{HISTORY}

Tucked inside this one forty-five-year-old recipe box, there are hundreds of stories. Two hundred of them to be precise. The central one is about a librarian named Beverly. 

Married in the Midwest in the 1950s, Beverly moved to California in 1961 with her husband, kids, and a burgeoning interest in cooking in tow.  Her husband liked to joke that Bev only knew how to cook three things well when they first got married - burgers, brownies, and boiled eggs, but after the move to California, Beverly's culinary curiosity took hold and she began collecting cookbooks and testing out recipes from a wide variety of sources.

True to the character of a book lover and a lifelong learner, Bev explored recipes from around the globe. Both her cookbook collection and her recipe gathering reflected that.  In the margins of her books, she wasn't shy about declaring what was a good or bad recipe, which ones needed more tweaking or more time. But when it came to her recipe box, it was filled with all the good dishes. The ones from family, the ones from friends, the carefully curated favorites collected over decades.

Every recipe box tells little secrets about its chef in the kitchen, and Bev's box is no different. Even if you never met her, you can tell a lot about Bev by the recipes she saved. For starters, her heart beat most strongly for passed-along favorites, party foods, cocktails, and the regional West Coast cuisine of her adopted state of California. 

It's true, the barbecue section might be sparse, but the cake section is bursting, and the salad section is practically a library archive in and of itself. That tells you a bit about Bev, too.

Typed, handwritten, clipped from newspapers and magazines, the recipes come in all shapes, sizes, and formats, but handwritten is the most prevalent, with many a note attached as to its original cook. Patricia, Sylvia, Fern, Lois Lovelace, Grace, Marlene all get proper credit along with major brands too... C&H Sugar, Toll House, Lipton, The Standard Cheese Company, Grand Marnier, Butterball. Even Len, the teaser husband, is represented with a recipe for his Sausage n' Cheese Skillet. That bit tells you a lot about Bev, too. 

Her recipes are housed in a black, hard plastic storage box made in 1980 by Eldorf Office Products. The recipes take up a large portion of the box, but if you squeeze all 200 of them together really tight, you'll be able to fit some more in, too. Bev would like that.  

Her recipe cards run the gamut with illustrations that are very vintage (1950s) to more contemporary vintage (1980s). They are adorned with florals and old-fashioned teapots, with pigs in hats, and stickers of golden stoves. Some have tape, others cooking splatters. Some are made of plain, white index cards, and others come in pastel shades of pink and blue. All in all, it's a visually creative and dynamic collection, ready to be enhanced with your creative and dynamic cooking too. 

Bev's cookbook and recipe collection comes courtesy of her daughter, who has fond memories of her mom and her cooking and her kitchen. Bev loved her culinary librarian life, and her daughter loves the fact that her mom's legacy will carry on here In The Vintage Kitchen with a collector like you. From one cook to another, from Bev to you, cheers to many culinary adventures to come. 

Find more of Bev's cookbook collection coming soon in the shop. 

{SPECIAL FEATURES}

• Contains over 200 recipes
• Includes vintage box circa 1980
• Recipes date from the 1950s-1980s
• Includes vintage photos of original owner

{CONDITION}

In lovely vintage condition, the recipes and the box are both in great shape. The plastic hinge on the box operates smoothly nad closes securely. The recipes are all in legible condition and contain all the hallmarks of vintage age. Some creases, cooking splatters, paper wrinkles and fold lines add authentic character. Please see photos.

{SIZE}

The recipe box measures 5.75" inches (length) x 3.5" inches (width)  x 3.75" inches (height) and weighs 1.3 lbs with recipes. 

{DONATION SUPPORTED!}

This heirloom gives back! 20% of the proceeds from the sale of Bev's recipe box will be donated to Feeding America - a nationwide network of food banks, food pantries, and local meal programs dedicated to providing nutritious meals to food-insecure communities around the United States.