(Note: This is a long-ago post from a previous blog I shared with my husband. Since it’s food-related, I decided it should live here.)
Recently, I read a blog posting on eGullet about cookbooks for kids, and how they’ve changed over the years, and for the first time in a long time I thought of my first cookbook.
Like the blogger’s first, mine was one of those Scholastic book club purchases–oh, man, I LOVED the Scholastic book club. I loved to read, and, outside of relatively infrequent trips to the school library or the dinky Shelby Township one, this was the only way I could acquire new books, at least until I was a teenager and could take myself to the bookstore. I absolutely lived for the days when the teacher passed out those thin newsprint catalogs/order forms. (God knows, there was nothing else interesting going on at school.) But I digress. In any case, as a book club acquisition, my first cookbook was a treasured item, at least for a little while–I was probably only 8 or 9, and like most kids that age I had a tendency to switch obsessions every couple of weeks. I don’t remember a whole lot about it–I can’t remember the title, and can only dimly envision a tan cover with some sort of pinkish-purplish swirly art. What I do remember is that its chief recipe was for Stone Soup, which of course was accompanied by the ubiquitous story. I also remember that there was only one recipe I ever tried to make from the book–I was only just beginning on my childhood career as family baker, and while I certainly loved to eat, it would be a long time before I summoned up the courage to try to make something other than cookies or banana bread. That one recipe was for snickerdoodles, a relatively exotic cookie for someone used to chocolate chip and peanut butter, like me. I remember the finished products having a certain … tanginess to them, no doubt from the cream of tartar (which is the only distinctive ingredient I can recall). I’ve never tasted that tanginess in any snickerdoodle I’ve had since, so I’m not even sure they were supposed to taste like that. Maybe I made a mistake, put in too much cream of tartar or something like that, but I’d prefer to think that my snickerdoodles were the real deal. Otherwise, snickerdoodles are just a cinnamon-sugar cookie with a goofy name, and that’s no fun. I have no idea what ever happened to that little paperback cookbook–I’m guessing my Mom sold it at a garage sale or gave it away (I hope she didn’t just pitch it in the garbage). I guess I must have finally hit the nostalgic part of adulthood, though, because of all the books and toys I had as a kid, that cookbook is one of the few things I wish I’d hung onto.
(BTW, there’s a pretty good recipe for snickerdoodles here.)
I inherited my first cookbook from my 11-years-older sister. It was “Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls” and I still have it. A particular recipe I remember was “Sunshine Toast” which was white toast (of course – this was probably printed in the 50s) spread with a combination of butter, sugar and orange juice. It was supposed to be for a Mother’s Day Brunch, but I’m not sure my mom actually liked it. It was fairly iridescent.
When I was in 3rd grade or so, my sister had a kids’ cookbook that was somehow connected to the Peanuts comic strip. It had a recipe for “Lucy’s Lemon Bars” that I remember as being the best lemon bars in the entire world. I somehow suspect that if I were ever to find it again, I’d find they’re just run-of-the-mill lemon bars. But they live on in my memory…