Cookbooks

Does anyone else have a pile of cookbooks that they rarely use?  There are a few choice cookbooks that I go back to all the time (Better Homes & Gardens), but the others generally just sit on a shelf.  Or right now, under the sideboard until we build the bookcase that they'll go into out of Liam's reach.

Most of these I've received as gifts.  I may have bought one or two thinking that they would have some good recipes in them.  They probably do.  I just haven't had the time to look through them.

So, I've set a goal to actually look through these and start cooking some of the recipes.  Either that or get rid of the cookbook. Really, who needs a shelf full of cookbooks that just sit there?

I did come across this cookbook from 1938.  I think it belonged to my mom's foster mother.  My mom inherited it when she passed away in the late 80's and I inherited it when my mom passed away last year.  I have no clue if it has any good recipes in it, but it is a cool book, just because it's old.

The first paragraph of the forward reads,

"The Household Searchlight is a service station conducted for the readers of The Household Magazine.  In this seven-room house lives a family of specialists whose entire time is spent in working out the problems of homemaking common to every woman who finds herself responsible for ht management of a home and the care of children."

Imagine being taught how to manage a household.  Nowadays we figure it out on our own, get some instruction from family, or households just aren't really managed, per se.  I find it odd that they had an entire house dedicated with a team of specialists whose job was to figure out the "problems of homemaking".  What are the problems of homemaking?  Why does homemaking have problems?  Or why are situations viewed as problems?  My, how society has changed in the last 70 years.

Still, I wonder if any of the recipes are good.