Weekend Cooking: Cookbooks on My Mother's Shelves

One of the more difficult tasks that children face after their last parent dies is cleaning out their house. My mother was still living in the same four-bedroom, two-story house that we moved to in 1964. Although neither she nor my father was a hoarder, there are still quite a number of personal items that my brothers and I need to look through.

Among my mother's things were dozens of cookbooks. Only one of my brothers is a dedicated cook, so the two of us went through the books, picking out the ones we wanted to take home. Many evoked fond memories and prompted stories about holidays or special occasions, which made our job a little bit lighter.

I ended up taking only seven cookbooks, and that's what's today's Weekend Cooking post is all about.

Lee Bailey

The first four I knew I wanted to find on my mom's shelves were all by Lee Bailey (the food writer, not the attorney). Bailey had a down-to-earth attitude about cooking and used to write a monthly column for Food & Wine magazine. As I said in a post I wrote in 2012:

Bailey's books are known for their beautiful photography, not only of the food but of the table settings, rooms, people, and natural surroundings. I love that his cookbooks are arranged by complete menus. Depending on the book and recipes, he also writes about wine choices, the inspiration behind the meal, the right occasion to serve the meal, and so on.

I'm pretty sure his books are currently out of print, which is why I was happy to find four on my mother's bookshelves. I had a really hard time finding cover images for his books; thus the fuzzy photos below.

• City Food (Clarkson Potter, 1984) has menus with such great titles as "On a Ferry," "A Swell, Swell Dinner," "On a Rooftop Terrace," and "In a Painter's Loft." Yet, in true Bailey fashion, the menus are quite accessible. Here's one: Grill tuna with Creole sauce, string beans and mushrooms, oven-baked potato chips, coconut flan, wine, and coffee.
• Cooking for Friends (Clarkson Potter, 1992) compiles menus from around the world, including the Florida Keys, Gascony, New York City, and Tuscany. One of the Greek menus goes like this: pistachio-coated fish with cucumber sauce, orzo with onions and black olives, baked honey-mint tomatoes, and peach bread pudding with brandy jam sauce.
• Country Desserts (Clarkson Potter, 1988) breaks from Bailey's signature menus to give us tons of recipes for down-home cakes, cobbles, cookies, ice cream, and pies. The kids' desserts are hardly just for kids and the pound cakes, muffins, tarts, and bread puddings will make your mouth water.
• Good Parties (Clarkson Potter, 1986) covers the seasons from lazy summer lunches to city birthday parties, warming Sunday roasts, and winter getaways. A Sunday pasta dinner consists of vegetarian pasta with tomatoes and peppers, a lettuce and cheese salad, crusty bread, a peach cake, and wine and coffee.

If you ever see any of Lee Bailey's cookbooks at a yard sale or used book store, don't pass them by. Some of the ideas/meals may be dated, but all his recipes are pretty much guaranteed to succeed.

Thoughts for . . .

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Houghton Mifflin published three cookbooks: Thoughts for Food, Thoughts for Buffets, and Thoughts for Festive Foods (maybe not in that order). My mother used the latter two so much that they no longer have covers, so I had to search the internet for images (which you see to the right). So many of our long-time family favorite dishes came from these cookbooks that I had to have my mother's copies. I love that she wrote in the books and that they are so beaten up. I'm not sure how much I'll cook from these books, but I'm going smile every time I see them on my bookshelf. One puzzle though: Why didn't she own the first cookbook? Hummm.

Knopf Cooks American

Back in 2011, I wrote about the cookbook series Knopf Cooks American, which was published in the 1980s and 1990s (I think) and covered all kinds of cuisines and regional cooking found in United States, from the Deep South to the Pacific Northwest. I bought at least six books in the series and so was happy to see that my mom had one of the titles I didn't own.

Joan Nathan's Jewish Cooking in America was first published in 1994 and encompasses quite a broad range of flavors and traditions. The subtitle pretty much tells you all you need to know about this cookbook: "A splendid feast of over 300 Kosher recipes, old and new. With stories from Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews who settled throughout this country." The book is also full of black-and-white family photos that document family meals, celebrations, menus, and restaurants. It doesn't look like my mother ever cooked out of this book, but I did find some recipe clippings tucked in its pages.

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Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

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