Cooking with Jane: cookbooks and the reasons to buy them, 08/09

I was sitting in the cookbook aisle of Goodwill the other day when another one of the regulars either walked up to me and started talking or was just talking to himself out loud to himself. He tends to do that, walk around and talk to whomever he pleases. He's tried to engage me in chatter many times but I haven't had anything to say to him as his comments and his "help" are really too all over the map for me. But the thing he said the other stuck with me and someday I might have to tell him so, and that was "it's not the price of the cookbooks but the high price of groceries that'll get you". Something like that. I am sure that must ring true for those who regularly shop at Central Market!

I have been lucky with cookbooks lately. I tend to find them when my friend the Bookstore Owner is not prowling about. I guess that this time off has had it's benefits. I get to hit up the books during hours that I would normally be helping patrons. I sometimes feel a bit guilty about that, but then again, as I've mentioned to friends in emails and to family on the phone, it's not as if I haven't been working. Today's Goodwill run was combined with a run to Ace hardware. The basement door project that I started on Monday is still in progress, but the framing is done, the door is hung, the supplies are laid in and so all I need to do now is fill in the "blanks".

But back to those cookbooks. You would think, after that days long event that I slogged through a couple weeks ago boxing and moving cookbooks that I would want to hold back awhile. That I would refuse to buy any more cookbooks until I landed someplace. But no! Today I went in, in some small way just to get out of the heat for a bit, and took in the cookbooks and wow, did I score! But it's been that way almost every day almost for two weeks now. Every time I go in it's some new selection on the shelf, some great run of titles, some classic or another to buy. Today I went in to chill out and came out with five cookbooks instead. And on top of that I also found a half dozen Nordic Ware pans. I came out with four, but still. I did a price check online and found out that they would have set me back thirty dollars a piece retail. My twenty bucks spent was all to the good.

I suppose that I could stop buying cookbooks and someday I suppose I will. I've said the same about record albums and, to my credit, rarely buy them anymore (but oooh, you should have seen the handful I scored last week..tons of old Celtic stuff! Wow!) I tend to buy cookbooks in the same fashion I buy music. For instance, there are recordings I buy just because I know an artist, or because I like the sound of the titles of the songs, or because I like the label or the kinds of instruments the band is playing. The same kind of categorical reasoning applies to cookbooks. I might like the type or style of cooking the books are covering. Or I might like the author, or just the way that an author puts together a sentence. Sometimes they're new and graphically pleasing, sometimes they're beat and just something I have to own.

I tend to take my findings over to the furniture area and find a couch that's comfy and then plow through them. Today I had a big stack to consider. One was an Emeril cookbook on New Orleans style cooking. Another, put out by Fine Cooking Magazine, was filled with great how to illustrations and great Thanksgiving recipes. Another one was strictly recipes for pizzas and savory pies from around the world. I also found a great Kathy Casey cocktail book and, to top it all off, a nice William Sonoma compilation of Italian recipes.

I know that I already have a ton of cookbooks, and I do really, truly owe it all to you. But today's haul was like almost any cookbook score I come across these days. Strange as it is, there is always some reference to something we've made or talked about doing. There is that connection to food that we shared long ago, of ideas tossed about and dreamed about that still call out whenever I pick up a new title. I go through each new find and wonder "what would M think about this recipe?" or "is this something that we could make for company or the kids?" I go through the motions knowing that Punkin and I will more than likely get around to knocking out all those interesting looking recipes long before I ever get around to making them with you, but all the same. A man can dream.

I tend to dream alot, but it's that visionary mindset that got me here, that landed me here in the Puget Sound oh so many years ago. It wasn't just happenstance that we met. It was practically planned from the beginning. It was all those Colorado trips I took when I was in the service. It was that seminal experience in discovering the joys of Seattle the summer before I started graduate school. It was landing that job in Everett after The Boy was born, it was finally realizing my dream job with SPL, but moreso, it was finally being fed up with that commute to Seattle that set me on the final approach to meeting you. Had we not landed in Seattle my Estranged One's sister would have never come to live here. If she hadn't worked in Seattle she would have never met her ex. Had she and her ex not bought a house in Belfair we would not have been inclined to buy a house so far from Seattle.

I think of all the reasons why I am here, and they are as numerous as the reasons why I buy all the cookbooks that I tend to do. I think of those finds, so random, so chancey, and then I think of you and think "wow, there is a god, a trickster god out there who really has a sense of humor". I met you pretty much the same way as I tend to find those cookbooks: for a reason. Those cookbooks are on the shelf to be looked at, used, put to work. My relationship with you was to teach me things, to help me grow, to make me move on with my life. My cookbooks, well, like anything else that teaches you things, are there to help me gather together new skills and go on to the next level of cooking. You, my love, took me to the next level, too. Without you I would have never grown, learned to soften, learn to love the way that I have. Certainly, after we broke apart I crashed and burned, but I have managed to rise up again, better, stronger and more self aware. I hope that the lessons that I learned from you teach me to be a better man, kinda like the way, because of knowing you, I learned to make a mighty fine cheesecake, clafouti, and creme brulee.

Today I found a handful of cookbooks and a pile of Nordic Ware and thought of you. So, Jane, my dear, my kitchen goddess, grab your apron and into the kitchen with you! We have alot of cooking to do, dontcha know!

Your WHMB