My friend Becky told me this week about a cookbook called The Book-Lover's Cookbook. I searched through the table of contents, and at first I was discouraged. I had the typical writer's reaction of, "damn! they thought of my idea first!". (Which I guess makes it their idea--whatever.)
But then I thought about this again. As far as I can tell, one of the strengths of the cookbook is that it makes cooking accessible. In the main dish section, there's an entry for beginner's sweet and sour chicken (which refers to Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Tree). Sections are outlined according to course. The book offers variety and functionality; in short, it looks pretty cool.
Essentially, I had to revise what my plan was, narrow and focus and define my terms. And last night I hit on it. One of my roommates, Andrea, and I were discussing costume ideas for a literary Halloween party. She thought of being Stephen Dedalus from James Joyce's Ulysses. I suggested she could hand out bars of soap, and she countered that she could carry a cheese sandwich in her back pocket. She then added that I should make cheese sandwiches for this blog.
But I don't just want to make a cheese sandwich. I want to make a croque monsieur, which is really a gateway drug into the croque madame.
The croque monsieur is a French grilled ham and cheese sandwich. The croque madame is basically the same thing, except you serve the sanwich open-faced and top with a fried egg.
I've not read Ulysses, but to my knowledge, Dedalus does not put a croque monsieur in his back pocket. But that doesn't matter. When I read books, the ideas I take in are places to jump from. They're starting points, not the final say. And this blog, I think, works the same. I'll recreate the foods I read about in books, yes; but that's not to say I'll make it exactly how it happened in the book. Consider it the poetic license of the kitchen.
For today, however, I have a bag of Virginia apples that came in my CSA batch this week, and since it's raining, and I'm battling a pre-Literary Festival sore throat that I refuse to let ruin my week, I'm thinking it's a cinnamon apples kind of morning. Hot and spicy, with sunflower honey bread, and some fried eggs and home fries.
