POOR SEASON SO FAR FOR HAND WRITTEN RECIPE PICKIN’
My wife and business partner, Suzanne, a teacher by day, collector always, reminds me that I’m always disappointed in the early goings of yard sale season. "All winter you plan out our summer adventures, and it always hinges on good and plenty," she says. "You expect, on the brink of outrightly demanding, that the flea markets, yard sales and auctions, will be tailored to your wants.....you know it doesn’t, it can’t work this way, or the entire order of the universe would be screwed up. You’ve go to be patient and realistic."
I’m not going to argue about it simply because she’s absolutely right, and she’s lived with this hard core collector for enough years now to appreciate the elation associated with good sales and great finds, and the misery of too few sales, and a miserable assortment of collectible items up for grabs. In my own defense, to get up with the birds on yard sale Saturdays, one does require a smidgeon of hope that there’ll be something for the collector, at one of a dozen sales advertised. This year however, has been one of the leanest in my thirty odd years as an antique collector / dealer. We were fortunate enough to have acquired the rights to sell off a local estate, earlier in the spring, but if we had been depending on the local Muskoka scene for inventory, we’d have been awfully disappointed.
The last major find of handwritten recipes was more than two years ago, when we happened upon a fundraising flea market, in the Town of Bracebridge. The sale was at its end, and a vendor was packing up some books to haul home. We found a box of old recipe books, stuffed with handwritten material, and the lady was so happy to find two keeners, that she made us a terrific deal for several large lots. She didn’t want to take them home again, so we were all happy campers. But as we are all too familiar, there are hiatus periods for every collector on earth....periods that just seem to defy all reason. You can go for months, picking up old cookbooks, with inserts, at just about every flea market and auction, including estate sales in particular, and win each time out. Then comes the famine after the feast. It’s been a long time since we found a good collection out on the hustings, and although I hate to report this shortfall, it is part and parcel of what makes a collector tick. If you can get past the shortfalls, and maintain many areas of collecting and business interests, you’ll be guaranteed to find something out there, if not handwritten recipe and cookbooks........maybe some neat pressed glass, old books, nice oil paintings etc.
On the cusp of another promising weekend adventure, Suzanne reminds me to look forward to the outing regardless, and enjoy the tour around our region.....just not in the G-8 zone in Huntsville......which I imagine is yard sale challenged this weekend.
As well, there’s more fledgling collector / dealers out there than ever before, proof the recession and subsequent layoffs, forced folks to seek out the ranks of the self-employed. There are many collectors turning to online auctions to fundraise, and we’ve noticed a much greater wave of competition out there......and not just from the antique shop folks we’ve know for years. I don’t mind competition and it should generate significant money for flea markets, church and community sales, and yard salers. Maybe it will inspire more folks to have them this summer.
Have fun out on the hustings. Drive safe and enjoy the beautiful summer scenery of this great province.

A SIMPLE TREND, A FUNDAMENTAL BEGINNING
When I began attending country auctions back, in the mid 1970's, the biggest movers were antique furniture, china, glass and sewing artistry, such as samplers and quilts. Accessories were also popular and I can’t even imagine how many treadle sewing machines, crossed the auction block during my regular attendance. In the antique trade one learns about the crushing weight of changing trends. As a rule, I always got onto something "in-vogue" at the end of its run, and yes I’d get stuck with a huge inventory of items from, you might say, yesterday’s news.
Seeing as I have always been out of fashion in one way or another, I’ve decided to be a really good watcher and leave the prognostications to those more closely tied to city auction trends, and the latest decorating promotions. What has interested me for some time, is the way kitchen collectibles, from utensils, pots and pans, fixtures, hardware, appliances, books, pottery, dining-ware and product nostalgia have held their market share. Some of this cookery, kitchen, utility articles can attract huge prices depending on rarity, sentiment, color, condition (always a major concern) and the portrayal of the period they represent....eg. Cream-top milk bottles, nostalgia can and bottle openers, vintage tins of tea, baking powder, cookies, candies and the list is a huge one.
There are many reasons for this but much of it does center around the fact, the kitchen is still the warmest, most memory-filled room in our abodes. Whether we think back to our young days helping mom or dad make dinner, bake cookies, cakes, preserve the harvest of strawberries, peaches and tomatoes, there are many good sensations attached to this humble room in apartment, cottage, house or condominium. Memories of grandmother, grandfather, great aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors, the kitchen is a storehouse of the nostalgic. As an antique dealer, who only profits by finding items he can resell, believe me, kitchen collectibles have always been an important component of my current inventory. It is much harder to get today, as more people turn-on to kitchen memorabilia in one form or another.
Hundreds of books have been published on the subject of kitchen-ware collecting, and many newer books profiling the use of collectible pieces in everyday working, efficient, convenient and tastefully decorated kitchens. The use of old mixing bowls, yellow and sponge ware, depression glass, jade-ite, crockery and old utensils, have certainly contributed to an ongoing escalation of prices for even the most basic pieces. Dealers, sale hosts, antique shows and auctions play up these vintage kitchen items, and that has caused a spin-off interest into some of the lesser known items associated with cookery heritage.
In a nutshell this was my own inadvertent commencement to collect handwritten recipes. But it was actually simpler than this, and it had to do with a collector’s shallow pockets. When I began my inaugural antique business, I had just graduated York University, in Toronto, and had a very tiny budget to open a store-front. Well, that didn’t quite work as my dreams had predicted, but my parents took the fall for this one, because I’d been forced to take a job as a news editor for the local press, just to keep a roof over my head. We didn’t go bankrupt but just lost interest. My parents had employment opportunities elsewhere, and I couldn’t joggle business and newspaper assignments. In the mid 1980's, my wife Suzanne and I were much better situated, to start another antique business, one that is still operating on-line today. We had better funding and manpower opportunities to keep it afloat. For business reasons, efficiency and family, we did move it from the main street back home, which has made all the difference as far as ease of operation, and cost efficiency.
Point is, many believe antique dealers are all fat cats with money falling out of their pockets. Truth is, most of us have a lot of money tied up in our respective inventories, and if we’ve made good choices, we’ll survive. If not, well, it’s a matter of time until the auctioneer gets a call for a little clearance sale. As our business was designed in the first place, to be an eventual retirement enterprise, we have always prepared for the future....the time when money will be in much shorter supply, and our efficiency and accuracy will have to be at its highest level. So despite what some believe, we have always been frugal by necessity. We’ve had to be scroungers and penny pinchers, and when you’re in a business you love.....that’s not a disadvantage. Our business from the 1980's onward, is a lifestyle and we couldn’t be happier. Our two boys, Andrew and Robert, are in much the same profession, selling vintage vinyl, electronics and restored guitars.
It has been frustrating over the years to attend auctions, estate sales, markets and fundraising flea markets knowing we have an inflexible budget. My wife is the accountant, and let me tell you, it’s like partnering with Ebeneezer Scrooge, before the spirited visits of Christmas Eve. God bless her, she means well, and she has kept us on track and as accountants like to see, maintained our finances "in the black." Over the decades we’ve had to find our inventory by resourcefulness and by seizing opportunity. We’ve also had to face facts that we just can’t afford to play ball with the upper echelon of the antique and collectible trade. We’ve become pretty good at ferreting out deals, and finding value in the most unlikely places. It’s what really commenced my foray into book collecting. With the exception of some titles and regional histories, which can sell for much greater amounts when sold individually, buying joblots of books fit our modest budget. And I found that re-selling them was possible, especially on-line, particularly on ebay. We’re in our sixth or seventh year now, selling via ebay auctions, and books are still my mainstay.
As I was generally forced away from major antiques, at regional auctions, shops and sales, I found few competitors with my background in history and literature, willing to chance money on old books. The reality that many of these books, not just cookbooks, held treasures ranging from hockey cards to folded-up money, and handwritten recipes, gave me many reasons to work a little harder as a hunter-gatherer. As you may have read on this site in a previous posting, it wasn’t until we had many hundreds of handwritten recipes, that we began looking at them from a number of angles.....did they have a monetary value, could we frame the paper and offer them for sale, put them into a large binder and sell them as a job-lot, or simply collect them, research the tradition of writing-out recipes, and sell off the companion books they arrived in, to make up our necessity, to at the very least, break even as dealers.
The reason I have offered this little biographical piece, is that it pertains to almost all collectors and dealers, at some point in their respective careers. We’ve all had to be frugal, buy prudently to please the bank, make sensible gambles, and occasionally, settle for a little less than the flashy pieces coming up for auction. On many occasions, as Victorian setees, pine flat-to-the-walls, hoosier cabinets, spinning wheels, sewing machines, diningroom sets, are being auctioned in front, we’re the contented souls in the back sorting through the old cookbooks, thrilled at the harvest of interesting cookery heritage that cost a fraction of what the big players were bidding. In terms of profit, it might not be as large as some dealers would like but in terms of a profit suited to our modest proportion, it’s more than adequate, and every reason to attend auctions in the future.
We were drawn to handwritten recipes by necessity you might say. Wanting to participate in the excitement of sales but having only a few dollars to spare. I used to feel bad about this until I figured out how to use experience and patience to make inroads. For years now I’ve been buying and selling vintage books and getting the contents, the handwritten recipes for free. I don’t intend to sell them because they’re more important than a means to a financial end. If you’re a wee bit like us, and like to collect but have financial limitations, there are all kinds of inroads you can make for a small commitment of cash. I suppose there are times, particularly when I’m asked by an interested reader, that I’d like to say in earnest, "it was commenced as a mission by the historian to capture cookery heritage for posterity." Ah shucks, truth is, I collect handwritten recipes because I’m cheap and getting cheaper. But I do love them......and I’m always on the hunt for more.
Collecting kitchen memorabilia is still a hot market trend with no end in sight. I feel pretty comfortable I finally caught onto a trend that matches my overburden of stuff. No, I can’t see a time when Suzanne and I will grow tired of seeking these paper heirlooms.....I’m just a little concerned how I’ll be able to convince my sons to carry it on after we’ve gone to our heavenly cookery reward. We’ll have to leave them the funds to open up a cookery museum. And yes, we could fill one many times over.
Note: We do hope to have some interesting actuality to present in coming submissions, as the spring season heralds the annual antique and collectable foray, here in the hinterland of Ontario. We’ll let you know about our recent finds, and give you some hints where to look for buried treasure....should you be interested in branching-out, to collect handwritten recipes for your own cookery archives. We should also report here, that there are some fantastic, delicious, and unusual heritage recipes worth their weight in proverbial gold.......just waiting to be discovered by chefs the world over. You can beat them to it! You just need to look in the right place, open the right book, and have the right mindset.......enjoy your travels, the hunt, the good folks you meet along the way, a little hiatus at a lakeside café, and of course.....the ultimate find! It likely won’t make you a million bucks, like finding a masterpiece of fine art, but it’ll make you feel like a million.....and that’s what this collecting thing is all about....or I’d given it up and got a real job twenty years ago.
On our web site, Muskoka Cookery, we will be offering some insights about the recipes, a wee bit of analysis regarding our latest finds, courtesy my wife and resident chef, Suzanne. Over the coming year she’ll offer some additional information about these old recipes, the terms and oddities she has found when reading through our collection. If you have any questions feel free to email us at birch_hollow@sympatico.ca

My Father Loved to Cook
He was a tough sailor-kind, who had served in the North Atlantic Squadron, a gunner on the Royal Canadian Navy ship Coaticook, during the Second World War. His mainstay over his working life, was as a manager in the lumber business, first in Hamilton and then in Bracebridge, Ontario. He loved to have a social drink after work, with his chums, over at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch. He had smashed his knuckles many times at other watering holes, when someone bandied an insult of one kind or another in his general direction. He was Irish enough to be a boxer, gentle enough to be a good father. Earlier in life, he had been a rather accomplished hockey player who was recruited to play international hockey, in Scotland I believe. And he was a well known fastball pitcher in Toronto. He decided to remain in Toronto while some of his mates went to play hockey overseas, and the last game I saw my dad pitch was in a mens league game in Burlington, Ontario in the early 1960's.
It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say I came from a male dominated household. My mother Merle, while a tough lady who had many accomplishments in the banking industry, was both a good mother and kept house with the same pride as her mother Blanche Jackson had maintained the family home in Toronto. Like many kids in the post War period, home life was ever-more important and even though we lived modestly in an apartment on Harris Crescent, in Burlington, I was nicely spoiled by their interest in giving me.....what they hadn’t enjoyed in their own respective childhoods. From early photographs, especially at Christmas, I did okay in the toy department.
What came as quite a shock to me initially shouldn’t have......enlightenment came much later in life, about sharing of household responsibilities. My wife Suzanne might question just how enlightened! Actually I went as far non-traditionally, with my own young family, when I became a full-fledged "Mr. Mom" when my wife went back to her teaching job after our sons’ respective arrivals. When my father Ed (Edward) began taking more control over Sunday dinners, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Merle’s role in the kitchen through the week didn’t change....she looked after the meal grind from Monday to Saturday. I don’t know where his passion for cooking came from but it had fully matured by retirement, and my mother was delighted. What began as Sunday meal preparation generated into a seven-day-a-week culinary protocol. It was his amazing Yorkshire puddings and gravy that won me over as a kid, and what kept me wandering by their place on Sunday afternoons, long after I had moved out, hoping for an invitation. There was always lots of food in the Currie kitchen. As my mother was on a restricted, low-sodium diet, and had problems with her gall-bladder and hiatus-hernia, I ate the menu items that Merle couldn’t, so my dad was always glad I showed up to try his latest recipes.
My father has been gravely ill now for the past month. It began on the 15th of December 09 with a small stroke but has worsened over the past weeks due to other unrelated illnesses getting in on the trouble-making. He has been near-death on numerous occasions, and at this point the prognosis for a recovery is slight at the most optimistic. When I began work on my web-site to promote the preservation and collecting of "handwritten recipes," Ed offered much reference assistance, and showed me many scrap pieces of paper, and some others scribbled onto journal pages and the inside covers of published cookbooks, that he had penned since those roast beef and Yorkshire days back in the early 1960's. He had shared many recipes with his other culinary arts friends, everything from making the perfect pickled pig’s feet, pickled eggs, dill pickles, chutney, chili sauce, spaghetti sauces, fabulous full-course dinners and desserts, and the list goes on. Since we have most recently had to pack up his apartment (my mother died two years ago), I have spent several enjoyable hours, despite the melancholy of the move, sorting through some of his keepsake recipes, many from his own hand. There are of course handwritten recipes given to him by his apartment building chums, who were fascinated by this former naval gunner/lumberman’s passion for good food.
I asked my mother, one day, if she was jealous about Ed’s takeover of the kitchen. "Not at all..." she fired back, letting me know that I shouldn’t ever think of rocking the boat, with a situation so wonderfully seaworthy as a man taking more responsibility in the kitchen. Her only complaint was that he often cooked things that were too spicy or too rich for her stomach to handle but it was a minor objection. His complaint of course is that she was too fussy and could handle more than she would admit. I was there to mediate. I recall that during the period of the late 1970's and early 80's, it was Ed’s kitchen magic that kept me fueled. As a lowly paid reporter I sure benefitted from his desire to cook for others.
He didn’t cook in a state of the art kitchen. It was small and very much run of the mill. Nothing special. Everything special was contained in those handwritten recipes, stuck inside the many volumes of cook books he got as gifts every birthday and Christmas from his family. He used the published recipes to develop a framework for a dish but he would add ingredients he fancied, and ones he thought we did too, hence the handwritten versions he used....... that while not entirely original, had been adapted to his and our taste.
The funniest cookery story I have of my father, dated back to our first days living in Bracebridge, Ontario. We had just moved from Burlington, Ontario, to the mid-Muskoka community, where my father had accepted a job with Shier’s Lumber,..... a legendary name here in the logging industry for many decades. Shortly after we arrived however, my father got into a dispute with the owner, and quit on the spur of the moment. What made it a tad more complicated, is that we were living then, in a company-owned house up on the extension of Toronto Street. While we were given time to pack-up, we didn’t have much in the way of financial resources to survive. While my mother had found work at a local bank, Ed, when he wasn’t trying to hustle up another job, did try his best to be a creative cook on a tight budget. We have laughed at it many times since but he did have one major folly.......a recipe someone had given him for.....get this.....peanut butter potatoes. These were baked potatoes, scooped from the skins, mixed with peanut butter, put back in the skins and baked again. My mother and I tried to be brave but it just didn’t fly. At first he did seem to a little hurt by the fact we couldn’t swallow the concoction.....but joined us for a chuckle later on that evening. Whether it had come from his Cabbagetown roots, (Toronto) or not, we never found out......and we don’t mean to suggest that this wouldn’t be fine for some folks......just not us! Ed’s attempt to stretch the food resources cost us some potatoes and peanut butter that first winter but gave us a longstanding good humor about culinary trial and error that would last literally a lifetime.