Have I Mentioned I Like Cookbooks?

I know. Everything is about to change! And then a cookbook post. I appear disingenuous. But I can't change overnight, or even if I do, I don't know if I'm prepared to write about it. So I'll stick with what I know for a while. Or forever. Really, I'm struggling with this whole be radically awesome deal.

I've been struggling with writing this blog, too. I look back on past posts (pre- Palingenesis) and find myself occasionally charming and funny (and self-absorbed, you mutter. Indeed, indeed). I have found very little of my latest writing interesting. The past couple of years have been... sapping. Is it the transition of my first child from infancy to toddler/preschooler? An I'm in my mid-thirties breakdown? Perhaps a voodoo curse.

Essentially, I need to figure out why I'm writing. Not writing in general (which I feel compelled to do in as much the same way I feel I must breath or drink coffee) but writing this blog in particular. I'm uncertain that Palingenesis is meeting my blogger needs. Is it meeting your reading needs? Do you even read this thing? (No, wait, don't answer if you don't.)

So anyway. Cookbooks. My love for the cookbook continues in spite (or perhaps because) of the sixty pounds I really should shed and that my household's day-to-day cookery has been long turned over to my stay at home husband. You may follow my obsession over at Well-Cookbooked, which means you know I'm nearly certifiable. I cannot get enough. Cookbooks, that is.

Perhaps because I have the other dedicated cooking blog I rarely discuss my culinary perusals here. I'm thinking that might change. I occasionally write about books here, and the cookbook is a genre that holds my interest throughout the year (while, on the other hand, I cycle through sci-fi / classics / fantasy / historial / self-help / drama / poetry phases in my "real" reading). Rather than saving everything for Well-Cookbooked I suppose I can spread the love. Why not.

The books in the photo were my latest score from a very exciting garage sale. The house had so many cookbooks I had to be dragged away before I spent all my birthday money (carefully saved since December). I'm currently reading Countryside, Garden & Table by Martha Adams Rubin and have found it enjoyable (heavy on the chat, light on the recipes, but it's okay in a Kingsolver type way, you know?). Next up will be Cook It In a Casserole, largely because in the book's forward it states that the best thing to come from Hitler's war (waged during the book's compilation) was that casseroles came back into fashion via necessity. I'd never heard the "Hitler = WWII = Casseroles = Good" argument before, and I'm intrigued to read what else the book may hold. (You need not remind me of fruit of the poison tree discourse as I'm leaning that way already. But still, I'm curious.) Third down is my new first edition copy of Love and Knishes found at the same garage sale (and which, yes, I bought even though I already had a copy at home. But who can say no to Kasdan? Maybe I should run a post giving my extra copy to a lucky reader. Let me think on that...).

And that's me for now. Reading about cooking. Thinking about life and blogging.

It's not a bad way to spend the last day of May, really. (Now, on to June!)