Cooking with Vincent Price
In the 1970’s actor, art collector and connoisseur Vincent Price recorded a series of 12 cassettes called, “The Beverly Hills Cookbook,” later titled, “Push Button Cookery,” to capitalize on the growing popularity of portable audio players. We acquired a set of these tapes while yard sale rummaging one Saturday morning and were immediately taken by Price’s familiar voice and wonderfully charming character. It was after playing these deliciously narrative recipes that we both realized how much we really missed his presence. He was a gentleman who has never been matched in graciousness, taste and a lover of everything life had to offer–characteristics that are sorely missing today. The recipes aren’t bad either. We digitized the tapes and are making them available here for your enjoyment. Listen to them all, and try out a few recipes in the same spirit as they are presented. We hope you savor them as much as we have. Read the rest of this entry »
Harry couldn’t have been more than five when he and his father, Walter, visited Pug’s Country Store on a brisk Friday morning in April, 1926. His daddy usually made the ten-mile trip alone by buckboard every other week to fetch supplies and, occasionally, get something special for the boys and their mother and some tobacco for granddad. But today he wanted to introduce his oldest son to the city of Clanton, Alabama, and show him the beauty of what the changing of the season had brought to the countryside. 
Aside from mad dogs and fishermen, who else would wake up before the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning and crawl out of a warm, comfortable bed to voluntary brave the elements outside? Why, your friendly yard sale rummager, of course. With the arrival of a more comfortable outdoor season and the memory of last year’s conquests still fresh in our minds, our thoughts turn to new found treasures just waiting for their discovery by rummagers like ourselves. But, more than once I have watched in complete horror as that priceless antiquity slipped into unknowing hands simply because they were the first one there, or the first to catch the seller’s eye. What can you do to optimize your yard sale experience or, if you’re newly addicted, what are the rules of the road and some useful etiquette to practice when bargaining with potential sellers? 
“Now, do you remember what I told you?” I asked, trying to negotiate the narrow, shrub-lined driveway leading up to Grandfather Andersen’s house with one eye on the rear view mirror. The kids were as anxious and excited as I was to attend one of Grandfather’s banquet dinners, only their excitement was compounded by the fact that they were decked in their very best dress, and their father was conveniently out of town on business for one of his “unexpected emergencies.” Duane gave me a mischievous, toothless grin in the mirror while Michelle sat quietly next to him testing the springiness of her new pinafore dress with her fingers. Lee and Jeff fidgeted next to me in the front seat while trying to slip their new shoes off the back of their feet with their toes. It was going to be a test of patience and covert facial warnings, but we would be in the presence of the most understanding people in the world, and I had faith in their upbringing and knew they would behave — I hoped. 
A panicky phone call from my mother-in-law had my wife and I packing and flying out to British Columbia, Canada the next day as her elderly father had fallen and sustained a critical injury. We flew into Spokane, Washington and were picked-up by a cousin who drove us to Bonners Ferry, Idaho and across the Canadian border to the little town of Creston which we reached just before midnight. I knew it hadn’t snowed up there yet but I still expected the temperature to be on the cool side. I didn’t expect it to be 15 degrees, which the locals said was on the warm side. When we stepped out of the car I got smacked in the face by a freezing cold that went straight through my parka and into my bones-much worse, it seemed, than the minus-eighteen degree weather that hit me when I got off the plane in Frankfurt, Germany in January several years before. We quickly unloaded the Jeep, said hasty goodbyes to our cousin and RAN into the house where a very warm fireplace and my equally warm-hearted mother-in-law greeted us.