I'm sure I ate stuff this week. But at the moment, I have a head full of congestion, and my brain isn't firing on all cylinders. Maybe I need to do what my Dad swears by for congestion, and eat a spoonful of tabasco sauce (the only one I have in the kitchen right now is chipotle, which is yummy, but before breakfast it might dam near kill me).
We had company this week, and one of the first things Mystik wanted to see were my cookbooks, specifically the Grange Cookbook I'd shared photos from on the blog. I was proud to show it to her, as it was left to me by by Great-Grandma Ella, and it still has little notes and strips of paper here and there to mark recipes. I was commenting that I have so few cookbooks, compared to what I once had.
First of all, my cooking habits have changed a few times over the years. Where I once had a 6'x4' bookshelf full of cookbooks I now have a mere handful. Part of this was the move, yes, where I gutted my library. But most of it was switching over to using the internet for recipes. I had two binders full of pages I'd printed over the better part of a decade, before the move. I left them behind, something I promptly regretted, as I find it difficult to rediscover the precise recipes I'd found before. But I have, over the years, learned to look at a recipe and be able to predict with some accuracy how it will come out, which helps.
So you may be wondering which books made the grade of traveling with me from New England? My Fannie Farmer (Mom, sorry, I have no idea where my Meta Given's went. I'm keeping an eye out at used book places, I do plan to replace it). Diana Kennedy's The Cuisines of Mexico, which was my bible while teaching myself to cook Mexican. My Alton Brown cookbooks. The Brushy Cookbook, a community collection from my childhood hometown Tok Alaska. A handful of random titles I have picked up since arriving here: slow cooker, Thai, and baking books. My canning bible, Stocking Up III. At one point I had a shelf full of different canning guides and recipe books, this was the best of them.
In the picture, you'll also see a purple cloth binder off to the far side. That's my Flylady binder, converted now to just recipes printed off the 'net that I decided I wanted to keep. I do occasionally use my tablet in the kitchen, and not even bother to print, but a really good recipe I want to be able to find later goes in the binder.
I know myself. I will acquire more cookbooks. For one thing, I miss my Julia Child books. Although I probably shouldn't cook like that...
Today, I may not cook. Scratch that. Hamburger thawed in the frigerator will go into a slow-cooker pot of chili and the First Reader will make his famous cornbread (in a cast iron skillet, how else?). I can manage that, even with a head full of cotton wool.
Such a small collection it has become