Message in a Cookbook
Once in a while I have days where, for one reason or another, I'm not feeling great. My desire to mope and sit in my pajamas watching old episodes of the Great British Bake Off is strong. Sometimes it's for a specific reason. Someone has said or done something that hurt more than the logical part of my brain thinks it should. I'm questioning what I'm doing or if it's enough. I'm trying to figure out how to be better at being social. Other times, there’s no significant reason. The weather is crummy. I finished a good book. I ruined a simple dish with too much heat, or salt.
Sometimes the mood goes away as quickly as it came. Sometimes it stays for as long as it wants. There is, of course, no quick fix. But I’m a problem solver by nature - so I try. I go to the book store.
It’s a 5 minute stroll from my front door. I walk in the door whisper a quick hello to the folks at the counter, and scurry to the small room all the way in the back of the long rectangular shop where used cookbooks, food writing, children's books, and (oddly) sports biographies all share space.
“Elissa, May everything you create in and out of the kitchen turn out just the way you want it. Much love, Mom + Steve. 12/25/97”
I quickly scan the shelves for one of the most gifted cookbooks of the last 50+ years - The Joy of Cooking. Inevitably, there are 3-4 tattered copies waiting for me - some spiral bound, some hard bound - and I pull them all off of the shelf. I sit in one of the way-too-tiny chairs from the kids corner of the room, carefully pry each copy open, and eagerly flip through the first few pages.
Usually, the gift giver has inscribed one of the first pages of the Joy of Cooking for the recipient. Sometimes from friend to friend, sometimes from parent to child. No context other than the note itself and the book’s print date.
“Christmas, 1985. For Lucille, with affection from Jane. (on the occasion of another Christmas meeting of the nutsy bridge club).”
I imagine how the book made its way to this tiny corner of the world. How someone decided on this classic (if outdated) cookbook for their loved one, decided what to write, how to wrap it. I imagine the recipient cooking from it for a few years before deciding to sell it to my local book store. I wonder how they were able to part with it; how they knew to trust this store to ferry the book to its next owner.
I have my own copy of Joy, gifted to me by my dad for Christmas many years ago - one of my first cookbooks. I don’t remember the last time I referred to it. But it feels like a bookshelf requirement at this point. Table stakes in a cookbook collection.
Inevitably, I leave the bookstore in slightly better spirits with some other book in hand - most recently MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating. I had been looking for it on the recommendation of a close friend and was excited to see a copy in wonderful condition. I couldn't resist checking the first few pages. Just in case.
“To Shelby - Christmas 1999. You'll enjoy just reading this one - xxoo M + D”
I believe it.