Shreveport, Louisiana, is a great place to stop for a rest and walkabout while driving east or west on I-20. And if you’re a fan of used bookstores, you should definitely make time to browse The Thrifty Peanut while you’re there.

The first time I browsed The Thrifty Peanut, I had Robert Aickman^• on my want list. I found two of his short story collections, Cold Hand in Mine^• and Painted Devils^• on the Peanut’s shelves. Aickman is a very subtle horror writer, and these were elegant hardcover editions with covers by Edward Gorey. The stories are about hauntings that aren’t quite there, slightly twisted realities seen obliquely. Things just on the edge of remembrance, jus tout of reach of the senses.

I have often noticed in life that we never really learn anything—learn for the first time, I mean. We know everything already, everything that we, as individuals, are capable of knowing, or fit to know; all that other people do for us, at best, is to remind us, to give our brains a little twist from one set of preoccupations to a slightly different set.

On my second trip, William Sloane’s^• The Edge of Running Water^• was on my list; it had been recommended to me in an offline forum so I didn’t know what to expect. Sloane turns out to have strong similarities to Aickman. He blurs genre as much as he blurs reality and the supernatural. The Edge of Running Water^• is a ghost story with science fiction elements (vaguely similar to the much later Hell House), or perhaps science fiction with horror elements a la Lovecraft.

Both of these authors are worth reading.

The Thrifty Peanut also has a couple of shelves of church and community cookbooks in good shape, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. I didn’t pick up any of them, but I did find a fascinating collection of sweetened condensed milk recipes from Borden’s Eagle Brand, with a great sixties cover, on the main cookbook shelf. Borden praises sweetened condensed milk as a sort of miracle ingredient, and frankly it really is.

I had already started using sweetened condensed milk based on a recipe in another community cookbook, The Artist in the Kitchen from the Friends of the Saint Louis Art Museum. That recipe uses sweetened condensed milk, no flour or eggs, and somehow manages to come together with that cookie/cake texture required for brownies. It really did seem like a miracle ingredient. I wanted to improve my repertoire of recipes using it, so I bought this cookbook. The great sixties cover didn’t hurt, either.

The macadamia nut squares in The Dessert Lovers’ Handbook are literally just a matter of laying down a crumb layer and scattering, in order, nuts, chocolate chips, and coconut over the top. After those layers, the sweetened condensed milk is poured over the top. No mixing, just lay down the layers in the pan and bake.

Another recipe in a different Borden book I picked up elsewhere in Shreveport just rolls together cookie crumbs, nuts, and dried fruit with the sweetened condensed milk. Let it sit, and you’ve got some great fruit-nut rounds.

I also bought the beautiful, tome-like, Treasury of Great Recipes from Mary and Vincent Price on this visit. It is a huge, padding-bound book. The Prices collected their favorite recipes from chefs of great restaurants around the world and wrote about each restaurant and their chefs and managers. It’s fascinating reading about those great old places, many of which are gone, and the recipes that came from them.

The photos are beautiful, both of the restaurants and the Price’s dinner spreads.

The Thrifty Peanut is a wonderful place to browse and relax in the middle of a long road trip.

I didn’t buy much during this trip, but what I bought was amazing.

While you’re there, Shreveport also has some nice antique stores and restaurants. That other Borden cookbook with the dried fruit and nut roll came from Timeline Antiques and Collectibles. 70 Magic Recipes shares a lot of the same recipes as the Dessert Lovers Handbook I bought at The Thrifty Peanut. I went to Timeline first, because the Thrifty Peanut was open later. Had I gone to Timeline second, I would already have bought the 1969 Dessert Lovers’ Handbook and would have passed up the 1952 70 Magic Recipes. The cover on the newer Dessert Lovers’ Handbook is just so much cooler than the cover on the older 70 Magic Recipes, which is why I bought the newer one despite having already purchased the older one an hour earlier.

I’m glad I didn’t pass up either of them! That dried fruit and nut roll isn’t in the newer book. Nor are the fudge oatmeal cookies or the Spanish cream. These are all recipes worth making many times. The fudge oatmeal cookies are like no-bake cookies, but easier and glossier. The Spanish cream layers itself automatically into a rice-like layer and a pudding-like layer.

I’ll be visiting Timeline Antiques every time I pass through Shreveport now, too.

There are, as I recall, three antique stores on that block: Timeline and two others. I didn’t buy anything at the other two, but I do remember being at one, getting into my car to map out the next one, and realizing it was the next building over.

The Lebanese fish at Athena’s. Yum!

These coconut squares are indeed magic, especially with macadamia nuts.

This Spanish Cream was very easy to make, and very, very creamy.

Shreveport also has restaurants worth eating at after you’ve covered yourself in old book and antique dust. Just before leaving for Monroe, I ate great Lebanese fish at Athena’s Greek & Lebanese Grill, finishing it off with some of their wonderful chocolate baklava.