Cookbooks

Though I find it very difficult to follow directions, I love cookbooks. I have the same problem with gardening. I'll read each step, collect tid-bits of information, and then make up the rest.

The funny thing to me, however, is that I've gotten into collecting cookbooks. Particularly cookbooks which reflect how we ate in "Old America".

When Mike and I were in Hunterdon and Bucks County for that crazy week in June, we visited a farmers stand to pick up cheese, fruit, and other treats for a picnic. At the checkout line I noticed an old, plastic ring bound cookbook entitled Bucks Cooks: The Artists' County. Below the title was a typical Victorian drawing with little, but much detail and was followed by the tease A Gourmet's Guide to Estimable Comestibles with Pictures. Seriously though, for $10 how could I pass this up!

We went on our picnic and as he played photographer and skipped rocks on the river, I laid back on an old rock and flipped through the pages finding recipes from Martha Washington on. It was a treasure of insight.

Next, when my mother and I traveled to the Mother Earth News Fair, I new I had to walk away with some culinary tangible. We came across an Amish Country stand who sold bird houses and other out door trinkets made of wood, some quilts, and then a table filled with knick knacks. On this table was my prize: The Esh Family Cookbook.

When I finally returned to Brooklyn a few nights later, I laid in bed and read through this families food history. The recipes here were quite different from the wholesome and of-the-earth meals of my latter book, but they told a story. And at the end of the day, don't we all just want to prepare and share a dish which tells us a story and invites us to create our own?