Antiquing actually won out. (I didn't mention it, but I'd been a bit gunshy of driving much distance of late; my last trip south, coming home, I was moving into the passing lane and some dude came up out of nowhere, and either I nearly hit him or he nearly hit me (I looked, and I looked behind me, and I DID NOT SEE HIM). Of course, he was going pretty fast... but anyway, it made me nervous because I thought, "You're getting inattentive with the driving, better not do any "unnecessary" driving for a while."
But there's also the question of getting back on the horse.
But I went. I only went to one shop, the "big" antiques store in downtown Sherman. They've reconfigured the streetscape around the courthouse square; it's now one-way all the way 'round (in some ways it's like a giant traffic circle, just with lights at each corner to make it easier to get through).
I saw an absolutely sweet revolving bookcase that was done in Mission style oak and was about as tall as I am....but it was $900 and also I couldn't immediately think of where I could put it in my house. (Still - if I had had a spot? $900 is a lot, even for a sweet Mission-style oak revolving bookcase. Then again - if I had known IMMEDIATELY where I could put it, I probably would have figured "Worth dipping into savings for")
Instead, I wound up buying a couple older cookbooks:
The middle one - the Robert Farrar Capon one - was the most expensive, at about $20. (I have no idea if that is a good price, but I find books that are likely out of print, if you WANT want them, best to buy them when you see them, because you might never find them again). Capon is (was? I have no idea if he's still living) an Episcopal priest who writes essays, lots of them on food, eating, community around the table, etc. I enjoy his essays because he is very much in the "enjoying life" camp (He once commented in an essay "God must like stuff, because He made so much of it" - as part of (IIRC) an argument against those in favor of austere celebrations of Christmas and the like, where the family decides instead of giving gifts to give a family donation somewhere....Capon is all in favor of donations, but he also thinks that the sort of hair-shirt mentality that sometimes goes along with the "simplifying Christmas" is not ideal)
Anyway - he has chapters on A German Christmas Eve, an Armenian Easter, and similar, complete with recipes. And I enjoy those kinds of things - reading about recipes, their origins, what someone thinks of them, even if they are things I will never cook. And he also has essays on Bare Hands in the Kitchen (and yes, I often use my hands even when I might have another tool that would work), and one on salt (his argument being, the current killjoy mentality toward salt - or any good thing - that says even those without health issues MUST avoid it, is foolish. Though he does also acknowledge that there are those who (regretfully) must leave the shaker on the table for health reasons. And that's true. While I've dined with people who must avoid Item X and who spend the entire meal telling the other diners how they are "killing" themselves by indulging (and what a tiresome meal that becomes), my main reaction to someone getting a lovely Italian sausage pizza, or one of those giant soft pretzels covered in salt, is to look at it and murmur, "Enjoy it for me.")
The other two books are a bit older - "Impromptu Cooking" is from the early 1970s. It's allegedly aimed at those afraid to depart from the dogma of a recipe, and while I'm definitely not one of those (Actually, I could be described as an "impromptu cook"), I wanted to see another person's take on that form of cooking. (And it was inexpensive - $2). There are a number of "choose three things from this list and combine them with..." suggestions, and also broad general guidelines on things like braising meat and creating yeast bread.
The oldest of the three books is the Rumford Cook Book, published 1946 (a revision of a book first out in 1908). Yes, Rumford as in Count Rumford, or, more immediately, the company that makes Rumford baking powder (which, incidentally, is the brand I use - it's aluminum-free* and they also now make a reduced-sodium version, where a calcium compound replaces one of the sodium ones).
It's interesting, like many older cookbooks - very limited dependence on "convenience" foods (which didn't really exist in the initial run of the book). Which is good for someone like me. And also, there are some fascinating (and fascinatingly-named) recipes that you don't see much any more:
"Eggs in Prison" - essentially eggs baked in a custard cup between layers of breadcrumbs and minced cooked meat.
"King George's Pudding" - a steamed suet pudding with "dark colored" preserves (currant recommended). Makes me wonder if it was the George whose reign overlapped the era of the book, or an earlier George.
Planked whitefish (and also, a different recipe: planked eggs) where you cook things on a well-oiled plank of wood. I know some restaurants (especially up in northern Michigan) still do planked whitefish but you almost never see recipes for at-home planked cooking any more....
And there are other recipes you never see any more: beef tea, for example (usually suggested as an invalid-reviver). And often the vegetable recipes seem more creative in the older books....I don't know if that's because people cared more about vegetables then, or if they were less paranoid about cooking out all the vitamins (or less worried about "diluting" the alleged health-giving properties by flavoring them up with cheese sauces or some such).
Of course, the recipes for cakes and quick breads specifically recommend Rumford baking powder, but unlike some commercial cook books, they don't try to shoehorn their product in where it doesn't belong (well, they do suggest adding it to the beaten eggs for an omelette to make it rise higher....ugh, I'd think that would give it a "chemical" taste).
The previous owner of the book seems not to have used it much other than for desserts....some of the pages of those chapters bear stains, and a couple of the cake recipes have "good" handwritten next to them.
(That makes me smile. I guess all cooks do that. A few of my cookbooks, I've penned in "Good" next to certain recipes, or suggestions, like "Better if you cut sugar down to 1/3 cup." And my mom has that in some of her cookbooks: "Good" or "Makes more than suggested" or "NO! Use Mama's [my grandmother] recipe instead...." And in a few of them she has calorie calculations, back from the days when my father would try more actively to reduce, especially before field camp....a lot of the cookie recipes have "total calories per batch" written next to them; I suppose you divide based on the number you make)
(*There is limited, not-sure-how-much-I-trust-it-but-still, research that suggests ingesting more than a very small amount of aluminum could contribute to various health problems. It's not as clear-cut as the 10 or 12 year old research claiming aluminum can "cause" Alzheimer's, but still)
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