Cookbooks....My Passion

About ten years ago, I was making a major change in my life. Joe and I were getting married and we had to combine two households. We had both been married forty six years to other spouses, who had passed away. We had to downsize at that time. As it turned out...I did more of the downsizing than Joe. He was more attached to his possessions than I. When I looked at my new home, I found that there wasn't much room for my kitchen things. He had a (what I thought) well stocked kitchen. He tended to have the basics, but I had things to make cooking pleasant and fun. Kitchen gadgets, table linens, sets of dishes. One of the things that I had to pare down was my cookbook collection. I had literally hundreds of cookbooks. A long time obsession of mine. My mom must have been an influence for me. She could read a cookbook like a novel. When we shopped together...we would always head to the book store and scout the cookbook section for a new one. Maybe one we had heard about on the TV or the radio. While on vacation...we would always bring my mom a small cookbook from the area we were visiting....and one would go into the bag for me too. Favorite gifts for me were cookbooks. My brother loves to cook..(the apple doesn't fall far from the tree) He and Deb have gifted me with many cookbooks over the years Getting back to the job of paring down my possessions...I realized that some of the cookbooks had to go. My new kitchen just didn't have room for my vast collection. By this time, I had cookbooks from both my mom and mother-in-law after they passed away. I had several recipe boxes from them too. I weeded through the books and selected the ones that I would take with me. The others were put in boxes...ready for the sale. The day of the sale was here and all of my things were on display, when a man entered the room. You could tell that he was on a mission. No wife with him...just a young man... there to shop. He went right for the books. Now, you know that I have done crafts and quilting, and artwork all my life...there were so many books about those subjects. He came with boxes...started boxing up all of the books in good condition. People watched as he filled them up. Finally I said, "You must have some lucky wife...bringing home all of these books for her." He answered back, "I'm not married, I'm selling these on E Bay." At that time, I was not very savvy about computers etc...had heard little about E Bay. Later on, when I learned more about E Bay...I realized that my collection hadn't made just one woman happy, but probably many. I brought my boxes of books to the house and since then Joe has built me some book shelves and also a pretty recipe box for my birthday one year. 

Since then (10 years) I have collected some more. This time only ones that are really special to me. I have been given gifts of cookbooks and a gift card to a book store is one of my favorite gifts. The internet is my playground...If I want to make pork chops different...I just click on the recipes and print them out.The food channel is a favorite of mine. Some of my kids and grands are foodies too...they watch the food channel as much as I do. When I am sitting in my living room, watching the food channel...I think of my mom. She would have loved printing out recipes from a favorite website or just sitting in her living room with the TV tuned into the channel about food.

Balisha