Monday , Thinking About Food and Words and Colors

Good morning!

I was just looking at Saturday's post, about sauces, and it reminded me that there is a great, beautiful book that I have, about Southwest cookery.  It is called New Southwestern Cooking, by Carolyn Dille and Susan Belsinger. This is an elegant book, from its red-pepper covered cover to its amazingly varied and ambitions recipes using southwest ingredients.  They have many sauces, delicate and precise variations on the tomato-onion-chile theme all.  I wish I had six people to cook for when I read a book like this one;  I get all inspired.  It also has a section of  "Menus."  I love menus.  Love reading them. I used to love planning them, but nowadays I am out of practice for that.

My favorite cookbook for all time--have I told you?--is Perla Myers's The Seasonal Kitchen.  There  she is on the cover, all young and active, walking along in her seventies' trenchcoat with baskets of FRESH food in her hands.  Fresh was a new watchword in those days.  Women seemed to make ninety percent of their dinner dishes using cans, really.  Especially cans of soup.  Perla must be nearly my age by now, hard to believe.

Anyway, I love the book because it is based on seasons, and menus...her food is very simple compared to the cuisine of today.  Nowadays, those who cook are condemned to a very rigorous criterion if the recipes of the magazines are to be followed.  A simple salad can contain, must contain, at least twenty ingredients at least half of which are from Asian sources.The simple stirfry has had to become "fusion cuisine" with a mish mash of ingredients never heard of by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.  I go for Perla and her simple but good ideas.

The timer has just chimed, telling me it is time to go climb into the waiting bathtub with horrible horrible novel, Divisadero.  Why am I having such a hard time reading these novels lately?  What is that novel about? and I mean, with what has that novel to do?  Maybe it doesn't have to do with anything, but just be readable.  Helloooo! I can hardly read it.  I am, really am, going to go into art.  Three primary colors, plus black,lots of paper, a big glass of water (near a tap).  And just spin out.  Literature has obviously escaped me now.  Three primary colors, lots easier than twenty six letters and all those words. YAZZYBEL