A SUMMER-TIME HUNT THAT WAS BETTER - JUST NOT PERFECT FOR THE RECIPE COLLECTOR

The past summer months were for collecting stuff. Just like so many summers before. Suzanne, on summer break from teaching, greatly benefits from our toodles around the home district, and the respite in the antique domain, is the perfect way to re-charge for the coming resumption of classes in September. That's right. We find collecting a form of relaxation. We made a lot of great finds out there on the hustings, and came up with a number of cook books and old paper, related to home economics, that certainly pleased us by content alone. This is the first time, and we did this "first" twice in one summer. We found two handwritten booklets, one actually written (as was common) in an older published book, that not only contained recipes but was side by side a laundry list…..not a personal list but an accounting record of laundry taken in, and what the various pieces cost to wash and press. Fascinating. Of two estates, from opposite ends of our town, here were two families who took in neighborhood laundry to make ends meet. These two books were from the 1920's onward, and both contained a small but significant collection of handwritten recipes.

While we went through a rather stubborn drought, for the past year and a half, where discoveries locally were pretty thin, and far between, it was great to make the several key finds that we did. We don't buy our handwritten recipes and homespun cookbooks from internet auctions, and we don't make a habit of traveling beyond the Muskoka region of Ontario to make our acquisitions. We have mostly a Muskoka influenced, Muskoka found collection of handwritten recipes. This doesn't mean they were all inspired here, because that would be faulty logic. Many arrived here with families who shifted locations, from overseas, and within Canada and the United States. But we just haven't gone far afield just to build a collection.

I will have much more to write about this coming fall season, and I plan to have a new series of columns lined up for a publication I work for, known as "Curious; The Tourist Guide," which you can find online, beginning in February 2012. Watch for it. More on this blogsite as well. All coming soon!!