HANDLE WITH CARE ...

Some people will see nothing more than a battered old cookbook but I see my mother sitting at the kitchen table leafing through the pages to see what she will cook for us that day.  She loved and relied on this book and I don't think it ever let her down.  It is the Lily  Wallace "New AMERICAN COOKBOOK" and the original color was this bright 
    blue.     

A notation she made on page 279 next to Deviled Salmon reads: "Good. July 20 '44".I don't recall the Salmon dish but I would have been 11 years old them and CAN remember how  much my  sister Peggy  and I loved making cakes and other desserts. I'm sure the recipes came from this book. I have no idea when Mother put a new cover on the book but it was probably sometime in the 50's. She was still living on her own in the early 80's and it was then that she passed the book on to me.

Here are a few of the recipes that I'm sure I'll never try … and will probably not see in another cookbook either. SHRIMP SHRIGGLE, PIG's FEET ala RUSSE, BEEF & KIDNEY PIE with SPAGHETTI and FRIED SAUERKRAUT. However, the recipe for YORKSHIRE PUDDING is the best I've ever found.

It's so easy to run to the computer when I want to know how to cook something, but it can't compare to the warm feeling I get every time I open the pages of my very old “New AMERICAN COOKBOOK”