom2fur said...

I kind of like the feel of a book in my hands, Stephanie!

Mom2fur said...

Most garage sales go on until the afternoon. Frankly, if you missed it 'cause you didn't get there in the a.m.--you didn't need it anyway. And a lot of 'late day' sales are the best ones!

*** said...

I love Giada and Paula, so good buys there. I never pay full price for a cookbook and do the same...look at thrift stores or garage sales. Another great idea and one I do all the time now...I check out cookbooks from the library and while I'm at the pool with my son or other leisure times, I peruse through the book and jot down anything of interest.

Amy said...

I am a huge cookbook fan too. My husband found an ad in the classifed section for a lady who was selling her cookbook collection. She had over two hundred cookbooks and was asking a hundred bucks for the whole collection. It took everything in me not to buy them. My husband was encouraging me to get them, but where the heck am I going to keep two hundred cookbooks and who the heck is going to dust them? Not me!

I called to find out if she had The Joy of Cooking though. She was elderly and I thought she might have that in her collection. She actually didn't know what cookbook I was talking about. I figured if she wasn't familiar with the Joy of Cooking then it probably wasn't worth looking into :)

The only cookbooks I have bought are the Rachael Ray cookbooks. The other books that I want get added to my Amazon wish list. I am hoping someone else will buy them for me :)