Revelations in the cookbook aisle

Spotted on my mother-in-law’s shelf - Gabrielle Hamilton’s Prune, with a nod to Blood, Bones & Butter

Earlier this week, after dinner, my son and I went thrifting. It’s rare, almost unprecedented, for me to be out in the wild after dark on a weeknight, but when your son asks to spend the evening with you, you say yes. The trip also meant I could offload the ‘stuff to donate’ in the back of my car before shopping. Goodbye clothes, books and the dog crate that doesn’t fit in our car. Hello evening under the fluorescent lights of Value Village.

While Rex sorted through the hangers of grey sweatpants (straight-legged, not cuffed, he emphasized) I hit the cookbooks. I always find a sense of comfort in reading the spines of cookbooks purged from Canadian kitchens. It’s like the books know me as well as I know them.

Like Anne Lindsay’s The Lighthearted Cookbook. This was a title embraced by my mom after my dad had a heart attack at age 48. The recipes were straight forward, practical, and stripped of fat and fun. I was just 18 at the time, too young to understand what my mother must have been going through. How swapping out butter for vegetable oil and sprinkling rubbery fat-free mozzarella on our Friday night pizza’s must have given her a wobbly sense of control in the midst of a tough time. She wasn’t the only one who leaned into this book. I found four copies scattered throughout the rows of metal shelves. The former book shop worker in me lined them up together with their spines straight and smooth.

Or the Company’s Coming series by Jean Paré. Paré was a caterer from Alberta who wrote her first cookbook at age 53 and went on to sell 30 million cookbooks by her retirement in 2011. I imagined her chocolate book was in there somewhere on the shelves. I worked as a food stylist, twenty-five years ago, on the Halifax leg of that book tour. I remember Paré, with her short perm and large circular glasses, making chocolate cups on live television by dipping balloons into warm chocolate. I remember the chocolate dipped balloons resting on parchment as planned. Then I remember one balloon, freshly coated in melted chocolate, popping then spinning around the host, spraying her canary yellow jacket, again and again, until the camera cut to commercial. I didn’t see the whole horror show; I turned my back mid-spray and quietly whimpered in the corner of the television studio.

I wish I had had the foresight to sit down with Paré and ask her about motherhood, divorce, remarriage and finding your calling in your 50’s. About selling her books on spinning carousels at hardware stores and other practical places where you least expect to find cookbooks. The books aren’t my style, but others loved them. I counted 30 on the top shelf alone.

When Rex appeared I was sinking into chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir Blood, Bones & Butter. I remember reading The Lamb Roast, a story Hamilton wrote in The New Yorker that chronicled her childhood in a flavourful, ‘the Royal Tenenbaums meet small-town America,’ kind of way. I never made it to Prune, Hamilton’s New York restaurant that’s been closed since 2020. I now have the chance to get to know her through her writing, for just $4.99.

Rex didn’t have any luck in the sweatpant department. He is learning that thrifting is a process, a journey, and sometimes an opportunity to learn something about yourself.