$7 at an Estate Sale

I enjoy cooking, but admittedly, I find most of my recipes online because it’s easy and there’s such a wide range of recipes available. However, books can carry a lot of recipes and it’s great to peruse them and find something unexpected.

I bought a recipe book set: Prudence Penny: Binding of the American Woman’s Cook Book and The Prudence Penny Regional Cook Book for at total of $4. They’re from 1958. These books don’t have the cute retro illustrations that some of my other vintage cookbooks have, but there’s a lot of interesting information and recipes in them.

Prudence Penny: Binding of the American Woman’s Cook Book has 856 pages of content. It has a large introduction section that covers a wide range of information: freezing food, cooking times for meats and produce, rendering fat, how to buy food, meal planning and table settings. An extra tidbit I liked was a list of recipes to use of when you have an extra egg white or yolk (which is so smart because then you don’t waste anything).

Many recipes look pretty good and may be similar to other recipes I already use. And then there are the recipes that I question, like the peanut butter and pickle sandwich or the peanut butter and onion sandwich. I haven’t eaten either, but they don’t sound very appetizing…

The Prudence Penny Regional Cook Book is interesting because it breaks the recipes into ten American regions: New England, Southern, Pennsylvania Dutch, Creole, Michigan Dutch, Mississippi Valley, Wisconsin Dutch, Minnesota Scandinavian, Southwestern and Western.

Each region has an introduction about the region and influences on people’s cooking. There are a lot of recipes in this book that I’m unfamiliar with, probably due to a strong European background.

And finally, although I’m not really a paisley person, I bought this red scarf for $3. I liked that the pattern was muted and I think it’ll add a nice pop of color (since most of my wardrobe is white, black and navy).