Road Trip

One of my most frequently asked questions (alongside "How do you make any money selling cookbooks?") is "Where do you source your books?". My answer is always vague (one has to preserve some trade secrets as well as some mystery) but includes -road trips. I love a good road trip, taking to the highways and byways and back roads and making serendipitous discoveries along the way: hospital op-shops in a small town, a previously undiscovered second-hand bookshop tucked away in a back street. I took February off and spent a couple of days driving around the goldfields region of Victoria: Bendigo, Castlemaine, Maryborough, Clunes, Ballarat, Maldon. Sorry I'm not giving away any trade secrets, but wanted to share a couple of the treasures I picked up in my travels. The Savoy Cocktail book is a facsimile, but a very faithful one, which retains the lovely art deco design of the 1930 original; there's also a first edition of Mary Burchett's Through my Kitchen Door which I wrote about in a previous blog; a scarce-as-hen's-teeth Cookery the Australian Way; several copies of the Esk Valley Cookery Book and other early Australian classics. These will all be in my next catalogue - due out just before the Clunes book fair on the first weekend in May.

I've just added to the front page of my blog as well as my website a list and links to some of the best food shops in Melbourne - not your trendy delis, but the authentic and often wholesale suppliers of good ingredients for a variety of cuisines. Please let me know what your favourites are and I'll add them to the list (and go and visit them myself).