Off the Shelf November 2026

I had forgotten about our new Off the Shelf topic after my first post in September, but thankfully Carole's wonderful post about her pie cookbook last Monday reminded me. So today I'm sharing a "sort of" cookbook that has an important place on my shelf. 

I have a small desk in my kitchen that is handy for paying bills and it also has a little shelf at the bottom that works well for cookbooks. I don't use them more than a few times a month, but they're the ones that matter to me and have survived multiple weedings. 

 

 

I actually added a couple of new ones last week, but I digress.

 

My mother wasn't particularly fond of making dinner day in and day out, and she eventually settled into a familiar rotation of meatloaf, spaghetti, pork chops, sloppy joes, and assorted casseroles. She may not have been much of a cook, but she was definitely the Christmas Cookie Queen. She started baking in November, making dozens of different kinds of cookies and storing them in multiple Charles Chips cans. My sister and I thought the man who delivered the chips was named Charlie, so we called them Charlie Chip cans. Mom baked so many cookies that we almost always had some left on Valentine's Day. 

  

Along with cut-out cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, chocolate chip, gingerbread, snickerdoodles, candy cane cookies, gumdrop cookies, and stained-glass cookies, she also made my absolute favorites: Magic Carpet cookies. The recipe comes from a Betty Crocker pamphlet published in 1957, and I still have my mother's copy tucked into a file folder on my cookbook shelf. 

 

They have a buttery shortbread base with confectioner's sugar icing. I tried making them once after my mother died, but they were so fiddly to put together and didn't taste anything like I remembered. I haven't attempted them again in several decades. Maybe this will be the year I finally give them another try and manage to get them right.

But even if I never make another batch, this little pamphlet will always have a special place on my shelf. It brings back memories of a very special cookie that my mother made year after year simply because she knew how much I loved them. Thanks for the love in cookie form, Mom.

 

 

Read With Us: Off the Shelf

Hello, and welcome to our latest Read With Us spin-off!

During the last Zoom call that Kym, Carole, and I had to discuss our next books, Kym came up with yet another great idea. Off the Shelf is a place where we’ll talk about why a particular book has earned a spot on our personal library shelves.

We’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and not create a schedule for this one. Instead, you can look for an Off the Shelf post on random Mondays. There may be Mondays when all three of us post, Mondays when none of us post, and every possible combination in between. In other words, there are no rules (which seems very Read With Us)!

My library at home consists mainly of a three-shelf bookcase filled with books I’ve saved over the years. The top shelf has all the Harry Potter books, the middle shelf holds poetry and some of my special fiction, and the bottom shelf is mainly children’s books that I can’t bear to part with. The book I want to tell you about today is from the middle shelf, and it’s the one I thought of as soon as Kym mentioned her idea.

 

 

Early Candlelight Stories, published in 1922, belonged to my grandmother when she was a child. She kept it in the room where I stayed whenever I visited her. The book opens with a grandmother arriving to spend the winter with her grandchildren, Bobby, Alice, and Pink. As the children gather around her in the evenings, Grandma shares nostalgic stories about her own childhood, family life, childhood adventures, and small-town community, all accompanied by charming illustrations. All I have to do is pick it up, and I’m transported back to the warm feelings the book has always brought me.

I used to read several of the stories each night when I was staying with my grandmother. I don’t read it much anymore because the binding is falling apart and a few pages are coming loose. I’ve looked for replacement copies and have found some reprinted versions since the book is in the public domain, but they just aren’t the same.

So I’m content to keep my old, falling-apart book just as it is. It’s still in good enough shape to hold all the lovely memories I have. Its pages may be loose, but its place on my shelf is secure.