new crush

Here are a few of my collections photographed this morning as an homage to Lisa Congdon's collection a day blog. I am in serious full swoon with her blog, please go check it out.

1. Vintage wrapping paper.

This is a fairly recently started collection for me. I made a commitment to myself not to buy new wrapping paper a few years ago, and mostly I use comics or old maps and calendars, but when I see this stuff at estate sales or the goodwill I just can't help myself. It feels a little bit like adhering to the letter but not the spirit of the law, but I just can't help myself.

2. Thumb tacks and push pins.

I've shown you some of these before. I have a related thing for cork boards.

3 & 3.5. Security envelope linings and rubber bands.

Here are two things that have become kind of a tic for me, now that I've started seeing them I can't stop and I see new ones, ripe for scavenging, everywhere. The linings I first started noticing when I read Collections of Nothing by William Davies King, and I saw an almost volley ball sized rubber band ball at someone's house last year and just had to have one for my very own. It's coming along, check back next year.

One aspect of the King book is the idea of his collections interfering with his life. I would have to call him a borderline hoarder, and the hoarder border is something all of us collectors face to some extent I think. How much is too much, how much is amazing? Sometimes I walk into an estate sale and a horror washes over me, I want to go home and get rid of everything I own (but I never do.) Sometimes I see something like ACAD and I get the tingle, I want to go find more. Photography is helpful, I photograph a lot of stuff that I get rid of and it makes it easier. Blogging is helpful too, it is a place to put stuff, I think that is part of what LC is getting at with her lovely year long project.

A few other awesome books I pulled down while I was writing this:

Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan,

Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors,

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder,

and

Typologies

Would you call this #4 for today? Collection of books on collecting?

J. is home!

J. is home! This is one of my favorite things, vegetables wrapped in quickly seared meat and dipped in sesame oil and salt, he used to make it for me after longs nights of work on hot summer days back in Queens. We have a new set up now that we've moved, I found this Wagner's fat free fryer at the goodwill and we sit at the counter across from the stove so he can cook the meat as we go. Being cooked for is such a wonderful thing, isn't it?

A quick note on cast iron, Wagner's was founded in 1881 by Bernard and Milton Wagner, Sidney, Ohio. This was maybe 15 years after Griswold was founded in Erie, PA, but Wagner's eventually bought out Griswold and now both are owned by The American Culinary Corporation, looks like they still do some manufacturing in the U.S., but the website is a little vague. In any case, the old stuff works perfectly and only seems to get better.

keep it simple

Travel is delightful, of course, but I am always happy to have real food in a real kitchen when I get home. For our first night home, J.'s birthday, I cut the backbone out of a nice chicken, covered it in hot red pepper flake, lemon zest and salt, and roasted it on top of these vegetables. Spicy sweet potatoes have made me happy recently. The roasting minded itself for the most part, while K. and I took a long walk in the late afternoon sun up to the reservoir to shake ourselves out from several days in the car. I used my huge new copper roasting pan for the first time, recently scored at goodwill, worked like a charm, practically my new best friend. I think it came out well, and there were enough greens in the garden for a salad again!

score

Two recent aquisitions:

I do have a fascination with cookbooks, and I'll admit to a raging goodwill addiction, but I try to be discerning in my selections, and not just buy any old kitschy book that comes along. Books are already crowding out my dry goods, and since J. seems to feel he needs a backup of every item in the kitchen (seriously, we live less than 5 minutes BY FOOT, from a totally acceptable grocery store, do we really need three bottles of soy sauce? ) I do have to keep it under control. I have my eye on a spot for built in cookbook specific bookshelves one day, but still, there must be guidelines.
The Outdoor Cook's Bible here joins a sub category of what I guess I would call "special circumstances" cookbooks. Included are Bradford Angier's Wilderness Cookery (nice line drawn chapter on foraging wild plants), The First Book of Boy's Cooking from 1957, Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed and also M.F.K. Fisher's amazing 1942 How to Cook a Wolf. This last one is about food and life under rationing during WWII, and is the only cookbook I can think of that speaks knowingly of iceboxes commandeered by the local red cross for blood plasma. Jim Harrison hangs out here too, pretty much any time he mentions food. Also, I'm waiting for just the right copy of Judith Jones' and Angus Cameron's L.L. Bean cookbook to come along.
Belonging to an established area of interest, writing style, book design, recipe quality and sheer novelty do count, but aren't necessarily enough all alone. So for example, the interesting observation that frogs will jump at red flannel is awesome, but maybe not quite enough to buy a book for. What probably put this one over the top is more the aggregation of useful and unusual facts, pictures and ingredients, rather than any particular recipe.
This one, Patonga Country Kitchen, barely made the cut, but the chapter on pickles won me over. I'm always looking for an interesting pickle. I'm excited to try the tomato-strawberry jam this summer. I really loved this tomato jam recipe, and I love this pasta sauce. And, I have a good feeling about the scone recipes, a well tested baking recipe is really something to take seriously.