Saturday, January 03, 2009

Cookbooks

I have collected cookbooks since I was a teenager and cooking in 4-H. (an aside: I had to laugh as I looked up that link, that when I was a teenager cooking, there was no internet to look up. How weird it is to say that. How weird it is to think about that!) Some five+ years ago, in reorganizing our home and life for child#3, I boxed up all but 3 and stored the box, reasoning that when I cooked, it was faster/easier/handier to look up the recipe I wanted on the previously-mentioned internet, even one I knew I had, and that is what I was doing. Exclusively. I hadn't even purchased a cookbook, probably since Rosie's Bakery All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book. So, that was valuable space to be gained.
Now, fast-forward to the last year. I have rediscovered cooking for pleasure, not just sustenance. And related to that, I found a whole new world of food blogs. And related to that, I have come full circle: because of the internet, I find myself drawn to the cookbook aisle in the bookstores. Specifically, because of these blogs especially: Smitten Kitchen, and French Laundry At Home, and 101Cookbooks. I would have came home with French Laundry recently, when I came across it unexpectedly at Borders, but it was $55 and it was two days before Christmas. And I didn't want to cook with it, haha, just read it.
But now, it is after Christmas. ....And because of that, I don't have $55 dollars. HA. and Borders is 99 miles away and it snowed. But anyway... I just read this Smitten Kitchen blogpost. And amazing Amazon will deliver to me on January 7th for only 14.98 the hardcover version of said cookbook. Click. Log in. Confirm. And I have just bought my first cookbook in at least 8 years. I am so looking forward to many more :).