Cookbooks Cookbooks Cookbooks!

I have been busy logging books into LibraryThing and am nearly finished with the books in my study. It so happens that cookbooks upon cookbooks are stored in here for lack of shelf space in the kitchen. I have a lovely walk-in pantry full of shelves, but they are mostly taken up with food, not books! I keep a dozen or so cookbooks in there for quick access, and change them out quite often as the calendar seasons change and as my internal seasons change. Except there are three books that never leave the kitchen.

The first is this one, a wedding present from my mother in, ahem, 1968. I rarely use it these days but it does not feel right for it to be hidden away on a dusty shelf in the corner of my study.  A well-worn, well-loved old-fashioned cookbook.

The next two books are not "loggable" into LibraryThing because they are my own kitchen notebooks. See the beautiful cookbook holder "Lonestar" (my husband) made for me? He is quite clever that way. The red notebook is for recipes we use all the time. Lonestar especially likes the recipe for waffles and biscuits because he is the breakfast chef around here!

The sunflower notebook is for menus and menu ideas. It is organized by calendar seasons. Summer is full of outdoor dining menus, with lots of Provencal-style meals. I began this notebook after returning from a summer visit to Provence so it is a kind of love letter to my favorite place on the planet (after home, of course!).

However, you might notice some poetry on the inside cover pages. I tend to copy down poetry in random places (like this notebook) and leave little notes such as I found in the Summer section:

"Lavender is the fragrance of half-forgotten things." Yes, it is!

So, if you are at all interested, here are the rest of the cookbooks I have logged in today.

Plats du Jour is a real fragile first edition, published in 1957. The Chamberlain Calendar of French Cooking is another fragile oldie.  It is for 1958!  Every so often the current calendar coincides with 1958 and I keep it out and follow along through the year with wonderful pictures of old France and make some of the suggested seasonal recipes. Very fun! I bought this one at a garage sale in Sierra Madre, California, a small hill town overlooking the LA basin. I suspect this was a gift to someone in Hollywood because the first few weeks of the calendar have notations for appointments with agents and photographers in the LA area. Wish I knew who it was...

I just love it when books provide their own custom bookmarks! This last one is a very special cookbook. I bought it in a bookstore in Uzes, a small town in the south of France near Nimes and the Pont du Gard. It is written in Provencal, the old language of the area. I had the bright idea to use a French-to-English dictionary to translate it! I still think it is possible because Provencal and French are very similar, but I gave up on the project after a few pages. Hmmm...maybe I could do it one recipe at a time?  What do you think?

That about does it for cookbooks.  I still have books about wine and gardening to log in, but those can wait for another post.  We will continue on the real Reading Road Map journey next week.  I am excited to tell you about our trip to Africa to see The Mountains of the Moon.

Finally, I really love comments.  If you visit, please let me know you stopped by.