Life is a Banquet

[thedeadlyhook]

Holiday packages are all sent. I got up with the sun yesterday and stumbled to the post office, somehow early enough to be the first person in line, waiting in the P.O. box lobby before the package desk cracked the gate. I read a book for 20 or so minutes, and then whoosh! Priority mail, and I'm outta there. A nice surprise.

A not-so-nice surprise was the unexpected rain I walked into leaving the post office for my fifteen-block walk home. But good luck is relative - the skies didn't open while I was trying to hump all the boxes, so I count myself lucky.

I also calorie-bombed our household yesterday by making chocolate zuccini bread, one loaf of which I hurriedly decided we need to give away, stat, to our landladies. This stuff is just plain evil. Especially smeared with a little creme fraiche. Evil.

By the way, the book I was reading in the post office was John Thorne's Simple Cooking. I hadn't looked at this book in awhile, and re-reading it reminded me, in a huge nostalgic rush, what it felt like to discover Thorne's food writing, which is just the way I like it - chatty, sensual, no-nonsense. Marion Cunnigham is another favorite of mine, and she has a similiar style. Ditto Jan and Michael Stern, and from that you can probably guess a lineup of my favorite cookbooks for American food - Square Meals, The Breakfast Book, The Supper Book. (For Chinese cookbooks, Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking is hands-down the best, but Mai Leung's The Classic Chinese Cookbook is also solid. Both have that very personal, chatty style.)

Now, here's the thing - most male food writers I've read (a small number, but a representative sample) talk about cooking as science, as if the study of cooking and the rotation of planetary spheres were all the same thing. (There are very slight peeks of this in Thorne's writing too, which is what makes me think it's a male thing, but lesser than most.) Thorne's universal principle is more about taste, and simplifying the process of getting it - soups with no stock, no-fuss cheesecakes, pasta and beans. Easy, simple, pure. Looking at this book again, I suddenly realized how and why some of the odder items in my pantry got there - I'd been inspired, obviously, by a recipe and then gotten distracted, but the ingredients linger, waiting...

The holidays do bring out the shameless foodie in me. I love winter cooking, winter baking. I suppose I'll just have to learn to love habitually taking off the extra pounds I put on in the spring.

Comments

[queenofattolia.livejournal.com]

Now, here's the thing - most male food writers I've read (a small number, but a representative sample) talk about cooking as science, as if the study of cooking and the rotation of planetary spheres were all the same thing. (There are very slight peeks of this in Thorne's writing too, which is what makes me think it's a male thing, but lesser than most.)

You should read Nigel Slater's books, particularly Real Food and Real Cooking. He is a complete hedonist/sensualist about food and his books are the diametric opposite to the "cooking as science" guys (although Alton Brown is entertaining). And even though she's overexposed (in more ways than one), everyone forgets that Nigella Lawson started out as a food writer, and her first couple of books are wonderful and shrewd in a really great way. Actually, I'm partial to British and Australian food writers in general (all totally straighforward yet vivid), and their food magazines (Olive and Delicious in particular) make their American counterparts seem both overly fussy and self-importantly trendy (Saveur) in the extreme.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love Nigella Lawson. I have two of her books (I avoid the baking one, because that'll only lead to trouble), but I've not seen Nigel Slater. I'll have to look up him up!

I actually have a huge shelf of cookery books. I only listed a few of my favorites because I went down a list of everything I have, it'd get kind of embarrassing. I'm the kind of person who reads cookbooks for pleasure, including ye olde used copies of Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and church potlock pamphlets. My mum-in-law recently handed down to me the granny's copy of Mrs. Beeton's, and I just about fell over squeeing.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Rats, I missed a close-italics tag. Let's hope this fixes it.