So there I was, standing in front of the bargain books, browsing with high hopes that my eyes would fall upon something magical with a dirt cheap pricetag. And there it was, Simple Old-Fashioned Baking: The Best Recipes from Grandma's Kitchen, $5.99. I had to have it. Suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks. I love old-fashioned baking. I love simple recipes with simple directions that turn out deliciously fattening results! My grandma's recipes are like barely a paragraph long. Yet they are still the yummiest things in the world! I have a ton of baking books. Like literally... if you put them all on a scale it would be close to a ton. Maybe not, but it feels like it when I'm lugging them from one room to another searching for the perfect recipe for carrot cake (found one, by the way, it's from my Godmother and it fits on a 4x6 index card!). Anyway, lately I've been noticing that the first place I like to go to when I'm looking for a recipe is my old-fashioned or southern baking books. I love the books full of recipes from real women, real mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who've been doing their thing for YEARS! The recipes are usually handed down through generations, and they last because they are freakin good!Another great thing about books like these is that they are SO cheap. They aren't written by people with hyped up names or published by big giant companies. You can usually find them for under $10... under $5 if you're as good as me! ;) I think the main thing I like about the recipes is that they taste as simple as they are to make. You don't have to worry about how this flavor perfectly compliments that flavor. Or how this texture provides the perfect balance to that texture. It's not stuffy or uptight. It's just easy, uncomplicated, GOOD! Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to be all high and mighty by dissing the high and mighty. I don't think there's anything wrong with fancy, complicated baking. I know the French haven't gotten where they are today by feeding us a bunch of BS (was that a pun? ha. ha.). But for me, most of the time I'm happy doing things just the way my grandma and all grandmas have been doing things forever in the South... the old-fashioned way.
Shortly after my revelation in the bookstore, I came home and went straight to Amazon.com. Then things got a little crazy. I bough Jim Fobel's Old-Fashioned Baking Book, Wooden Spoon Dessert Book, Sugar Pie and Jelly Roll: Sweets From A Southern Kitchen, and Lee Bailey's Country Desserts. You wanna try to guess how much I spent? Okay I'll just tell you... $18!! How awesome is that?? And almost 90% of that was shipping and handling. The books were a steal! (One of them was $0.01... AS IN ONE CENT!!) Omg, I get so excited when I buy books online. It means the next week or so will be like Christmas all over again! I'll run out to the mailbox every morning and see if my lovely gifts were delivered. Oh I can't wait. And you bet I'll be reviewing them for you to reassure you of their awesomeness. ;)
