Low-Cost Collectibles: Retro Recipe Booklets

In my search for ideas for this blog I

came across a feature article under
What to Collect in the current online issue of Country Living magazine. The subject was Recipe Booklets, items I've collected since the 1960's.

The booklets often came with appliances and cookware, but

they were also acquired "with-purchase" or free at grocery stores like A & P and Safeway. You could get some of them for 10 cents or a quarter by saving box tops or labels and writing in to companies like Baker's Chocolate and Heinz. Others came from Cooperative Extension Services

at various Universities. Utility companies offered booklets too.

Inspired by the magazine article I decided to go through my own recipe booklet collection which

I treasure more for the heart warming memories the little books bring than the recipes inside.

Whenever I have time to browse through the stack, as I'm doing right now, fond recollections of

times gone by come to mind.

One example is a booklet by Sunbeam that came with my first Automatic Fry Pan. It was a

wedding gift from my boss at the company I worked for back in 1961 in New York City. The

bright red cover shows an illustration of a woman dressed in 1960 fashion holding the pan neatly

filled with fried eggs. In her right hand is the automatic heat control plug-in and under that the

statement that promises "Everything you cook will be more delicious because you get the

correct heat every time."

Another booklet published in 1965, Proof of the Pudding, came with General Foods introduction

of Jell-O Instant Pudding. No more time spent cooking pudding the old way when you could

create these great desserts made with a package of the instant no-cook version.

Two booklets by Baker's Coconut & Chocolate stir memories of my children's birthday parties--

for one birthday I know I made that cut-up Teddy Bear cake.

Since I grew up on Bond Bread and my dear mother, Jean, passionately baked using Duncan

Hines cake mixes , those booklets bring flashbacks of so many good lunches at the kitchen table

and the wonderful aroma of cake baking in the oven.

So one question is, do you have to be a cook to collect recipe booklets? Bonnie

Slotnick, cookbook dealer and owner of her own cook book store in New York's Greenwich

Village says that's just not so. In a recent interview on National Public Radio Slotnick said

reading cookbooks for the pleasure of reading cookbooks and not for cooking is very okay. I

couldn't agree more.

Another question is just how much should you pay for a retro recipe booklet? The

booklets are usually very reasonably priced starting at 50 cents up to a few dollars each. Some of

the rarest could go for $15. but I have yet to find any at that price.

Where do I find them today? Flea markets and yard sales are places to look but I find

antique malls and shops are even better.

Please join me on my next hunt for retro recipe booklets at the Orange Wall, my shop inside the Charleston Antique Mall, 307 W. Charleston

Blvd., in Las Vegas, Nevada. We will definitely find some in my area and it's a good bet some of the other 40 dealers in the mall have a few on a shelf in their shops too.

To view the Country Living article with pictures and some history on retro recipe booklets go to: http://www.countryliving.com/antiques/what-to-collect/recipe-booklets-0109

For more info on Bonnie Slotnick go to: http://www.bonnieslotnickcookbooks.com/

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Starting January 13, 2009

We Hope You Can Drop By

Browse, Shop and Sit Down For A Cup of Tea and Something Sweet

Charleston Antique Mall

307 W. Charleston Blvd.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Serving Time: From 2PM - 3:30PM

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