Vintage Cookbook Discovery!

                               Vintage Cookbook Discovery !


  Recently I found myself browsing the shelves of a used bookstore, looking for
some items for baskets for a local charity fundraiser. For me this is potentially dangerous territory, being in a bookstore with time to browse the shelves. Suffice it to say that when in a bookstore, I can always find a book to buy, either for me or another person. On this particular day however, I confined myself to the cookbook section.

  Since I own a fairly large collection of cookbooks, it was nice to see many of them as I browsed each section...similar to meeting an old friend among a crowd of strangers. The classic standbys were present, such as Alice Waters and Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, but there were vintage regional cookbooks as well. My eye was drawn to a small thin blue volume, and as soon as I opened it up I knew I would be purchasing it for myself because of the literary connection to John Steinbeck. The title of the cookbook is The John Steinbeck House Cookbook, copyright 1984, which is filled with glorious photos of the Salinas Valley, along with recipes served at Steinbeck House. In addition, there are six pages of black and white Steinbeck family photographs. There is even a handwritten recipe attributed to John's mother from a cookbook she received as a bride. 

 After bringing the cookbook home and spending more time looking through it, I can't say there is anything particularly outstanding about the selection of recipes, except that they were served at the Steinbeck House. I do plan to try a few of them very soon, such as: chicken cheese enchiladas, praline cheesecake  apple kuchen and pumpkin mallow pie with gingersnap crust.

 A bit of research on the Steinbeck House, located at 132 Central Avenue, Salinas, CA 93901, reveals that this Queen Anne style Victorian was the birthplace and boyhood home of John Steinbeck, who wrote Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Cannery Row, The Red Pony, and Tortilla Flat among others. To get a sense of how Steinbeck was so masterful in creating mood and evoking sensory response to food, read Chapter 22 in The Grapes of Wrath.

 The Steinbeck House was built in Salinas in 1897, and the Steinbeck family moved into the house in 1900. The house was opened to the public as a restaurant on February 27, 1974, which was the 72nd anniversary of John Steinbeck's birth. In 1995 the house was designated as a literary landmark, and in 2000 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

~Kathy~