My mom bought a few of them when I was a kid, and I kept them when she died. I was just a teenager, but I already knew I wanted to cook and held onto what had been hers. But she only had four books--Italy, Spain and Portugal, Provence and the Middle East--I have no idea if she cherry picked what were to her the most interesting topics or if you were even able to do that vs. subscribing to the whole thing like a Book of the Month club. But whichever it was, at first I treasured them because they were mom's, and eventually I grew in my culinary knowledge and came to appreciate the books because they are such fabulous reference works, and I refer to them fairly often. Somewhere over the years someone gave me two more--I've always meant to hunt down the rest of the series but never have.
So today I was over at a friend's house. He's a greatly skilled cook (and something of a hoarder) who for health reasons can't do the kind of cooking he used to, and his wife has put the edict on him to unload the things he never uses. He's going to hold a garage sale tomorrow but gave me first right of refusal today. And guess what? He had six of these books, and all with the precious spiral recipe-only companion books, and only one of his six was one of the six I already had!
I am a happy girl!
Oh, the dupe I have is the Chinese book. If anyone wants it, I'll happily send it to you.
