As I have mentioned before, we have to go to our local dump to take our garbage and recycling. We always stop at the “Shelve and Share” on our way out.
Usually Mondays are quite good for finding treasures as people drop things off after having had a garage sale or weekend purge. This week the pickings were sparse but definitely worth a closer look.
My husband decided to retrieve some glass panels from the glass recycling bin. I should add that the attendant was walking by repeating, “I didn’t see anything, I didn’t see anything”. You aren’t supposed to take anything from the recycling bins.
I wandered into the shed and noticed a pile of magazines with the mish mash of books they had on the shelf. It was a pile of Kraft “What’s Cooking” magazines. In the early 2000’s I would be just as excited to receive, via snail mail, my free quarterly “What’s Cooking” magazine as my three boys were to get their free “Lego” magazine. These magazines contain easy to make recipes with ingredients that we always had on hand.
I was never sure when the magazine stopped running or if I just didn’t update our address after one of our moves but I stopped getting them at some point. From what I can tell online, they still had a hard copy magazine after 2011 but you had to pay for the subscription. They did offer email subscriptions and they would send you your free copy digitally. Now, the only way to find the same exact recipes, is to go to their website:
It is not the same as reading the magazine but, and it is a big plus for me, the recipes are JUST THE RECIPE; no extra ads, no monologue, no extra photos.
Skimming through some of the magazines I already spied some recipes using Stovetop Stuffing mix in them that I will have to try.
The other thing I spied in the “Shelve and Share” was an upright box with more magazines. It turned out to be a box of Country Woman from the 80’s and 90’s. I used to subscribe to Country Woman as I enjoyed the craft ideas and the recipes but that would have also been in the early 2000’s. Recipes are timeless and seeing crafting ideas can often lead to other creative inspiration.
I plan to slowly peruse through all these magazines and copy down recipes or other craft/decorating ideas. The magazines will either be passed on to someone else who may enjoy them or they will go back to the “Shelve and Share”.
“What’s Cooking” and “Country Woman” magazines helped me get through some lonely times as a young mother away from my family. There is a certain satisfaction leafing through the pages one by one. It can be an escape from the day to day as you enjoy the colourful photos and read the parts that interest you. Finding magazines that I enjoy reading, that someone was giving away, feels like a gift….Christmas in July.
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Those were favourite of mine as well and miss them. Enjoy