Dooney'sWorld

A Reader Cooks

Or is it the other way around?  I'm not sure.  I love to cook.  I love to read.  I am not sure I am either a "cook" or a "reader" though.  I do know that I love cookbooks and that I love not only to browse through them and ogle the recipes and cook from them, but that I actually do enjoy reading them, front to back, just like any other book.

Recently I was cataloging my cookbook collection and the process was making me think about all the different books and why I had them.  I decided to randomly work my way through some of them, cooking and reading, mostly out of curiosity about why I originally purchased them and what I thought about them now.

 The first book I grabbed, Cookwise by Shirley Corriher, was chosen because although I remembered that I have used it for reference, I couldn't actually remember that I had cooked much from the book.  So I started reading and cooking.  Well, actually in this volume there was more reading and less cooking because it is basically about the techniques and materials of cooking and the recipes are designed and arranged to illustrate the points.  This is good from the perspective of learning, but not necessarily so good when you just pick up the book looking for something to cook for dinner.

Cookwise was a very interesting book to read and it contains a lot of valuable information. As I mentioned, I have used if for reference, and I will refer to it again and again as it has some tables and charts that are either not available or not as clearly presented in my other cookbooks.  It has a very thorough discussion of baking, which doesn't directly affect me any more as it is based on wheat, a grain I can no longer use.  I don't do much baking anymore anyway.  But there is still good information here that I can apply to good gluten-free baking because success requires understanding the underlying principles and knowing what one is trying to emulate.

As for the recipes; I find these less successful.  There are really only two recipes I have tried in this book that I will make again.  One is for my favorite sour-cream cornbread, a recipe that I easily adapted to hold up better as a gluten free bread, and one which my guests adore.  It is not dry minimalist cornbread.  I will save the book forever just for the reference materials and because it contains this cornbread recipe.  The other recipe is for a cake by Rose Levy Beranbaum and I actually bake it from Ms. Beranbaum's original version.  

Notice that the two recipes I use are for baked goods.  There are other recipes in this book but I find they all emphasize sugar and starch too much as a substitute for fat.  Now I enjoy me a good dessert now and then, but everything that I have tried is too sweet for my taste.  And I am not convinced that adding more sugar and starch to food to make up for fat and flavor is all that healthy of a choice either.  I certainly find it less satisfying.  

In the end I find Cookwise excellent as a reference work and only so-so as a cookbook.

 The other book I pulled out of the shelf was a book by Rick Bayless called Mexican Everyday.  Now this book is more of a cookbook than a reference book, but I still read it all, and cooked quite a few things as well.  I found more to cook here than I did in Shirley Corriher's book, and although there are several things I will make again and again, I did not actually find that I was happy with many of the recipes as they were written.  I made a fair number of changes and revisions to suit my own taste.

Now I must admit that I am a huge fan of Diana Kennedy.  I have all her books.  I have cooked extensively from all of them, and although I am not a purist and do not always cook everything the classic traditional way she describes, I can do so when I am in the mood to put in the time.   I also have several of Rick Bayless's other books, which I have also used, and I am a fan of his restaurants, where I have eaten several times.   And being a bit of a Diana Kennedy and mexican food snob, I'll admit that when I received this book, I was not particularly impressed.  Mexican Everyday takes quite a few liberties with traditional Mexican techniques and flavors. But I didn't really give the book a chance.

To my mind this is not Bayless's best book, but it may be his most accessible, at least of the books I have read.  And I do find the book inspiring.  Reading this book filled with me with all kinds of ideas for making things I would not have made had I not read the book, and although I don't find all his techniques for simplifying things agree with me, or there are some things I do differently, I have to admit that I will use this book again.  So far there are many recipes that I have been inspired to make, and many that I will make again and again, using my own techniques and changing them, often a good bit.  So far there is only one recipe that I have liked pretty much as it is written, a recipe for slow-braised lamb Jalisco-style.  I am not saying the recipes are bad; they aren't.  I am not saying they don't work; they work beautifully.  I am merely saying that that the actual execution does not really resonate with me although many of the ideas do.

So in the end, I think I rate this book pretty highly, even if I change most of the recipes.  It seems pretty evident that I am more interested in ideas and inspiration than I am in recipes that work but which I find insipid, no matter how good the information surrounding those recipes.

Garden Progress

 I seemed to have fallen off the world-wide-web for a while and landed, with a good sized thunk into wide world.  In other words I seem to be spending my time living my life rather than fretting about it.  I just got on with it.

You know, I probably once had a bit of a Martha Stewart complex, without the staff to pull it all off, and I did everything.  And I recently accepted that I not only can't do everything, I actually need help.  I had realized this long ago, and I knew it intellectually, but was experiencing a rather significant disconnect between what I knew and what I accepted.  That changed.

And so I hired a talented designer and friend to do my pots for me this year.  I always loved doing the pots, but hadn't done them for a few years just because I hadn't found the time to gather the plants I wanted as the process of dragging G from one garden center to another is far too confusing.  And of course Celeste did a fabulous job.  You can enlarge the picture, but I didn't do the best job of making the collage so some of the pictures are pretty tiny.

 And the best part was that once I had one thing taken out of my hands I was eager to work on other things.  So I started pulling the front yard together and working in my flower bed, cleaning them out, mulching here and there (I should have done this much earlier) and really thinking about how the light had changed and how I was going to need to do some serious rearranging of plants to suit the new conditions.  I also realized that my plans at the beginning of the season were a bit too ambitious.  I am not going to get the vegetable garden cleaned and actually growing vegetables this year.  So planted some of my vegetables and herbs in the front bed.  As you can see, I am still working here, and some plants will have have to be moved again.  But I am making significant progress here.

And progress is being made with the front yard as well.

 Here is the front yard as it is right now.

No I didn't do all this work.  The thought of it was daunting.  I hired someone to cut down the plants and then dig up the yard and remove the old slate walk because....yes, we are going to put in a new bluestone walk next month and I do want to save the slates for use in a few other areas of the yard.

I have grand plans.  But they will only be accomplished in small increments.  First the walk.  Then the front yard between the walk and the house on the right in this photo.  We will probably enlarge the stone bed by the house, put in another planting bed, and have an area with gravel and slates and some kind of outdoor sculpture, or a potted plant.  it is all rather sketchy in my mind right now.  

Only after this is done will I seriously tackle changing the left side of the path which is not as seriously in need of work.  I will clean out around the rhododendrons and feed and mulch them this year.  The pachysandra and hakonechloa will stay. The rhodies may be moved or they may not.  I am working with a designer, but I have to maintain my own stubborn independent streak.  As I said, I am moving in stages, and beds have to be built, and soil has to be amended.  What you see is pretty much solid clay. This means the area where the path was is actually easier to walk on now without the slate, but the soil needs serious amendment before planting; and with my penchant for woodland plantings such as rhododendrons and hydrangeas the beds must be dug at least 12 to 18 inches and heavily amended to achieve the light, high organic matter soil I required.

 I actually think this new front yard, bare clay and all, is more welcoming than the old front yard which was a frightening mess of the overgrown and broken down.  Approaching the front door was something like asking an acquaintance how she is doing only to have her launch into a diatribe about her liver spots and all that is wrong with the world.  Far from welcoming; it only made you want to turn and run.  Here is a picture I posted here last year.  Believe me when I say it was no better before the digging commenced.  In fact, it was probably worse.

As you can see, there is still plenty to do, but the difference is that before I was overgrown and mentally unkempt, just like my yard.  We are both on the way to new ventures.

 

And because I cannot leave you with that old ugly photo, here is another picture of a recovering shade bed.