I would love some of your water lilies. We have a hugh pond in our side yard. You can email me directly and I will get your address and go ahead and send my end of the trade now. No since in them sitting around here when you could be using them. :0)

I have a copy of, "the NEW Fannie Farmer-Boston Cooking-School COOK BOOK", 1953. My father, in his retirement, took on the care of several Summer homes in Southern Maine. He would check on them during the winter, board up windows against storms, uncover rose gardens when the time was right, deal with emergencies...that kind of thing. During the Summer, when people were in residence, he was sort of a general, all around handyman. His largest client was old money...there was a beach named after the family, a road named after the family, and a huge home, loaded with antiques that had been the original furnishings. An elderly Black woman came up every summer from South Carolina to be their cook for the season. Little bittie thing, set in her ways and stubborn as heck, but since she'd been cooking for the family for decades, she knew what they liked and how to manage them. I had been separated from my father at age 5, and when I found him again in my early 30's, I went out to stay with him and my stepmother for a year to get to know them. He took me down to meet Marguerite. She was a kick, and we got along...several years later, when she knew that she wouldn't be able to make it up again the next season (or ever), she gave my father her Fannie Farmer for me. It still has a bunch of book marks in it, some with shopping lists, some with her name, some with cryptic notes I can't decipher, all in the same, slanted hand. I actually use the book quite a bit, but I don't disturb the bookmarks. I sometimes puzzle over the marked pages, wondering which recipe she had marked... I also have my mother's copy of "The Complete American-Jewish Cookbook",1952. It has a separate section of Passover recipes. There are no pork recipes, naturally. Generally, the cookies and bread recipes are good. As for unique...I have an Ethiopian cookbook...the only one I've been able to find. "Exotic Ethiopian Cooking-Society, Culture, Hospitality, & Traditions. I've only made a couple of dishes out of it. I love Ethiopian food, and when I found out how much Nit'ir Qibe (purified herb & spice butter) is used in most of the dishes I love, I realized why I love them. For example, in dishes made from 1 pound of ground beef, it is not unusual that they contain a cup of butter. A typical lentil dish pairs 2 cups of lentils with 2 cups of butter. No wonder I love it!

I don't have any of the books but they do have a channel that I watch from time to time on Roku. I have made a few of the recipes. I think they are mainly tried and true recipes sent in to them (at least on the videos).

Tongue was not around much in my small Midwestern town. The first time I ever saw it was at one of the German dinners of our German class. My teacher made it, with some kind of sauce with raisins and he kept joking those were the taste buds. It looked like a big ol' honkin' tongue and I could not bring myself to try it even though I try to be open minded. Later, I was visiting my NY relatives and they had some thin sliced tongue on a deli tray and people were eating it and raving. I thought I could do it then, give it a taste, but I still couldn't, it looked like a thin sliced tongue. Now I can pull the vegetarian card to avoid it . . . I made something called "Cheesy Tofu Squares" last night that was basically kugel since the main vegetable ingredient was shredded yellow summer squash. I salted it and pressed the liquid out for about 5 min. (should have done more but I was "pressed" for time). Then I dried it and sauteed it to further evaporate out water. The result was very good in terms of flavor and pretty good in terms of texture. But this kugel had way more seasonings than the usual peasant food type of one that is part of Jewish heritage. The mix of cheddar, shredded mixed Italian and goat cheese didn't hurt either . . . Being mostly vegetarian for our meals, that was not a problem with kosher rules. Maybe I don't need a new book. With Web sites like Bluebird posted with 50 versions of kugel, I might not have to spend the money. I am intrigued by several of those, gonna try some with mayo and other non dairy add ins. Then I can maybe check some of these other cookbooks out from the library and have some weeks featuring "Jew Food." I really don't like to cook, but having some kind of additional goal helps motivate me. Once every month or so I also pull a couple of recipes out of Mom's recipe clips that are in a file box. Enough there to keep me occupied for the rest of my life. But it's a way of feeling close to her. A lot of them are not keepers though, so I end up throwing them out. It's also a way of winnowing out just the best. Both my grandmother and mother were stymied in their cooking repertoire by having to include my dad, who is uber picky. He visited relatives in Israel and waxed poetic about how their home had the smells of his childhood memories at their house, and my irritated mom chimed in, "Yeah, onions and garlic, two things you say you don't want to eat because they upset your stomach." If I invite my dad over for dinner and he smells those now, he'll say, "I hope you're not fixing that for me."