Cook Book Love

We all know I love to cook. I love food, I love cookbooks, and I love kitchen tools. I just love food. My favorite time of the week is Friday mornings. I wake up start coffee and randomly select a stack of cook books. I pour my coffee, sit in my arm chair and start selecting delightful dishes for the coming week. I always allow myself one exciting dish, something fancier, maybe a little more expensive and a bit of a challenge. I usually have one comfort dish, something familiar, from my childhood, simpler and cheaper. And then there are usually a few quicker meals for busier week nights. Thus my cook books fall into these categories. I have my fancy exciting cookbooks: Barefoot Contessa, Julia Child, Cooking with Capriel, and of course Jamie Oliver.

I have my standard cookbooks these are full of good and interesting dishes but a bit simpler, easier and more affordable: William Sonoma’s Easy Entertaining, Dave Lieberman, Paula Deen, Martha Stewart’s Great Food Fast, and Ellie Krieger.

Then there is the comfort food. This section of my cook book collection is probably the most vital. Here we have Better Homes and Gardens, my Southern cookbook, Farmhouse cooking, my grandmother’s Joy of Cooking and the most important cook book I own: the 1979 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook.

Lately, a lot of my friends have been getting married and I’ve been buying them cookbooks along with their wedding gifts. For me cooking was the highlight of newlywed life. You suddenly have wonderful cooking tools, and a husband eager to eat and adore anything you make. You can make pies, cookies, pastries, and he will eat them, thus allowing you the fun of baking without the calories of eating it all yourself. You can plan dinner parties and set the table with your new china. You can send out invitations that say delightful things like “Mr. and Mrs. Potter invite you….” It’s wonderful! Once I got married I started my menu planning routine. I pick some books, make a menu, go grocery shopping Friday after work and am ready to cook delightful dishes in the week to come. But as I started choosing my favorite books for each of my bride-to-be friends I came to realize the importance of the Betty Crocker Cook book. I decided to share with all of you my #1 newlywed cooking tip.

Ask your Mom which cook book she had when she got married. It’s probably only one or two and it was probably, The Betty Crocker Cookbook, the Better Homes and Garden’s or the Joy of Cooking. Then beg her for it. If she won’t part with it, this will probably be the case, then find that book in the same edition. If she had the 1966 Joy of Cooking then find a 1966 edition of Joy of Cooking. This is very important because they change them.

I begged my Mom for her 1979 Betty Crocker Cookbook and she adamantly refused. Instead she went out and bought me a new edition of the book. I eagerly open it up thinking I’m going to make chicken crepes (a recipe I grew up eating) only to find there were no chicken crepes. Not only were there no chicken crepes but there was no tamale pie, there was no chicken rice salad and the recipe for enchiladas was wrong and so was the one for spaghetti sauce. Further they suggested you bake chicken fried steak in order to cut the calories! This was not going to do at all. So my sweet sweet Mother looked through antique stores and used book stores for months until she found another copy of the 1979 Betty Crocker Cookbook and it is my greatest cook book treasure. Because their will be those days when you want spaghetti exactly like you remember it from your childhood. And there will be days that you want the exact muffins your mom made or the chocolate cake from you birthday when you were 8. And sometimes your Mom won’t answer the phone and you will be very upset. Trust me I know.

Some mornings I wake up and I don’t want to eat risotto with lemon thyme and goat cheese. I don’t want super healthy whole wheat pasta and I don’t want to go buy fresh herbs. Sometimes I just want plain old American spaghetti with ground beef and steamed broccoli on the side. Or I want peanut butter cookies exactly like I used to make with my mom when I was a kid. And on those days I turn to my Betty Crocker Cookbook and I am comforted by the familiar pictures and the 70’s orange mixing bowls and the dorkey way the food is garnished with radish flowers. Now I want to know: what is your favorite cook book and why?

Mrs. P

Friday Eats at Potter Place

Mr. P has been gone one week and I have to say it has been rather interesting living by myself. I was hanging out with one of my best friends from college last night and he pointed out that this is the first time I have really lived alone. During college I had roommates and lived within a five minute walk from all of my friends. I did have my own apartment the first year after college, which was also the year Mr. P and I were engaged and planning the wedding, but my apartment was across the street from Mr. P's apartment he shared with two friends, and all our good friends lived within a couple of blocks. Mr. P and I moved away from the campus area when we got married to the other side of town. Now I live by myself and not in walking distance to anyone, which is a very different experience. It's hard to feel very alone when you are shouting distance to most of your friends.

So far I am kind of enjoying living alone. I have strange new living alone habits. I stay up really late, which is something Mr. P and I almost never do. Then I get up really early. I love the late night hours of dark stillness with beams of street light floating into the apartment. And I also love the early morning hours which are just as quite yet with a completely different energy. I like eating whatever I want for dinner and not worrying about if it has enough protien or calories for Mr. P. I like listening to country music on the radio as much as I want. Mr. P had a limit to how much he would listen to without whining at me.

Don't get me wrong, I miss Mr. P. And I know that week 8 or 9 may feel quite different than weeks 1 and 2. But it's good to know I am doing pretty okay by myself. I wasn't too worried about until right before he left and everyone was so worried about me. People kept saying things like, "what are you going to do all by yourself all summer?" "oh my gosh, that's so horrible for you", or "you can't even talk to him on the phone! oh I just couldn't do that". People also kept pointing out how lonely I would get. I am an extremely social person. But I have been staying busy and using this time to spend with friends I don't see enough. I am also spending time with people I've always wanted to get to know more or be better friends with. I think this summer could bring a lot of great memories and friendships. I hope Mr. P can say the same.

So now that I have rambled on and on....it's time for Friday Eats:

Friday: Japanese Chicken Curry, brown rice and Swiss chard

Saturday: BBQ at friends from church, I'm bringing Pesto Potato Salad from The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger

Sunday: Fried rice with broccoli

Mon: Five-Minute Salad of Goat Cheese, Herbs and White Beans from The Food You Crave

Tuesday: Spiced Pork Chops (my own recipe) with Spinach and Chickpea Salad with Cumin Dressing from The Food You Crave

Wednesday: I am making all the kids in Youth Group one of my favorite childhood dinners, Taco Casserole from A Taste of Oregon Cookbook and salad

Thursday: Quick Pork Tacos (using left over pork from Tuesday night) and salad with cumin dressing

*I just got the Ellie Krieger Cookbook and these are the first recipes I'm trying out of it. You can check her out here: http://www.elliekrieger.com/

Happy Weekend Cooking!

Mrs. P