a nice thought

bookstores. they really are a nice thought.

today at lunch time i was wandering through the Border's bookstore by my office. there i was passing by display after display... and out of the corner of my eye i spotted Julia Child's How to Master the Art of French Cooking. I took a little diversion from my intended path to take a peek. And then I found a great German cookbook... followed by an Irish cookbook... and then Greek! I stood amidst the bookstore wide-eyed and dreamy and thinking to myself, "oh how i love cookbooks!"

Let's pause for a second here. which is what i did in the bookstore as well. Anyone who knows me knows that i would never claim to be anything greater than a kitchen failure. i don't like to cook. i avoid it whenever possible. and most attempts at cooking turn out much less edible than intended. i of course eat it anyways because i don't like to waste food, but i rarely enjoy it. the cooking or the eating.

so why oh why would i, of all people, ever be so enamoured with cookbooks??? especially ethnic food cookbooks?

I determined that I like the idea of cooking. The idea of being able to bring, by my own two hands, the foods i love into my own home. I suffer from a deluded, romanticized notion of cooking. from which i come crashing down nearly every time I make an attempt at it. and also when I find myself at the kitchen sink afterwards washing all the dishes, retracing and erasing all the steps in that recipe by cleaning.

bookstores seem to have a way of putting me under just such spells. it was a nice thought while it lasted. Afterall, they do contain a lot of nice things, that have an air of ideas, potential and possibilites about them. But at home, somehow they loose thier luster for me. Most of my purchases get perused for a few days and then simply add to the collection of books i don't know what to do with that are taking up valuable space in my apartment. I am going to make a concerted effort to use libraries more often.

But with wonderful enthusaism like this, and recipes that could make you melt just like the copious amounts of butter in them, can you really blame me for being lured toward her book?
Some advice that came from someone who is reportedly a wonderful cook was that to find success in both cooking and love, they must be approached with wreckless abandonment. perhaps there is some truth to that. so perhaps there is hope for me yet. geuss there's only one way to find out...