Ye olde cookbooke

My cookbook collection is huge--anyone who knows me knows that. Despite my (self-imposed and self-ignored) ban on buying more, somehow the number of coobooks keeps growing, and the shelves are starting to sag a bit under the weight of all these books. I have a lot of the popular books that are out now--Barefoot Contessa ( times four), some of the other Food Network chefs, and couple of Marthas--but there are also the old standards like The Joy of Cooking. However, I will confess right now that I never fail to be entertained by old-timey cookbooks, especially the community or church-related ones. At a second-hand bookstore today I bought two cookbooks, and at $2 for both, how could I resist? The first one, simply titled New England Cookbook, is from 1966 and includes such recipes as roast pigeon, lima bean chowda, clam omelet, and eggs frizzle. Another recipe is rinktum tiddy, a tomato, egg, and cheese thing that's apparently served on toast. This cookbook, almost a booklet really, also has a number of maple recipes, including maple biscuits, maple sugar cookies, and maple sugar snow (this needs a recipe?) Interestingly, the form of maple most often used in here is not syrup, but a harder kind of sugar than you usually see--one hard enough to be grated into the recipes. My second purchase today was the Herb Cottage Cookbook from the National Cathedral Association. I could say something about the proximity of the National Cathedral and how beautiful it is, or about how I love buying herbs there (which I do!), but really it's just the recipes that drew me in. The one that first caught my eye is Flaming Beehive Enniscorthy--points to anyone who knows what this is. There's a note in the margins that says this is "spectacular!" Well it must be then, because who would make things up in a cathedral cookbook? There is also an intriguing recipe for something called only Government Sauce. Now in DC that could mean any number of things, but in this case it appears to be some kind of tomato-apple chutney. Something called Turquoise clearly also requires further investigation.