A Post In Which I Reveal My Craziness

I think I may actually have a problem. I am an obsessive cookbook collector. Cookbook maniac.  I know that's, like, the point of this entire blog--too many cookbooks and not enough cooking--but I think I've officially turned into a cookbook freak.

I haven't been posting here, not because I'm lazy (though I am) but because I honestly haven't cooked a single thing (nope, not a single thing) in months. Months! Nevertheless...

I've [somehow] managed to procure 6 (or 10) more cookbooks.

Good ones!!

And some bad ones that are rather funny and embrace their badness.

I plan to share them with you, even if I don't in fact cook anything right off the bat.

Here's a good one:   The Night Before Cookbook by Paul Rubinstein & Leslie Rubinstein (1967).

It's big idea:  prepare most of your party foods the day/evening before so that the night of the big event you don't have to rush around like a mad person getting ready. They tell you what to prepare in what order, how to store it, and how to put the finishing touches on the next day. Brilliant!

The introduction was what caught my eye and demanded that I buy the book to read it in its entirety. This quote in particular, written by Leslie about her husband, Paul:

Paul was not only born with a silver spoon in his mouth--it was filled with pate de foie gras. 

Funny, right? Gross, and no one should be eating foie gras, much less feeding it to a baby (click here to be cool and learn all about it from Kate Winslet), but it gave me the impression that here were some rich food snobs who were trying to impress me with their recipes. I bet they were pretty good recipes if these folks had their fashionable reputations on the lines. And so I've read and I really have been impressed. One dessert recipe in particular, Bombe Rothschild--a fantastical ice cream cake stuffed with chocolate and covered in cookies and chocolate sauce--sounds really impressive.

Will I actually make any recipes from Night Before? I hope so. I hope I whip up all sorts of recipes from each and every one of my ever growing stash of cookbooks. For now, however, I'm content to sit back and read of decadent foods. While sipping water and maybe scarfing a potato chip or two.