Apr 2nd, 2008
Too many cook(book)s in the kitchen
I have a lot of cookbooks. A lot.
With the exception of the top shelf (which is glass and can’t bear much weight), this bookcase contains only cookbooks. An identical bookcase on the opposite side of the piano contains the overflow (a few more books, back issues of Cooks Illustrated and Vegetarian Times, file boxes of printouts and photocopies), but the bulk of my cooking library is here.
For a long time I worked hard to increase my cookbook collection. But last spring, when we remodeled our living room, I resolved to have no more cookbooks than those that would fit comfortably in the bookcase. No more stacking them higgledy-piggledy, leaving towers of books in the corners of the room because the bookcase was full.
So I went through my collection as honestly as I could. Haven’t opened it in years? Gone. No chance I’ll be using it in the near future? Gone. The result: a nice stack of cookbooks that need a new home.
Here are the vegetarian cookbooks:
- Vegetarian and Vegetable Cooking
, by Christine Ingram
- Indian Vegetarian Cookbook
- The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine
- The Shoshoni Cookbook
- Natural Foods Cookbook
And here are the nonvegetarian cookbooks
- Martha Stewart’s Healthy Quick Cook
- The de’Medici Kitchen
- Pizza Art
- Fresh Start
These are all great cookbooks, and they’re all in like-new condition. But they overlap with many of the ones already on my shelves. (For example, I have a gazillion books on Indian vegetarian cuisine. Well, maybe not quite that many. Let’s call it a half-gazillion.) And because these are the ones I consult very rarely (if ever), they obviously need to find a new home.
If you’re interested in getting a box full o’ cooking inspiration in the mail*, leave a comment to this post and tell me about your greatest culinary triumph—or your most horrific culinary disaster. (If you’d rather post your tale in your own blog, that’s fine; either include a link there to this post or put a comment here telling me to go read it there.) Each story is an entry, so if you have a triumph story and a disaster story, you get two entries!
I’ll let this marinate for a week. Next Wednesday evening (April 9), I’ll randomly select from the entries one person to get this mini-library of gastronomic goodness!
*I regret to add that, because of exhorbitant postage rates (ah, international media mail, how I miss thee!), this contest is open only to people in the USA. There are a lot of books, and the box will be heavy!
I can vouch for the goodness of Marsha’s cookbook collection. I believe I am out of the running because I’m a friend IRL and I have too many cookbooks myself.
Hey, real-life friends are definitely eligible! So if you have a tale to share, by all means do so! :)
Oh, how cool, a contest. After a long hiatus on my part, I feel a post coming on.
I made pasta with portabella mushrooms. It was when we were first married so it was just the two of us. John is eating but not saying anything. I finally sat down to eat and it was the most horrible tasting thing I have ever eaten. I started throwing a fit ranting and raving. Yelling at him why didn’t you say anything. He said he did not want to hurt my feelings and was gonna eat all of it if I had not thrown a fit.
I did not know that you should only eat the caps.
Sounds like a good idea. But, I also have way too many cookbooks. *sigh*
Good luck!
I like to make lasagna from scratch. I roll out my noodles, I let the sauce simmer on the stove all day long, and then I assemble the mess into a pan and pop it into a pre-heated oven. The last time I made lasagna in this fashion, I accidentally left the cast iron skillet in the oven. When I realized that the skillet was in there, I removed it and put it on top of the stove. Unfortunately I forgot to turn the handle in, so when I bent over to pop the lasagna into the oven, I burnt a solid 4 inch line into my forehead. Ahh, 375 degrees, how I love thee. It took almost a month to heal!
[…] giving away cookbooks. Leave her a comment about your greatest culinary triumph or tragedy and you could win a box full […]
Hee hee - I have a cookbook collection that I never use myself… Great idea, though!
Ms. Chaos pointed me in your direction so I feel obligated to share my current horror.
I have an ice cream maker. Great? No, for I can’t make icecream worth a darn. I can make sorbet, i can make milk ice, but not ice cream. I have successfully frozen many a custard bases, but alas, each one tastes like EGGS! GROSSSSSS my poor husband has waited patiently 5 times now for me to have some delicious homemade soft ice cream, and every time… eggs. Egg. GRRR, and that is my current cooking disaster which will hopefully end next time I attempt ice cream but don’t hold your breath.
When I was about 9, my friend Aimee and I decided to make lunch for my dad who was working on the front pasture.
We didn’t know how to cook but decided to make a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese. When we finished and he came in to eat, we were just about in tears. For some reason, it came out like soup.
We forgot the step where you DRAIN the pasta! My dad is the best dad ever. To keep us from crying, he ate a serving. AND had seconds of this disgusting slop we’d made!
What a great guy
When hubby and i married I had not eaten meat since age 5, he was a die hard irish boy…meat and potato. I was the 2nd grader who had a recipe box and did cook the evening meals, mom did the dishes once she got home from work. I cooked through college as well and one of my fav dishes was a tofu mushroom stroganoff. As a newlywed i made this one evening for hubby. He could not even pretend to like it and i think ended up ordering pizza. Lol, he jokingly said that if that was what tofu tasted like it was grounds for divorce. (of course this view has changed somewhat over the years but he feels that was the disaster meal of the century!)
I think a triumph would be when i used to teach scuba diving. One week we had a huge military event where i was contracted to take the guys off of an aircraft carrier out diving for 5 days. Each evening i would go home and start prepping our picnic lunch for the group for the following day. (my boss where i worked even gave me the week off and helped prep the goods) I did not feel like the meal was anything spectacular but good wholesome food. The guys who had been on board ship or who had not been home in a while for homecooked food loved it. It made it so worth the work.
I would love to receive some new cookbooks! When we moved 3 years ago from the islands everything was moved by weight and i had to give away nearly all my cookbooks.
Ooh, easy. My annual marathon of Christmas Stollen.
See?
http://chappysmom.com/2005/12/09/lost-stollen-whatever/
(Really, I’ve posted about it every year, but that first post tells the story best! My father’s is so lucky I love him so much….)
One year when I was ten, my father had been out to sea for a two month voyage, that turned into eleven months. So for his homecoming, I made cherry tarts, and I even made the crust from scratch. They looked wonderful and smelled even better. Unfortunately, I forgot to pit the cherries. My poor Dad, ate three of the tarts, spitting out the pits and said that they were the best tarts he ever ate.
I was very young, old enough to read and I had done some cooking. (I started cooking at the age of four, when my mother was confined to bed while pregnant. I was putting soup in pans and heating it, nothing very difficult. This was about 1960 - no microwaves.)
Anyways I was a little older than that but not very old and I decided to make baked custard. I mixed the ingredients and suddenly realized I’d goofed. I tasted the mixture to be sure and I discovered instead of 1/2 tsp of salt I’d put in 1/2 cup!!!! I got the amounts of sugar and salt confused. Ick! I threw it out and made a new batch correctly.
To this day that is my worst cooking goof. I’ve had mediocre meals but nothing that horrible.
Of course, I don’t NEED more cookbooks and have not enough space as it is, but I sure do love books.
My culinary epic failure was a lemon meringue pie. I have been baking since I was old enough to hold a knife on my own (8 years old) and pastry and deserts are my favorite. When I was 13 or 14, I decided to make a lemon meringue pie. I found a recipe, collected all the ingredients, even borrowing some eggs from my neighbors since we didn’t have enough. I worked really hard at it, and the meringue just WOULDN’T make stiff peaks! I decided to just finish it according to the instructions and call it good. I baked it and it came out looking like someone vomitted on it…. turns out I mixed up egg whites and yokes. DUH! I chucked the whole thing, and went in my room to cry. I swore off lemon meringue and still have never tried it again 12 years later.
Tragedy:
I made mac n cheese one night and even the dog wouldn’t eat it.
Sniffed the sauce pan, turned her nose up, and walked slowly away.
When I was about 9 my best friend in the world was Mary Spooner. I was (at age 9) Dale-Harriet GOLDISH. She lived with her mother and her Aunt Dorothy. One sunny day, we were at her house, and Dorothy called to say she’d be home for lunch. We instantly formed “The GOLD SPOON Cafe” and after wild expressions of delight at our own cleverness, we set the table in formal style, drew up a fancy menu (complete with Gold Spoon logo and only one item) and set to work.
We made “Scrambled Eggs Gold Spoon with Fresh Toast” (no, not “French”) and Tea. Remember, we were 9. Mary cut the bacon into pieces while I scrambled the eggs. We made the toast and cut it into little points and put a teabag in a cup.
When Dorothy got home, we ushered her to the breakfast nook and gave her the menu. She ordered the scrambled eggs. We hurried back into the kitchen, stirred the bacon into the eggs, poured water (uhm…cold…) into the cup and I cooked the eggs in butter. We arranged the eggs on the plate, surrounded them with toast points (”buttered” to the point of being downright greasy) and carried the food to Dorothy, serving it with a flair.
She ate all of the toast, most of the eggs (!) and drank the cup of tea, nevermind the teabag was still floating in it. Cold. She hurried back to work, and as we went to clean up we realized: you’re supposed to COOK bacon before putting it into scrambled eggs. Dorothy lived to a grand old age and never did mention that she ate raw bacon with her greasy toast and cold-water (un)tea. Gold Spoon Cafe: triumph for us, tragedy for her.
Interesting contest! Here’s my story:
I’m originally from Virginia, and married a California boy, and that’s where we ended up– in the Golden State. My husband introduced me to regional cooking, including chilies. I learned about peppers from Anaheims to serranos to habaneros. However, at first I didn’t know anything about the heat scale, or why chilies are used only in certain dishes/cuisines.
Early in our marriage, I decided to experiment with cooking new dishes, and decided on making arrabiata from scratch. I boiled the noodles, then put together the sauce. I decided that some peppers would suffice for the sauce. So I threw in some nice-looking small orange peppers, dicing them and mixing them in with the rest of the recipe.
Dinnertime came, and we sat down to enjoy our meal. But before long, both of us were rushing around, fanning our mouths, trying to gulp down milk. My husband asked me WHAT I had put in the sauce. I told him about the peppers. That was my introduction to the dangers of using habaneros, and a lesson in the amount of hot peppers to use. What was worse, my husband had rubbed his eyes before he realized what was in the sauce, and his eyes, tongue, and hand were burning for a while.
That evening definitely spiced up our marriage. We can giggle about it now, though…
[…] winning things, Chris posted one of her many contest announcements the other day–this time, a chance to win a box full of cookbooks. Well, guess who won? Me! How cool is that? I guess having that annual Stollen Day ordeal has its […]