Ohmahgah, I met her on the internet and I thought she was really cute and she was so funny but then I woke up this morning and I looked down and there was this THING, and as it turns out, PAM GAVE ME FFCM.
1. Total number of (cook)books I've owned:
Surprisingly few. About 15. I tend to use them mostly for baking or porn; I prefer to cook on the fly. Which is why I should attach this warning now about my recipes -- they are all approximations, as I never measure anything; also, I have very poor spatial perception, so my measurements may be less than accurate. I should probably start writing instructions like "Add two two-second squirts from a salt-crusted Tiparos fish sauce PET bottle with a tired hand."
2. The last (cook)book I bought:
The last cookbook I bought was the Bouchon cookbook for Christmas for a friend. The last cookbook I added to my collection was The Best of Thai Cooking, in Thai and English, sent to me by my father.
3. The last (food) book I read:
Well, I started reading Poet of the Appetites, the biography of M.F.K. Fisher, but I got distracted by some other memoirs that had more sex and drugs. Before that, I read Mimi Sheraton's Eating My Words, which I enjoyed very much. And before that I read Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. I have Mark Kurlansky's Salt on my desk, waiting in the queue, as well as Rudolph Chelminski's The Perfectionist, about the rise and fall of Bernard Loiseau. Cookbooks I have few, books about or related to food I have tons.
4. Five (cook)books that mean a lot to me:
I can't really say that there are five cookbooks that mean a lot to me.
But there is one: Better Homes and Gardens Complete Step-by-Step Cookbook. I used to pore over the perfect hands in the perfect demonstration pictures; I used to dream about making all of these wonderful cakes and cookies which I could never have made in our house because we didn't have the right kinds of ingredients -- we had rice flour, but not all-purpose flour; we might have Chinese soy milk, but no whipping cream.
I read this cookbook the way other people read travel books -- it took me to an exotic land where people owned futuristic gadgets like electric hand blenders and meat thermometers; where perfectly manicured fingers tested sugar syrup to see if it had reached the sporty stages of "soft-ball" or "hard-ball"; where people held dinner parties and ate crazy things like golden pastry-wrapped Beef Wellington, dreamy caramel Floating Islands, and the science-defying wonder that is the Baked Alaska -- an ice cream cake that you actually put in the oven!!
5. Which five people would you like to see fill this out on their blog?
Can I be a chicken shit and pass on this part? I don't have so few real live friends who blog whom I can pester -- and I can count on one hand the people I've exchanged one or two emails with who do food blog. So the grandma in me feels totally unprepared to pass FFCM on. I still have a disconnect when it comes to asking for something from sort-of strangers. Is that lame? Sorry, Pam. I am no rock-n-roll fun.
oh, but you are SO rock and roll fun! ha ha...hey, ain't no thang. i guess it's kinda skanky to spread FFCM's to complete strangers.
thanks for playing ;)
it ain't skanky, it's free love. I'm just repressed asian girl.
wait, what were we talking about again?
Wow, the Step by Step Cookbook. That was my favorite as a kid. I think I have it in storage someplace on the west coast. I'm not even sure why my mom had it because she really wasn't much of a cook (I'd be shocked to discover that she'd actually made a recipe from it). I was completely obsessed with the baked Alaska photo--fluffy cooked ice cream?! I've never eaten one, but now I'm feeling inspired to concoct a baked Alaska.
I'm so happy someone else knows that cookbook! Everything in that book seemed exotic to me. I loved that baking bread took, like, four pages, including instructions on how to shape the dough into parker house rolls, rosettes, etc.
It is a really awesome cookbook -- I don't know if the recipes are any good, but I loved that there was a picture for every process.
I still have never tasted floating island, baked alaska, or beef wellington. I wonder if I will like them. I have to bring that cookbook from my parents' house.