Epic Summer Score: Eagle Trading Company Cookbook Store

This is a guest post written by my buddy Heather from Massachusetts. She typically posts about her garden chores over on the east coast, but she’s changing things up a bit today!

I don’t know about you but I am the collector of projects. Seriously, if I not in the middle of three, I’m thinking about four others and collecting ideas for my next twelve. It may be time for an intervention. 🙂

I came to this epiphany while peering down the camera roll album on my phone. Apparently I take photos of EVERYTHING.

During the summer I’m hyper-focused and my favorite “project” is to head out with my daughter with ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN WHAT-SO-EVER. Just fill up the car with gas, have a block of time, and follow the New England roads wherever they lead. Getting totally lost is a requirement. The boys are not a fan of this particular adventure technique and typically bow out with a graceful “yeah, no thanks”.

I was generally looking to pick up some interesting cookbooks and my daughter wanted to find a book on drying flowers. This particular day we hit the jackpot! We began innocently enough early in the morning making a pact to stop at every garage sale and antique store we came across – this is New England and a shortage of antique stores is like saying there’s a shortage of ocean water. Ha!

We picked up one or two cookbooks at a yard sales because, let’s face it, I could use some help with cooking. And just as we began to run out of steam and were about to Google our way out of the woods towards home we came across this little gem, the Eagle Trading Cookbook store.You read that right, and ENTIRE store of just cookbooks. It.was.unbelievable. And packed. And by packed, I mean single-file paths through bookshelves and towers of books. It’s said Mr. Williams, the owner has over 12,000 books in a roughly 800 sq. foot one room store.And owner Chuck Williams knew were every single book was. He’s personally handled every single book and knows where he put it. My 2015 brain wanted to know if he had a catalog system? A computer? How on earth did he know where any particular book was? If I asked him for a Cajun cookbook specializing in shrimp, or a book specializing in Jewish holiday desserts – would he know if he had it? And where exactly would it be?Unbelievably, the answer is yes. The catalog is his brain. I tested him three times and three times he asked me follow-up questions then filed his way through the isles, scrolled his hand down stack after stack, and never failed to pull a few selections for me to choose from.

Mr. Williams is known for his rare, out of print, sheer volume of cookbooks and often has tour buses arrive at his door from New York who make his shop a highlighted stop on their itinerary.Although Eagle Trading Company is known for it’s amazing selection of rare and out-of-print cookbooks, Mr. Williams graciously answered my multitude of questions, chatted with me about my cooking skills and goals and patiently helped me pick out a few selections. I really enjoyed meeting him.

As if fate was leading us on our adventure, my daughter found quite possibly the only non-cookbook in the store – a book about drying and pressing flowers just as she had been hunting for all day!

Eagle Trading Company is located at 4 Elm St., Unit 1, in Assonet MA about 10 minutes outside Fall River, MA. If you’re planning a New England tour, make sure to visit Mr. Williams and the Eagle Trading Company. Mr. William’s store has different summer and winter hours so make sure to call (508) 644-9880 for a good time to visit.

~Heather