I'm always on the lookout for regional / unique / church basement cookbooks. I found this Come 'n Get It - Cowboys and Chuckwagons at the "Share Shack" at the Deka Lake dump … sorry, I mean "land fill".

The image below is the first page of the book. The quote says:

"Bacon in the pan,
Coffee in the pot;
Get up an' get it
Get it while it's hot."

The recipes contain a lot of lard, flour, sugar, and beans. Here's the original recipe for Charlie's Doughnuts:

Two tea cups sugar, 3 eggs, 1-1/2 tea cups buttermilk, 2 teaspoons saleratus, 1 teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons melted lard, flour enough to roll nicely. Boil or fry in lard.

To make things a little easier, I'll let you know that saleratus is baking soda. I never have buttermilk in the house, but apparently putting vinegar in regular milk gets you close.

I'm going to leave the book here for my dad's cabin cookbook collection.

Today I went to Thomas Haas.

The drinks were nice, as were the pastries, but it was incredibly loud, there was nowhere to sit, and the energy in the room was frantic / hectic. So R and I wandered the streets of Kits sipping our drinks and ended up at the Salvation Army.

I always look for used cookbooks that are ethnic, or old, or from the women's auxiliary of some church in some county from a long time ago.

This first book is interesting because the author gushes about BC regional cuisine. Many of the recipes have place or people names from around the province.

It had a Bowen Island (where I grew up, and where my parents still live) recipe, so I definitely had to get it.

Lots of the recipes have canned goods of various kinds, even if they are things that can be sourced from BC (e.g. smoked oysters). I bet, back in the day, that lots of canned things were more local, so if you made something with a tin of tomatoes, it would taste different in BC because they were local BC varietals. Provenance for canned goods? Of course…

Cookbooks that focus on regional cuisines are also of interest to me. This one is a hardcover, and the pages are a rough type of paper, and the whole book seems to be covered in grease spots. Well loved!

Also, there are little notes like this - "I could eat this everyday" - scattered throughout the book. Again, a must have because of this alone. That, and every recipe seems to call for potatoes and bacon - at least, the ones that aren't calling for whipping cream and butter!

The New York Time Cook Book was another no brainer. Why? Well, because of this next recipe photo…

Why yes, that is a roast suckling pig! The book is great, with lots of multicultural recipes from around the world, as well as good versions of lots of "basics".

I'm very pleased with my used cookbook haul.