Library Book Sale

I was on my way to the market yesterday when I remembered I wanted to check for a book at the library. So I detoured there. And found a book sale going on, some donated books but most books that were being culled from the library. I'm not sure what their criteria are for removing books from circulation, I think if no one checks them out for a certain period of time they get rid of them.

I'm not really thrilled with their methods, it seems like they often get rid of well known or important, if somewhat obscure, books. We live in such a small community that it's not surprising that sometimes years go buy without something being checked out. I've mentioned this before but honestly, I wonder if some of the people who work at the library even read books.

But enough whining, their loss is my gain. I found a bunch of odd treasures. So many books that they gave me a box to bring them all home in. Here they all are, an eclectic bunch of titles to be sure! If you're nosy, you can click on the pic to enlarge it and get a good look at the titles.


A lot of these I purchased for art purposes, either to peruse, or... all you book lovers, don't get squeamish now....cut up or otherwise use for altered book and collage projects. Before you faint at the thought, many of these books are really, really old or have broken bindings. However there are also some fiction in there, including a couple of books by Barbara Kingsolver (I loved The Poisonwood Bible and I haven't read Small Wonders yet) and a wonderful book of essays about quilting that I was likely the last person who ever checked it out of the library.

I'm gonna show you a bunch of photos of the art books over on Laumes Studio. So go there. Don't forget. All sorts of neat pics. But first, here, I want to show you these three cookbooks.

You might remember me mentioning that I'm half Lithuanian. And yes, I know that Czechoslovakia (wow, I can't believe I spelled that right on the first try!), Hungary, and Poland are all NOT Lithuania. But they're all northeastern European cuisines.

My Lithuanian paternal grandmother used to cook a lot of wonderful dishes. As a child I loved them, ate them, and didn't give the recipes a second thought. Sadly she suffered from dementia before I was old enough to regret losing the opportunity to learn family recipes from her. (I learned from the experience and did manage to collect a number of recipes from my maternal grandmother and great aunt.)

My father was able to teach me ONE family recipe - canadles, otherwise known as potato dumplings.

I pulled the cookbooks out last night and spent an hour browsing through them. It might not be the exact same thing, but I think I can piece together quite a few of the dishes I remember my grandmother serving from the recipes in the books. I had no idea there were so many ways to make borscht. Or sauerkraut. And apparently fruit is as useful an ingredient for soup making as it is for pies. As for dumplings, there seems to be a hundred varieties of them! I might have to try a few and see if any stand up to the family recipe for canadles.