Your Homeliest Cookbook

[Toliver]

My mom received the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook when she got married in 1956. It's a three-ring binder cookbook and over the years the pages have all torn themselves out of the rings that held them. The back finally broke on it and she lovingly wrapped rubber bands around it all to hold it together in her cookbook drawer.

One Christmas I surprised her with another copy of the same edition that I had purchased on eBay (It had to be the same edition because in later editions she discovered they dropped some of her favorite recipes). The pages in this new copy were practiaclly pristine and it dismayed my mom. "Who could have this cookbook and not use it?"

To my chagrin, during one of my recent visits home, I discovered her using her old beat up copy of the cookbook. I asked where the new copy was and she said she didn't want to ruin it so she left it untouched in the cookbook drawer. Moms! Go figure.

[A.J. Di Liberti]

It’s a toss up between “Natures Kitchen” Fred Rohé 1986 and “Rodale’s Basic Natural Foods” 1989.

Both are paperback. Their spines held together with cloth tape, clumps of loose pages, dog-eared and stained.

Both are put to use for reference, I can’t imagine parting with them.