New cookbooks

One of my Thursday Thirteens is going to be about my favorite cookbooks, whether or not I use them. It will really be a memory blog. For instance, my mother-in-law died in 1998 and no one seemed interested in her cookbook, Betty Crocker (1950), so I got it. She had certain meals that were just terrific, but about the time I entered the family her alcoholism was slowly taking her out of the kitchen except for a wonderful tossed salad and garlic rolls to go with the steaks her husband fixed on the grill. But since my own mother had NEVER made anything like that meal, I thought it was a banquet. While collecting my thoughts for the TT, I took it off the shelf and remembered why I wanted it. It wasn't the recipes (most of which would now be called comfort food), it was her handwritten notes. She had the loveliest handwriting. I also found an index card with a recipe from my husband's grandmother, who had Parkinson's Disease, and you can see it in her tenacious handwriting.

Saturday I received a huge box of cookbooks, not exactly a gift, but more as a keeper of the flame from someone else's collection--a tiny part of her collection. She is now in a nursing home and will never return to her home. About 2/3 of these are Martha Stewart titles--hard cover and heavy duty, serious kitchen labor. This might be just what I need to try some new recipes I thought, anticipating that I might just start with one new one a week. It wouldn't be like that Julie blogger who turned her blogs into a marketable book as she cooked her way through Julia Child (Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen).

So I open what looks like the easiest one: "Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook" (1997). It's January so I turn to Winter. Pot-au-Feu? Rutabaga? Monkfish? Fennel Carpaccio? Enlightened Creme Fraiche? Pappardelle?

Back to my mother-in-law's torn and stained pages, quickly.