Books for Cooks

Happy Mother's Day to my mommy friends! I feel so very, very blessed that I get to be a mother to Sophia and Amelia. Today as I got to spend an hour with my sweet three year old Sunday School class, I also felt overwhelmingly thankful that I get to be a mother of sorts to these precious - and today very lively! - children. Last night as I sat in the hospital rocking sweet, sweet baby T, snuggling her, making her giggle, singing her to sleep as she held my finger, I felt so blessed that I got a few hours to mother her too.

For Mother's Day, Sophia's school made a cookbook of moms' recipes - it was awesome! Sophia's was:

Mrs. C's Nuggles
She puts them in water and cooks them for a minute. Then she puts cheese on them and bakes them in the oven for four minutes. I eat them with peanut butter and jelly.

When she got home from school, Sophia asked me "did I get it right? Is that how you make your nuggles?"

There were lots of treasures, like one mom's Rackamoni and Cheese, which she apparently puts into the oven until it's burned.

I've been struggling to come up with a good wedding present for my baby brother, who is getting married this summer - I wanted something special to add to the normal kitchenware, etc. (all of which is great - my entire kitchen is outfitted with our wedding gifts from eight years ago!) Both my brother and his sweet bride to be are embracing the domestic life in their new little house... and I finally came up with the idea of making them a cookbook. My husband and his brother own a publishing company and print shop, so I will get to make it a real, hardbound, lovely cook book.

Aside from sharing our favorite family recipes with my brother and future sister-in-law, I get to have lots of fun doing something I love...

I love cookbooks.

Several weeks ago, after my husband and I had a fight, I left the house for a little while to cool off. Where did I go? What did I do? I went to Barnes and Noble, and I browsed cookbooks for two hours until I was completely serene and happy, and I came home with a big smile on my face, and I even managed to restrain myself and NOT buy any - because that might have been a whole new fight! You see, I have a... collection of cookbooks.

I wanted to share with you my five favorites, which was not an easy thing to do, because I have... a collection. This is more a list of the cookbooks I use most frequently - there are others that I love for different reasons (one example below).

First, the cookbook from which all of my basic recipes originated - like meatloaf and spaghetti and roasted chicken - but which I can also turn to when I need any classic dish from just about any cuisine, is my trusty Joy of Cooking. There's a reason it looks like this

Another book with lots of staples in it, is the Field of Greens. This along with the Tassajara Recipe Book (I have had the great pleasure of eating both at the Greens restaurant and at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Retreat, and their food is a-mazing) have the best vegetarian recipes.

And, although we love our vegetables, we are also carnivores. And there's a man in our house. Which is why I love, love, love Meat and Potatoes (this is a different version, but looks like it has some of the same recipes in it as my old one).

Speaking of staples, when I want to make anything Italian, the first thing I reach for is Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

And for Asian cuisine, my favorite is Martin Yan's Asia. One of the things I love most about cookbooks are the photographs. And this one is filled with beautiful photos, along with great introductions into the different foods from different Asian countries, as well as ingredient explanations.

If you're like me and you love to just sit and read a cookbook, you'll love this... my mother in law, who is awesome and knows me all too well, found this book for me - after seeing me covet her copy. It is a cookbook from 1917 called A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, and it absolutely cracks me up. It tells the story (and yes, each chapter starts with a story and a picture) of Bettina and Bob's first year of marriage. There is the tale of Bettina's first dinner guest, a baby shower she hosts, and the many nights that Bettina cheerily welcomes Bob home from a hard day at work. Each chapter concludes with a menu and Bettina's favorite recipes. It's a gem!

I also love fonts and layouts, and I love food photography. A beautiful cookbook is a work of art to me. So as I work on my brother's cookbook, I am going to be spending some more time browsing cookbooks at Barnes and Noble for inspiration - and I'm so excited about that!

**I should add... I do enjoy browsing through recipes on my favorite blogs, and there's nothing quite as convenient as Recipezaar, and yes, I did throw away (gasp!) all of my years' worth of dog-eared Gourmet magazines in favor of the searchable Epicurious archives, but at the end of the day, I still love cookbooks, and no recipe website will ever totally replace them.