Everything in life evolves and changes, even how we cook and bake. For the most part, people don't want to cook or don’t have the time to spend preparing a meal or baking a cake.
Years ago, I had well over 250 cookbooks. I finally realized that I only used my favorites. The ones that were actually in the kitchen, not upstairs on a bookshelf in the guest bedroom. So, as time passed, I scaled down to around 30. The problem with 30 is they still take up too much space in the kitchen. The years went by, and I found I used about 10 of them. I still cook, but I guess you could say that I cook the same way I write. I begin with a recipe, a general idea, and then I create my own version.
I do have a few favorite cookbooks — special ones, dear to my heart and filled with recipes from my childhood.
These two cookbooks are special to me, and I'll keep them forever. My Godmother, Aunt Rosamond, gave me the "St. Malachy's Church Cookbook" for Christmas in 1982. St. Malachy's is located in Sherburne, NY, and the church where I grew up.
This book is unique because it's filled with recipes from women I grew up knowing. Women who lived in Sherburne and the surrounding area. The friends of my parents, my friend’s mothers, my neighbors, my Aunt Rosamond. Aunt Rosamond was an excellent cook and baker. After my mom died, it was Aunt Rosamond that taught me how to cook. She made the most delicious cinnamon buns. I can still smell the scents of cinnamon, butter, and baking bread wafting through the house and out the open windows.
This cookbook represents a community. I see it on every page. In the names of the woman who created the recipes. The way the book is put together the index isn't only divided up by regular categories, it's got a unique index:
Old Family Favorites
International Dishes
Soups, Salads and Lo-Cal
When's the last time you cooked for 50 People?
The Art of Syrian Cookery was given to me by my dad. He was Lebanese and he grew up eating the food of his culture. My mom learned to cook Lebanese dishes. I remember she would bleach the kitchen floor so that she could use it to roll out her oversized, very thin Syrian bread dough. The kitchen table wasn't big enough for the job. She'd use an oversized wooden board, similar to a pizza peel to scoop up the dough and slide it onto the solid oven floor.
I've used this book often. My husband loves the food. One of his favorites is Baklawa. It's really not a difficult recipe, but it does take a lot of time.
I'm known for making notes on recipes I use more than once.
I still collect recipes and I'm sure I have thousands of them. But, I no longer have to find room in my kitchen to store them because they only take up the space of an iPad or my iPhone.
They’re all on my Pinterest Page
Until next time...
Joanne
How fun! I have a kitchen drawer filled with cookbooks that were my mother's, ones from the electric coop in Cut Bank, Montana, some from the electric coop in Independence, IA, a lot from various churches I attended, and like you--I only use certain recipes. I should go through them and make a "new" one so my kids will have the favorites...but it's so much easier to go online and grab them. Wonder what Jamie Oliver is cooking today?
ReplyDeleteI sorted cookbooks a couple of years ago and only kept my favorites. I only use them occasionally, but I do have favorite recipes I fall back on when I'm ambitious. And, like you, I write in the margins.
ReplyDelete