Bye Bye, Love

I have been cooking dinner seven nights a week for as long as I can remember. From scratch. I have been tested by the fleeting vegetarian limitations of my children, their no-carbs, their gluten-free, the low sodium of my own middle age, and yet I am still happy to venture into the kitchen at 6 pm every night and start anew. I work (albeit only part-time, but five days a week) and I do not have a maid, or even a cleaning lady. I have a long-suffering partner who does the dishes in exchange for meals. I go to the grocery store often, because I cook fresh food and like it to start out that way. In an average week, I will visit the organic market, the Middle Eastern one, the Asian one, the Pakistani one, the fish market, the deli, the boutique known as Trader Joe's, and one of the big chains. I am in between warehouse affiliations at the moment, but soon again that will be another destination. I have at least five different kinds of mustard on the shelf, and that many flavored vinegars as well.

I presently own 97 cookbooks. I just counted them. And I’ll admit that number is pared down considerably. I have tried to give a few really dated ones away – but the rest sit on the bookshelf hoping I will put them into service. I have kept a few back issues of La Cucina Italiana, because it is easier to pour myself a glass of Valpolicella and look at the pictures than it is to fly to Lake Garda. The other food magazines I have subscribed to have been donated in fits and starts, because thirty years of magazines tends to take up an entire guest bedroom. 

It started in 1975 with a pre-Reichl subscription to Gourmet. Then I started reading the NY Times every Wednesday and Sunday.  The Boston Globe twice weekly. Molly O’Neill, Sheryl Julian, Julie Riven, Mark Bittman, Amanda Hesser, Frank Bruni, Eric Asimov, Calvin Trillin, all writing about food and how to prepare it. Some of it was more than just recipes -- restaurant reviews, some essays. I was amused by it, educated by it, inspired, and collected quite an impressive library of things to try. I bought cookbooks. I took cookbooks out of the library. I cut out recipes. I filed them meticulously. I made binders of the ones I went to again and again. Then something changed.

I can’t put my finger on when, but within the last few years I discovered that if you do a computer search for Curry/Eggplant/Raisins, you will get directed to dozens of recipes including that combination.  Some will need to be translated. Some will have their ingredients measured in metric units. Some will be from well-known cookbooks or well-known food sites/blogs. I can look at a cross-section, see what looks good, vet out the crap (of which there is a lot) and then move in for the kill. Aubergine with Curried Picadillo looks best.  A few hours later we are eating it. If the verdict is favorable it will get added to the Recipes bookmark.

I love books, and newspapers, and magazines. I love to read. I go to the library at least twice a week. I prefer to hold real reading materials in my hands as opposed to reading onscreen. But the cookbooks will get donated. The shoeboxes full of recipes I have torn out and haven’t gotten to trying yet will be recycled. I hate to say it, but there is no more need for paper in my kitchen.

It is more wrenching than I had expected, this particular undoing. I feel like I am dumping live puppies into the dumpster, but it must be done.