Cigarettes.
But that's TOO obvious. True and shameful, but too easy.
Cookbooks.
That is less readily recognized as an addiction, but there is something about a cookbook that I just cannot resist.
I have had to forbid myself from going into bookstores of any kind as I always end up leaving with at least one, and usually more than one, cookbook.
Not the ones jumping on the latest food/eating craze, be it Low Carb, Low Fat or whatever. Nor the personality publications (those 'chef X is hot/famous/gorgeous this week: let's have him get a book out NOW!'). And definitely not the big glossy gastro-porn coffee table books, where you know the sheen on the roast chicken is from Vaseline or hairspray, where achieving the presentation requires you to manhandle every piece of food until the dish is cold, and where most of the recipes verge on inedible.
The kind of cookbook I cannot resist (the kind that are weighing down my existing book shelves and languishing in cardboard boxes because I no longer have enough shelves to hold them all) are the ones that blend history, personal experience, science and philosophy, and where the recipes are mirrors to a person's experience, to a point in time or a specific location and not simply a list of ingredients and steps.
I want to feel the love of the food and the process of making it. I want a book that you can curl up with and just read. That you can be inspired by, not just to actually cook, but to treat your food, and your life, with a little more respect and wonder.
For the first 100 or so cookbooks, I could honestly say I had made at least 5 recipes from each one. I trotted that one out a lot with my family, as they thought I was nuts: after all, 1 multi-function cookbook like the Joy of Cooking and a few index cards with some family recipes on them would last you longer than a life time. They just didn't get it.
About the time I hit 250 cookbooks, that number had dropped to two recipes from each one, and after 300 or so I had books on my shelves that I had never cooked from.
I had read them all from cover to cover, though. And my tastes changed over the years. I started with books so I could teach myself how to cook. Then I wanted to know why things worked (or didn't). Eventually I wanted to know more about the wheres and whos. That evolved into the whens, and I have no idea where this addiction of mine will take me next.
By the time I hit over 1000, I decided to weed (having been inspired by some de-cluttering programs on television: 'I can do that. I am not controlled by my stuff.'). And the weeding is not going very well at all, as I stopped dead in the process when, after the first liberation of about 50 books to good homes, I suddenly found myself frantically searching around the house and through boxes looking for books I had given away and kicking myself mentally for having done so. So the great cookbook purge is on indefinite hold.
Anybody know a good place to buy a LOT of book shelves cheap?
No comments:
Post a Comment