Just the beginnings...

March 1, 2015 - Simply the very first  "post" I'm attempting, as I've never blogged before.  So much more to come later...once I've run thru a few how-to pages, so please bear with me.  For a taste of my subject, here's one shelf containing a small portion of my cookbooks.

By this photo, you may (correctly) assume I'm an avid Alton Brown fan.  There'll be more photos of the remainder of my cookbooks later...


Okay, so I'm admittedly a little cra-cra addicted to amassing quite a variety of cookbooks - over 210 to date - with no end in sight.

I've always been drawn to books.  Novels are all fine and dandy - I'm well known at my local library, where I lean towards culinary mysteries, such as the Goldy Bear series by Diane Mott Davidson, or Avery Aames' Fromagerie Bessette series about cheese and wine, or Joanna Carl's series on TenHuis Chocolates, or Cleo Coyle's Coffeehouse Mysteries, or Joanne Fluke's series about Hannah Swenson, just to note a few of the longer-running series.

But, if I'm going to plunk down my dollars on a book I'm planning on keeping, it's gonna be for a hardback non-fiction book, whether it's one on my other hobbies, like scrapbooking, jewelry making, card-making, etc., OR yet another cookbook.  So, I tend to test-drive food and wine books from my local library or thru Search Ohio or Ohio-Link, where that particular library may be 5+ hours from my home.

Once I pick them up, I spend time thumbing my way from cover to cover, jotting down page numbers for recipes I find interesting and different from the so many others I already have.  If there are enough "new" recipes, I'll end up buying the book, no doubt from an on-line source, where I can expect to receive a 25-40% discount, along with free shipping.  Sorry, but I greatly miss my local Borders, where I could use a 40% off coupon, as opposed to that other "shall-not-be-named" national bookstore chain that gives out at best a 15% off coupon, which just about pays for the tax and perhaps the gas to get to the store.

It's pretty much a given parameter that the book must be adorned with more than a few beautifully enticing color photos of various tempting recipes, or "food porn," if we must be honest.  I mean, truthfully, don't you find yourself lusting after the foods so artistically arranged and plated by those professional food stylists and so seductively lit and permanently digitalized by the photographers, that you feel your mouth filling with saliva, and can almost taste them?

All this has me proposing to myself that over the next 5 years, or until 2020, that I will work through at least 5 recipes from every book I possess, and document with photos, journals, blogging, or by whatever other means I decide to attempt.

Although, upon coming to the realization that I have over 200 books, and that would mean over 1,000 recipes to try - hmm...Perhaps I'll scale that back to only 3 recipes per book, and/or limit the number of books to a more manageable total.  We're talking 4 years and 10 months, so that's a shade less than 1800 days.

And, while I love to cook, it's not my only interest, and I do travel from time-to-time, plus I need to do the grocery shopping for my ingredients, so, yep, looks like I need to weed out quite a # of these books.  Let's start by excluding those books I accumulated before a certain year, like 20 years ago.  That already deletes my Time-Life series - The Good Cook, from some time in the 70's to 80's, so there goes 19 - already down below 200!

Now, initially I was thinking I'd attempt the more molecular variations of "modern" cuisine, such as pressing my way through Modernist Cuisine at Home, but I got to thinking there has to be quite a # of recipes + techniques in there that I'd not enjoy partaking of, or that would be difficult to locate ingredients for, or that utilize expensive uni-tasker tools and equipment, i.e. sous vide.

Now that my kids are teenagers, I've been more seriously searching for something to give more meaning to my life, something for me, and more satisfying than being their taxi driver, 'cuz that gets old real quick.  I need an intriguing subject to occupy my time - interesting, compelling, fun, and possibly a tasty endeavor - I hate to say "hobby", as that seems to trivialize this future experience in my mind.

While I actually trained as a pastry chef, and love the foods associated with that profession, in a way it's more restrictive than the savory side of culinary arts.  With so many categories of baking, it can be such an exact science - measure these ingredients down to the gram, heat to this exact range of degrees or it won't set properly, i.e. it won't be hard crack, or will curdle, etc., that while I will work thru my pastry books in this undertaking, I will be devoting far more time on the culinary aspects.

Despite possessing this personal library, I nearly always find myself free-wheeling my meals.  It's so much simpler to be able to substitute this spice or herb, add more lemon or tomatoes, toss in chunks of squash or pumpkin to render my own variation of hash, etc.  You can't get away with a ton of substitutions with pastry.

- Tomorrow I'll let you get to know more about my background, and you'll see the contrast between my early years growing up on a farm and the foodie I'm becoming.  Ciao, my friends...