(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

Oh, these spindles are gorgeous. Remind me vaguely of Narnia, for some reason, but then again, many things do.

I'm reading through Nigella Lawson's book How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking¹, and am looking forward to going home and baking, because man, I do love baking. I am also thinking vaguely about domestic fantasy, but have nothing beyond that label.

In conclusion, there is a ferocious thunderstorm outside.


¹Linked to Amazon on DW and The Book Depository on LJ, because damned if I'm going to give LJ money.

Comments

[snacky]

Love that cookbook so much. Make the peanut cookies! OM NOM NOM.

[bedlamsbard]

I am so excited to go home and bake from it! Do you have any of her other books?

[snacky]

I have How to Eat and Nigella Bites. I love How to Eat almost as much as Domestic Goddess, but man, the cupcakes! You have to try the cupcakes.

[bedlamsbard]

I will try the cupcakes! I just ask because I am thoughtfully eyeing cookbooks at Borders, and I already have several purely-baking books, and I don't know where to start.

[snacky]

Oooh. Well, I have a collection of cookbooks, and if I was going to rec a basic one, Nigella's How to Eat would be a good place to start. It's a lot of chatty conversation type recipes, with some very basic stuff and things to jump off of from there.

[bedlamsbard]

I will look at it the next time I am at Borders. I'd get one of Ina Garten's books, but they're all in hardback. *sadface* Of course, I shouldn't actually be buying cookbooks anyway, because there are cookbooks at home and also the internet, but I find cookbooks extremely soothing.

[snacky]

I actually read cookbooks cover to cover as if they were novels. So I understand their soothing properties.

I have some of Ina Garten's and I've always had good luck making her recipes.

As a former bookseller, I recommend the markdowns/discount section for cookbooks. You get really good bargains, and I have found some of the greatest cookbooks in the world there.

[bedlamsbard]

They are very soothing! *pets* The same thing is true of food blogs, to a different extent.

Yes...hmm, do you have any cookbook recs?

[snacky]

For Ina Garten, I think my favorite is Barefoot in Paris, but I love Barefoot Contessa at Home too.

Two of my recent favorites are The Pioneer Woman Cooks, because I've loved her blog forever and the recipes are great, and Make It Fast, Cook It Slow, because I have been having a crockpot renaissance lately.

Basic stuff: there's The Joy of Cooking, Better Homes & Gardens, and Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, but my favorite is The New Best Recipe, which is like my bible for anything basic. Seriously, I could read that for hours.

Others I just love: Ann Hodgman's Beat This and Beat That, Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, and More Home Cooking, Monday-Friday Cookbook, Cook Something, While the Pasta Cooks, and Rosie's Bakery All-Butter, Fresh Cream, Sugar-Packed, No-Holds-Barred Baking Book. Holy crap, best cream cheese brownies ever.

Some of my best bargain table finds are: French Farmhouse Cookbook, The Good Stuff Cookbook, The Breakfast Book, and my all time favorite, which is technically not a cookbook at all, but one of the most loving tributes to regional food I've ever read, True Grits.

Okay, stopping there before I get out of control. :D

[bedlamsbard]

I like out of control! I know we have The Joy of Cooking at home, but I'm not sure what else we have -- I have a couple of baking books that are mine, because, uh, I go to college and spend money on cookbooks and yarn apparently. Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking, because I love Alton Brown -- I haven't actually done any of the recipes yet, but I like the way he explains the processes, because despite it being the easiest thing ever, for some reason I can never remember how to cream butter and sugar together. *facepalm* And Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which sounds like it should be cheesy but turns out fantastic. So, uh, that is my cookbook rec of the day! Oh, I also have Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which is a collection of recipes put together by the New Orleans Times-Picayune after Hurricane Katrina, because people lost all their recipes in Katrina and kept writing to the Times-Pic to see if anyone had copies.

Have you ever read Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table? It's not a cookbook, but it's a pretty cool memoir about New Orleans food. I am actually not sure how well-known it is outside of Louisiana, because it's everywhere done here, but it's a really good read, and also explains (or, well, not) some of the WTF nature of some New Orleans food. (New Orleans: we love our food so much we have a whole museum about it!)

[snacky]

I don't have any Alton Brown books, but I do love his shows! I should try one of those. And Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day sounds AWESOME. *puts on Amazon list*

Also, I am totally getting Gumbo Tales because that is the kind of food book I love. Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking and More Home Cooking are similar things, although more essay collections about food, with recipes, than actual memoirs.

True Grits was published in 1990, and is basically obsolete in the internet-age, but it's written by a woman who missed southern food when she moved away from the south, and is this labor of love where she tracked down foods from all over the south, and found ways to order them (by phone! MAIL ORDER WITH CHECKS! No websites at all!). So each chapter is a kind of food (sweets, pantry, meats, BBQ, beverages) and the author went to most of these places, and talked to the people who made all the food, and it's just wonderful commentary about these people and their history and their love of the food they produce. It's all light-hearted, but I remember reading it right after Hurricane Katrina, and being moved at the thought of all those people and that history being destroyed by the storm.

[bedlamsbard]

I am thoughtfully considering his other books.

Gumbo Tales is fabulous. It was actually written post-Katrina, though the author lived there before Katrina, so there's a bittersweet touch as she talks about her experiences eating around New Orleans, and then notes at the end of every chapter that talk about how they were changed by Katrina.