Guess what? That’s not all of them!

From time to time even the most pack-ratty among us has to trim a collection. There’s only so much rearranging one can do to accommodate more books; thus, some must go. My most recent major cookbook cull was at the end of 2012, when we moved into a townhouse that didn’t have built-in bookcases as our house in Seattle did. Previous culls coincided with cross-country moves, as when we moved to Seattle from North Carolina in 2003.

Culled cookbooks come in several categories:

• Obsolete. The recipes may have been fine in 1979, but don’t match the way I cook or eat now. In the case of ethnic cookbooks, the authors may have substituted or eliminated ingredients that were hard to find back in the day. I got rid of an early edition of Charmaine Solomon’s Complete Book of Asian Cooking because it didn’t have lemongrass or other ingredients we now take for granted in Southeast Asian cuisine. (Years later, I bought a more recent edition of the book because it’s such a great reference.) I also had a small paperback Asian cookbook by the 1960’s author Myra Waldo that I culled back in the 1990’s. She eliminated fish sauce from the Vietnamese and Thai recipes because of its “distressingly fishy” smell. Vietnamese food without fish sauce is like white chocolate–the key ingredient is lacking, so why bother eating it?
• Duplicates. Sometimes I’ll receive gifts of cookbooks I already have from family and friends. Or I’ll buy what I think is a revised edition of a cookbook, only to find that it’s the same edition with a different cover–and a higher price.
• Purchase in haste… Impulse buys can sometimes be real treasures; other times, they’re wanton wastes of trees. Some restaurant or celebrity cookbooks fit in this category. Sometimes restaurant recipes don’t translate well to a home kitchen. In addition, some suffer from sloppy editing. Where’s Judith Jones when we need her?
• Diet books. I never had many of these, mostly because I never succumbed to the low-carb/Paleo/gluten-free fads. I have bought a few over the years, sometimes for legitimate reasons and often for comic relief. Most diet books fall into the aforementioned wanton waste of trees category.

So how does one cull a collection of cookbooks? Here are a few of my guidelines:

• Get the book out of the bookcase. Is it dusty? Not a good sign.
• Crack it open and thumb through a few recipes. Does anything jump out at you as something you’d want to make in the next week? Can you get all of the ingredients at a nearby store? Not everyone has a Wegman’s or Uwajimaya handy.
• Go ahead and try the selected recipe(s). Were the proportions off? Did the timing not make sense? The recipe may have been tested on a macho restaurant-style gas range where high heat = incendiary; unfortunately, you’re stuck with an aging electric range with iffy temperature control. Most importantly, did it taste good? Would you make this recipe again?

If the answers to these questions are no, it may be time to donate the book to a good home or the local library–or sell it to a used bookstore. And then go out and buy another cookbook that may work better for you.

Our Friday Night Follies group consists of several mixed-faith (or lack thereof) couples. We’ve been known to light Chanukkah candles on a Christmas-themed tablecloth. Passover is the one holiday where we (almost) do things by the Book. A few examples of how we tailor the holiday:

Several years ago we had both red and white horseradish for the table. This led to the yin-yang presentation below:

This year friends who have been wandering in the wilderness of Silicon Valley were up for the Seder (and were house-hunting so they can return to the Promised Land of Seattle). This is the family for whom gluten is a serious health issue. [See my earlier post, Feeding Between the Lines.] They purchased gluten-free gefilte fish that the daughter with celiac disease likes. (She may be the only 10-year-old in recorded history known to like gefilte fish.) They also bought gluten-free matzoh and what they thought was meal for matzoh balls, although the latter turned out to be farfel (coarse matzoh crumbs). The mom made the batter with farfel and decided that it was not suitable for matzoh balls. She started from scratch again by grinding up the farfel in the blender. I took the failed batter and made the pancakes seen below:

 After eating a couple of them, I’m convinced that any matzoh balls made from them would be serious sinkers. Here are the matzoh balls made with the ground-up gluten-free farfel:

 I opted not to take a picture of them at the end of the evening, as the leftovers disintegrated into a gooey mass. (Teachable moment: Most gluten-free flours are too low in protein to sustain the shape of products for very long. In this case, the main flours in the matzoh meal were tapioca and potato starch.)

As with most Seders, wine made an appearance. One friend brought some excellent 12-year-old wine from her late husband’s collection. This was not Kosher for Passover, however. The matriarch of our group wanted Manischewitz beyond what was used for the haroseth, so there was a bottle of what we called “goofy grape” on the table. We also had kosher grape juice for the kids and our non-drinking friends.

Passover is also a time of the Seder dessert smackdown. My coconut macaroons are a regular feature. I usually serve a fresh fruit salad alongside them, because the rest of the meal can be extremely heavy. Lest you think the plague of locusts only existed before Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, this is what the dessert table looked like after the guests descended. The macaroons and fruit are in the right foreground.

It is traditional to set a place for the prophet Elijah. This year Elijah was our friend who was doing his nurse practitioner rotation at a clinic south of Seattle and couldn’t make it in time for the (condensed) Haggadah reading.

A good time was had by all, as always.

A friend of ours used to teach at a Waldorf School, where use of technology is avoided in early education. (Her specialty was teaching finger-knitting to squirmy 6-year-olds.) Last night at the Friday Night Follies, she demonstrated how to make Waldorf School Whipped Cream:

Pour heavy cream into a clean, wide-mouth, screw-top jar. Shake the daylights out of the jar for 20 seconds, then pass it to another person. Repeat shaking and passing along just until you can’t hear any sloshing in the jar. Don’t go too far, unless you want to make Waldorf School Butter.

Not only were the results good for such a low-tech activity, but it was good exercise for the participants.