Cookbookaholic

My Two Cents

Once again, the Marconi Award for Network/Syndication Personality of the Year went home with someone else. While not surprising, it is very disappointing.

God bless Bob & Sheri for getting so many nominations. Goodness knows they deserve it…every single time. Their show is (and always has been) the most amazing morning radio program. And I’m not saying that because I spent the better part of seven years with them (and wrote several of their Marconi Award submissions).

They’re incredible people with a great show that engages you and gets your mind going in the morning. I don’t know about you, but I need some Sheri every morning to say something intelligent and hilarious. She inspires me to get on with it…with a laugh.

Here’s a little industry background for you: NAB members can submit a show for a Marconi Award. If your submission gets selected by the group as one of the final nominees, great! But here’s the catch, you can’t campaign for the award. So the big group selects the nominees, but a smaller committee decides who gets the award.

This year’s award ceremony was a missed opportunity to finally thank two professional broadcasters for bringing and keeping affluent, educated female listeners glued to their morning radio for the past fifteen or so years.

Let’s also remember that Bob lost his beloved son, John, last December. I went to that funeral on Christmas Eve and saw a deeply wounded man get up and speak so eloquently and movingly about his son. And then he did the bravest thing in the world…he came back to the microphone.

Other nominees have been in trouble with the law and then showered with praise and awards. Where’s the respect for someone who lost someone so precious and then returned to the show? Finally winning that Marconi would’ve been a just and respectful thing for the industry to do.

Don’t think I have sour grapes. In fact, I’ll go ahead and make a prediction now that this year’s winner will be lauded for his tenacity and contribution to the industry many times over. I’ll bet he even gets a lifetime achievement award and heck, even a Kennedy Center Honor before it’s all said and done. Does this year’s winner deserve a Marconi? Yes, absolutely—someday. Just not this year. 

Friday Morning Sale with Slippers

A while back I saw a posting for a Friday morning estate sale that listed cookbooks. Now, I haven’t been to a Friday morning sale in ages, but when I saw the picture of the cookbooks I thought to myself, “Looks like I’ll be going in a little late that morning.”

When I roll up the cul-de-sac is empty…and yet someone has already nabbed the first number. I take the slip of paper marked “2” and make my way to some breakfast options until time for the sale.

Now, when we line up just before the doors open, we usually get the same speech about how to claim big ticket items. But this time, we get asked to put on shoe covers before walking into the house.

I’m not kidding. We had to put on shoe covers or go in shoeless.

I opted for the slippers…

Note to self: shoe slippers are rather slippery on smooth, hardwood floors.  

The room with the cookbooks was upstairs and I found a nice stack:

 

There were a lot of Kentucky cookbooks and a really interesting one on Tacos. Now, off to work and wrap up this Friday.

Next Chapter Sale

I’ve got to tell you about this sale from earlier this year. There was an estate sale company that, sadly, is no longer in business. But, they were really interesting in that you had to email them for your slot in line.

In some of their sales I’ve been third; I’ve been ninth. For today’s sale, I was thirteenth. But I’m okay with that because I looked at the pictures from this sale. They’ve got fancy ties, cool concert tees and a small selection of cookbooks.  

The pre-sale talk by the gentlemen running the sale involves a backstory of the family holding the sale. He asks for a moment of silence to uplift them during their time of need. It’s very nice but then it’s on to business.

He begins calling names on the list. I’m guessing about 7 people haven’t shown up because I’m called up and briskly walking down the driveway in no time flat. I quickly get into the garage and find the cookbooks up on a shelf. The prices are rather hefty for cookbooks. I’m used to $1 - $2 but these are $5?!

The load I’m carrying is pretty heavy and as I begin to walk around, I see the fancy ties. They’re really nice and I’m thinking my oldest son would appreciate a few of these.

Now, I’m worried about my bill. I’m not sure I’ll have enough cash to cover all of it. So I decide to do the unthinkable…I put back about half of the cookbooks. I’m thinking that the fancy ties for my son are a little more important than a few cookbooks.

I get in line for checkout and then see something marvelous….they’re taking credit cards. What?! That’s awesome, I turn around and head back to the garage and take back the cookbooks and spot another one or two to add to the pile.

When I get to checkout, I’m very lucky in that the gentleman running the sale gives me a bulk discount. And the tiny cookbook gets thrown in for free. Nice!

See the yellow one with the goose wearing the hat in the large cauldron? That’s an early cookbook from the Junior League of Charlotte (NC) from 1964.

Not sure what this cookbook with the Bob Timberlake prints is all about? It’s called “The Figure Eight Island Collection.” A quick search on the web tells me Figure Eight Island is a barrier island and an exclusive, private community located near Wilmington and only accessible by boat or a guarded,  private bridge. I wonder if this family owned a home on the island?

Hominy Grill…didn’t that recently close down in Charleston, SC? I may need to give this one a good long look and see what’s featured. It’s autographed by Chef Robert Stehling on the cover!

$20 Exactly

My Saturday morning yard sale excursions have been getting more and more infrequent!

But, on this Saturday, I have two yard sales listed…both starting at 9am and on opposite sides of Charlotte. One in Mt. Holly and the other sale is up in Concord. I’ve got exactly $20 and I’m thinking it’ll cover me for both sales.

I chose to start with the one in Mt. Holly because the company running this sale creates their admission list by email requests. I’m number 9 and I’ll be among the first to get inside.

As we’re lining up to get in the first sale, the man running it comes out and tells us a little about the family holding the sale. He asks for a moment of silence and good thoughts for them. Just as the silence beings, this woman starts talking out loud about how she had a neighbor who had to have a yard sale after her mother passed. I guess she didn’t hear the part where the guy asked for a moment of silence?

Awkward!

Anyways, I finally get inside and find the cookbooks. I find two that I like and go to check out. They were priced at $4 each. Ahhh! Oh no, I can’t do that! The lady at the cash box graciously discounts them to $2 each and I get out with $16 left.

I make my way to the other sale in Concord. By the time I make it to this well-hidden location, it’s well past 10am. The sale has been going for an hour. Who knows what’s left…

When I get in the house, there are still plenty of people walking around room to room. I find a set of Cuthbertson Christmas china that has a Sold sticker on it. And when I make it into the kitchen I see a table filled with cookbooks….along with a sign: $4 each.

What is it with today’s sales? Seriously?

I sift through the selection and come up with five. The man at the cash box isn’t working deals so I have to put one back…ugh!

Disappointed that I had to leave one behind, I’m already regretting not coming to this sale first. What else did they sell in the hour it took me to get here? I need to stop with the regret and look at the positives of walking away with a solid group of four cookbooks:

And I spent my $20…so it’s time to head home.

$5 Box?

It’s been a while since I’ve been out to a garage sale. I did a little Friday night research and found a listing for a sale that included a picture of the cookbooks. It showed a full box and I spied a Pioneer Woman cookbook in there.

I’ll try to snag that one and see what the fuss is all about.

The next morning, as I make my way to the sale I notice this neighborhood is filled with two-story townhomes that are super thin and tightly packed in. Even the road I’m driving on is super thin. I’m not sure this is wide enough to have two cars going in opposite directions. So far, I’m the only one here and the only traffic is homeowners walking their dogs.

I pull up to the address and I see a lot of items in the short driveway and the garage door is open—showing more items in the barely-enough-room-for-one-car space. How do people park their car in there? You’d have to drive a teeny tiny smart car for goodness sake!

I hop out and say hello to the lady holding the sale. I tell her that I saw the picture of cookbooks. She points to a box and I walk over. I see the Pioneer Lady cookbook, but then notice that there are actually three Pioneer Woman cookbooks in there. How did I miss that when I looked at the picture last night?

Oh well. I’ve got about twenty dollars on me, so even if she wants to charge me $5 a book, I can still get all three of them. The biggest challenge would be to figure out what else to pick.

I ask how much she wants for the cookbooks. She thinks about it for a few seconds and then says, “How about five dollars for the box?”

I must have misheard. I say, “five dollars each?”

“No, five dollars for the whole box.”

Okay….

I pulled out a five dollar bill and then loaded the box in the passenger seat of the car. I wished her well and hoped her sale would be busy the rest of the morning. Quietly and quickly, I drove out of the neighborhood.

Did that just happen?

Yep, Just for Betty

Not sure if I blogged about this or if I put the photo on Instagram? It’s been so long since I’ve done any blogging…

I recently won an eBay auction on a collection of cookbooks for the low, low, bargain price of $9.99. Big whoop, you might say.

If you take a look at the collection, you will understand almost immediately why I bid on the lot.

 

Yep, the auction lot contained a Betty Feezor! Carolina Recipes Volume II.

Pretty good deal if you ask me!

After Easter

So this Easter we did our usual trip up to Winston-Salem. During last year’s trip, I pinched something in my back and didn’t move out of the bed. Got a lot of sleep…but not much in the way of getting out.

This year had an added layer of excitement. Nephew Chaz, also known as the Reverend Chaz, was chosen to lead the annual Moravian Sunrise Service. We ended up spending a lot of time with family and I didn’t get to branch out on my own for cookbook shopping.

A few weeks after Easter, I was able to spend a few hours back in Winston-Salem on my own. I was meeting up to buy a Bob Timberlake print and afterwards I made sure to visit the Moravian Book & Gift Shop in Old Salem. Their downstairs section always has church cookbooks and a few local choices as well. 

Only this time, I discover that the downstairs section is now a quilting shop. I take a few laps around the main floor and find one cookbook:

Southern Breads: Recipes, Stories and Traditions by Marilyn Markel and Chris Holaday. 

From biscuits to cobblers, hush puppies to cornbread, I think this looks really interesting. Lots of recipes and looks like a brief history section that I can’t wait to read.

A section near the end lists out cookbooks that inspired the recipes in the book. Of course, there’s the Charleston Receipts from the Junior League of Charleston. Another one featured is Gardeners’ Gourmet from the Montgomery Federation of Garden Clubs in Alabama. 

I think I’ve seen this one before, but I don’t believe I have it in my collection.

A couple of weeks searching and I finally see one online. Perfect condition! I buy it and after a few days it arrives….with the plastic spiral spine broken. Argh! Oh well.

Katie Brown x 2

Have you heard about Everything But the House? It’s an online estate sale auction website that is absolutely revolutionizing the way estate sales are done. Think online estate sale done ebay style.

 

I’ve been able to win a few items here and there over the past year. If the auction is in the city where you live, then you can pick it up the item you won in person and save yourself the cost of packing and shipping. If the item you win is in another city, then prepare for some shipping costs that can take your breath away. (For cookbooks, I wish they’d look into charging for just Media Mail)

 

Last year, they had an estate sale for the lifestyle expert, Katie Brown. Included in several of the auction lots were autographed, first edition cookbooks. I put in several bids and promptly got outbid on the ones that included cake stands or tiered serving trays. Ugh. I would’ve loved to have a Katie Brown cake stand. Oh well.

 

At the end of the auctions, I did end up winning two lots. In addition to two autographed copies of Katie Brown Celebrates, I have two gorgeous glass pitchers, a mixing bowl, wooden serving tray and two small  outdoor votive candle holders. As Christmas was right around the corner and the hubby was heading into a sangria phase—the tall, skinny glass pitcher (along with some fresh citrus fruit, Ocean Spray Cranberry Sangria Cocktail mix and two bottles of red wine from my local Food Lion) turned into a very thoughtful present for him.

 

But we all know it’s all about the cookbooks in the end! So here’s Miss Katie times two:

 

 

 

Big Red One

If you remember back to last year, I was so thrilled when I found a first edition/first printing of Charleston Receipts from the Junior League of Charleston. Had a slight hiccup, in getting the right one, but it did finally get here.

 

But did you know there was another cookbook that the Junior League published before that famous green one? I didn’t. At least, not until The Lee Bros. wrote about it in one of their amazing cookbooks.

 

It was ultra rare from 1949, and it was only printed once. First edition…only edition.

 

And it’s called Charleston Recipes…which feels more natural than Receipts.

 

As you can imagine, once I learned about this cookbook—I put it on my list. Don’t assume it went straight to obsession (hello, original Paula Deen Lady and Friends cookbook).

 

Not too long after, the Junior League of Charleston actually re-released a new printing of that original red cookbook. Here’s how they listed it on their website:

 

Virtually lost for decades, Charleston Recipes was recently rediscovered in an attic by Josephine Humphreys, a former JLC member and daughter of the original editor Martha Lynch Humphreys. “Only one year separates the two cookbooks (Recipes and Receipts), but they can almost be seen as representing different decades,” says Humphreys in her introduction. “The 1949 book seems spare and frugal, still in the shadow of the depression and wartime privations, while the 1950 book is exuberant, celebratory, even sometimes downright lavish. And yet there are tempting and delightful recipes to be found only in the red book.”

 

Amazing! And the proceeds for purchasing this reprint went to their charity work. And yes, I did buy one. So that scratched that itch….until.

 

I logged on to ebay and went through a search for Junior League cookbooks from the Carolinas. And deep in a “Buy It Now” section was an original. THE original….the Red One. It was part of a private collection of a professional chef who collected rare and antique cookbooks. He was choosing to sell off a few from his personal library and I knew I had to act fast. I couldn’t afford the Buy It Now price, but it did have a “make an offer” option. I submitted my best offer and waited.

 

The next morning, I got a notification that the offer was accepted. Woo-hoo!!!!

 

I thanked the seller and told him that Red was coming to a good home and she’d live right beside the first edition/first printing Receipts. And a few days later, she arrived:

 

 

So thrilled!

Midnight in Birmingham

I made it through the first week at work. A few tearups, but no ugly-cry meltdowns. So there’s a win for me.

This was a really trying time for me, not only for the loss of my Mom, but I had also endured a professional setback, quite literally, at the exact same time. Looking back on it now, that issue would work itself out—and by that, I mean out the door—within six months. But at that point in time, I was just starting down a path that felt dark, deeply lonely and like my new reality.  

That first week back was spent focusing on a previously scheduled trip to Birmingham, Alabama, for a symposium. I was looking forward to getting out of town, out of my circumstances and quite frankly, out of my self-imposed pity party.

 

I packed my clothes, a cookbook to get autographed, hopes for rest and got out of Dodge for a few days.

 

The first evening in Birmingham was great. We were invited to attend a get-together at the offices of Southern Living magazine. I knew absolutely nobody there but the office was amazing. Check out the appetizers, show kitchen and the library of cookbooks…I was in Heaven!

 

 

The next day started off with a light breakfast just outside the symposium venue and I spotted the Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, John T. Edge. I grabbed my copy of The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook and made beeline straight to him. I asked him to sign the cookbook and he very nicely obliged.

 

 

The day was filled with really interesting sessions. I took a lot of notes. After the last session, I walked back to the hotel and figured out dinner plans. Nothing major—just nearby and basic.

 

Back in my hotel room, I had a quiet evening ahead of me.

 

I pulled out of my purse three handwritten notecards. These were notes my Mom had taken from a lesson on the disciples after Christ’s crucifixion. She had kept these notecards and placed them on a kitchen cabinet door. Those three cards had been there for years…about 13 years exactly. They obviously had messages that held importance for her. As I was gearing up to leave her house following the funeral and come home, something told me to put the cards in my purse.

 

Now that I had time to myself in the hotel room, I pulled out the cards and began to read each of them.

 

The last card was titled, “The Miraculous Resurrection,” and it was filled with notes she’d jotted down from a radio broadcast of one of her favorite preachers, Dr. David Jeremiah. The card was dated February of 2003.

 

 

It was focusing on the day after the Crucifixion and how the disciples were left feeling devastated at the loss of Christ…that long Saturday.

 

The flip side of the card reads:

 

It is neither the dark Fridays or the brightest Sundays that require the greatest grace.

The greatest grace is during the eternally long Saturdays when we are caught in the middle.

It is where we seek to get rid of our grief and get on with our life.

It is where our former vision of what life would be has failed and we are desperate for a new one.

Hope is never more needed than on Saturday between Friday and Sunday.

Where are you?

 

Then below, she wrote, “I think this also applies to the grieving process. Is it Friday, Saturday or Sunday in your life right now?”

 

Wow. If this were a movie, this scene would be where a character suddenly realizes something important, there's a sound effect and then everything freezes in a quiet instance of awareness.  I was totally focused and understood that this card was meant to be read by me, at this moment.

 

It just instantly landed what had been quietly swirling in the back of my mind: I was definitely at the start of my midnight on this long Saturday.

Hard One to Write

So, the week following my mother's passing was slow and sad. I was sitting at her house, dreading going back to work. Couldn't imagine being able to sit at my desk without tearing up. Not to mention if anyone were to come up and express any kind of sorrow—even thinking of that got the waterworks going.

 

But I knew I needed to think about going home, back to my family and back to work. On Wednesday night, I got a phone call from a neighbor of Carolyn Leonard. Mrs. Leonard was having her final yard sale and wanted to be sure I came on Friday afternoon.

 

She had contacted me a few months earlier to come over and look through her cookbooks. I wasn't able to find the time since my Mom fell soon after and her passing followed a few months later.

 

Honestly, I felt guilty not being able to go over and meet with her earlier. But this was exactly what I needed to motivate me now to make the drive back home.

 

When I arrived at the house a few minutes before the start time, I noticed people were already inside. Oh boy, I hoped I wasn't too late.

 

As I walked through the house, I could tell that the sale had been going on for a while. I'd be lucky to find anything at this point.

 

In the living room, there were built-in bookshelves and I spied cookbooks. They'd definitely been picked through, but then I saw this just lying flat on the bookshelf:

 

 

Wow! Betty Feezor's Carolina Recipes Volume II?! Still here? I had a sense of relief wave through me. Now I could look through the rest feeling a little more relaxed.

 

A few more jumped out at me and I was able to snag these as well:

 

 

Tea Time at the Masters (Junior League of Augusta, GA), It’s Not Gourmet, It’s Better! (Eudora Garrison), Carolina Recipes Volume II (Betty Feezor) and The Food Lion Family Cookbook.

 

After these finds, I took a few more minutes and walked around the house. I even found this gorgeous footstool! Very Christmas-y, I think.

 

 

Now it was time to check out and finally head home. I saw Mrs. Leonard as I was leaving from the garage. She saw me from the top of the steps and said that she was hoping to see me a few months earlier. I could tell she was disappointed and a little cross with me. I struggled to find some words but the only thing that came out of my mouth was, "I lost my Mom this week."

 

The look on her face turned immediately to shock.  She quickly, but carefully, came down the steps and grabbed onto my arm. "I am so sorry," she said. Her grip on my arm was firm and shook as she said each word. We had a brief conversation and I’m relieved that I held it together without any tears.

 

A few months went by before I came across the small stack from this sale. For some reason, I found myself flipping through the Betty Feezor cookbook. Written on the inside of the back cover, I found an amazing surprise: a note from Betty’s husband, Turner.

 

 Feb. 26, 1978

To Mrs. Carolyn Leonard,

Betty asked me to send you this book and to thank you for your work on the scholarship fund. She is so pleased that young people are going to benefit from your work.

                                           Best wishes, Turner Feezor

 

I was astonished to find this note. It’s brief, touching and so unassuming…tucked away in the very back. A quiet thank you for helping his wife’s legacy live on with the Betty Feezor Scholarship program. And after doing a quick date check online, I find that this note, dated February 26, was written only two days before Betty passed.

 

I’m struggling to make a connection between my loss and finding this cookbook…but l am incredibly grateful that it found it’s way home with me.