School closed yesterday in what seemed like the longest year ever. Thanks to those makeup snow days tacked on to the end of the calendar, and the fact that my school is closing this year and we had to clean and pack a history that reaches back to 1946. But ... today is a clean slate, a new beginning and after a slothfully late start, I am feeling that sense of liberation that comes with the first day of summer vacation. When even the chores fail to irritate. It's all good today.
Finally had time to weed my herb and vegetable gardens, and then start dreaming about the things I would cook this year with all the summer garden goodies. Then started thinking about how I want to go to the library and check out piles of cookbooks, a few among the stack too impractical for actual use. Just eye candy. And then I remembered a post I recently read at Time's Flow Stemmed that referenced a recent Chicago Tribune article about the foodie books award-winning chefs read. Non-cookbook food books. The list looked like this:
- Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure - Joseph Wechsberg
- The Art of Eating - M. F. K. Fisher
- Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris - A. J. Liebling
- The Horse of Pride: Life in a Breton Village - Pierre-Jakez Helias
- The Food of Italy and The Food of France - Waverley Root
- Giving Good Weight - John McPhee
- The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine - Rudolph Chelminski
- The Gumbo Tales - Sara Roahen
Not exactly eight perfect instances of book lust but I could certainly go for the last two. And I want to add in some Ruth Reichl. And The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz is another one I have been eyeing for a year or so. Tell me about your foodie book lust? Of the non-cookbook variety.
Photograph by Stephanie Folet via the Gourmet website.