New toys! New toys!

Woohoo new toys! My mom and I went to an estate sale the other day, it was awesome. As my mom put it, "there's nothing in that house I wouldn't have taken if they gave it to me!" We made it out with all sorts of treasures, hat boxes, antique Christmas ornaments, old mixing bowls, we even got two beds! I spent forever looking through all the old records, all classical. It was mostly romantic piano music and Mozart, but there were a few odd guys stashed in there: a recording of Bolero, a little opera, and my favorite, an old-school recording of Tcahik 5! It was even spelled the old-school Italian way, Chaikowsky! I was about ready to fork over the $10 they wanted, but I looked inside; Chopin. I checked every record in the massive stack, the Tchaik was nowhere to be seen, it was just the case. I almost cried.

Then I went up to the attic for the fourth time, and felt a little better when I moved a stack of letters out of the way (apparently she was one of those people who wrote letters to her special guy every day and saved every one she got, there were boxes and boxes and boxes! It was adorable!) Behind one of the older stacks, cookbooks! About 7 or 8, all in great condition, all really old. I chucked the "healthy" looking ones out of the way, and grabbed these: The Cookie Book, 250 Superb Pies and Pastries, 250 Classic Cake Recipes, and 250 Delectable Desserts, all copyright 1939 or 1940.

I'm probably a little more excited about these guys than I should be. The cookies look good, a lot of classic recipes, and I could always use some more basic cake recipes. A lot of the desserts look kind of freaky, but I'm super excited about the pies! There's some really weird ones that sound really good, like grape pie, orange pie (not like a lemon meringue, like, real slices of orange in a pie!) and two kinds of persimmon pie!

"To avoid stretching and tearing, handle pastry as you would a delicate flower." Really now? Also, terrible slicing technique there in the bottom picture.

So anyway, expect to see some crazy pies in the near future, because really, who DOESN'T want to try my gooseberry-date pie?!