Cookbooks & Cups of Coffee

In the cold months, my work day changes pretty drastically. I go from constant stress, long days, people management, and physical labor outside to half days at a computer by myself and the other half spent with my small child.

In the morning I spend time thinking about how to attract and retain CSA members (hit me with your ideas!), and I perform a huge variety of planning and accounting tasks. Then I cozy up and do crafts, read books, clean, and bake things in the afternoon with my daughter.

It’s pretty chill.

The other day Juna and I went to library and I wandered over to the cookbook section. I do love perusing cookbooks.

I’m always amazed at the cookbook section. There are hundreds and hundreds of cookbooks it seems. Smoothie cookbooks. Sandwich cookbooks. Grilling cookbooks. Most of these books are written with the presumption that you have every ingredient available to you at all times via your modern grocery store. The recipes are based on the fact that strawberries and zucchini are available to you right now, even though there’s snow on the ground.

These cookbooks don’t interest me. I don’t cook the modern way. I cook with seasonal limitations.

Slowly, however, there are starting to be more and more cookbooks that focus on seasonal eating, and vegetable-dense eating. These seasonal cookbooks intrigue me.

When I find one of these cookbooks, I am a happy camper. There’s something about a cookbook, and the ability to cozy up with it and flip through its pages that is far superior to searching for recipes on line. No running videos on the sides to ignore, no buttons that you think are taking you to the next part of the recipes but take you to an ad instead. Just a book, with the crisp feel of turning pages.

I love sitting down with a cup of coffee and perusing a cookbook. I feel such possibility. Such potential.

I take little pieces of paper and mark recipes that I think would be good – both for my household and yours. I have every intention of trying them all!

Once I’ve marked them, I take the cookbook to my office and xerox recipes to try. Some of them are ones suitable for winter. Many are ones I can’t try until next season – calling for peas, beans, squashy etc.

I file the xeroxed recipes away. I have every intention of trying them.

Some I do. Most I totally forget about. Until the next winter, when I add new intentions to the pile.

It’s true that some of the recipes I find, I actually cook. Or I actually remember to put up on our website. But for most of the recipes I discover, their day of actualization in my kitchen never comes.

This doesn’t stop me from checking out more cookbooks, though. I love the feel and process of looking through a cookbook, and getting excited about possibilities to come. If that excitement, that feeling of potential yumminess is all that I really get out of the cookbooks, so be it. I enjoy the process deeply, regardless of the outcome. And I’ll take that joy again and again. Just me, a cookbook, and a cup of coffee.

Enjoy your veggies!
Farmer Cassie