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We have two meat grinders, Mary's mom's #12 and her aunt's #22, which is a beastly thing that I'm going to bolt to my mom's old maple block cutting board for use. I also have my dad's ceramic emerald green pint coffee mug, which he used when I was growing up in the 1960s, and I still use on weekends. And there are a number of cookbooks from the 1940s, including the 1945 version of The Mystery Chef's Own Cook Book, the 1948 Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery, and a copy of the 1947 Ladies' Home Companion Cookbook, which my mom and oldest sister also have original copies of.

I have an old pot fork that was great great grandmothers. I never use it anymore because I'm not quite sure the best way to keep the handle from cracking, it's an old bone handle, so smooth and worn from handling, it feels like silk. I can remember using it to toast marshmellows over the gas flame on the stove as a kid. LOL If anyone has any suggestions on how to keep the bone handle in good shape, I'd be thrilled for any and all suggestions. (hint hint)

An ex boyfriend bought me an antique Turkish pepper grinder for Christmas. I use it daily. Every time a new person sees it they exclaim over it, it is very cool (and functional!) Thank you ex boyfriend!

Geez. I wish I had some of them now, but my mom was way into kitchen antiques when I was a kid. (She tells me the whole "country" look was all the rage in home décor in the late '70s.) We had a cool old butter churn, several weird old glass-jar mixers, a handful of coffee grinders (wall-mounted and otherwise), eggbeaters, and a great butcher block that was used primarily as a surface to hold canisters of cooking tools. And who knows what else.

I remember being dragged as a kid to all sorts of weird rural Midwest antiques stores in the late '70s and early '80s, looking for this stuff. And these weren't the fey stores that city slickers go to when they go "antiquing" (that term makes me wretch), these were weirdass houses and barns filled with crap that must have been rounded up from the farms around them. Stuff that was just "junk" back then but that some goofball would now pay hundreds of dollars for.

Anyway, she sold them all before moving from my childhood house. Some weird old collector dude came and bought the lot of mixers. Apparently, one of them was worth quite a bit. If eBay had been around, my mom probably could have gotten even more scratch for it.

At times I've wished she kept the butcher block so I could appropriate it, but I wouldn't even have the room for it in my apartment. Oh well.

I have a 1959 GE range that isn't old enough to technically qualify as antique, but in the world of appliances, it's up there.

I have a wooden rolling pin that belonged to my aunt, who, with my mother, taught me the cooking basics, and now I'm a cookbook author! The rolling pin was used so much that the red-painted handles are almost worn down to the wood.

I also have some "vintage" bowls from the 1960s, with hippie flowers painted on them.

I know, everyone frowns on electric egg cookers, but I *had* a wonderful Deco electric silver Sputnik-like egg cooker/poacher, and it did eggs perfectly every single time--no gray coating on the yolk, whites very tender. I gave it to my ex when he moved to the Midwest. He eats a lot more hard-cooked eggs than I do. But now I have a new boyfriend who likes hard-cooked eggs, so I want to get another one. I've spotted them on eBay.

Not terribly old but I have a few things that came from my parents home. I've got a handmade clay bean pot that has been used over fire, in ovens and on a gas range. My mother was a teacher on a Navajo reservation in the 1920-30s and she got it there. On our stove, now, we have a set of art deco salt and pepper shakers from the 1930s that we use daily in cooking. They're pale green glass with aluminum tops. I still use a huge pressure canner, circa 1945 when I put up low acid foods. In the 40s my father made a "butcher knife" out of an old band saw blade. It was our famiy's only good sharp knife while I was growing up. Dad lovingly kept it razor sharp! Now it is reserved as a carving knife, and then, mostly for Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys, roasts or hams. I also have, and use all the time, a mahogany cutting board that my dad made about 1960 from scraps of wood used originally as crate skids. Don't we all hoard vintage cookbooks?

Thanks for sharing your antiques & warm memories--so enjoyable to read!