New-To-Me Cookbooks

I splurged recently and bought three cookbooks. Saint Vincent's has thankfully regained their sanity and returned to marking books as $1.00 (remember the outrageous $4 they'd charged for a time? I still fume at the memory) and so three books cost me less than a visit to Starbucks. I came away with:

• Classic Scandinavian Cooking by Nika Hazelton
• The Frugal Gourmet On Our Immigrant Ancestors by Jeff Smith
• A World of Menus and Recipes by Gertrude Crum

I've finished reading the Scandinavian book and have decided that this Christmas Eve Eve (Dec 23) will have a Swedish theme. Super excited about that. Will likely go off cookbook and use some of my grandmother's recipes. But no lutfisk. Oh, you thought it was "lutefisk"? Mmmm, sorry, that would be Norwegian, my friends. We Swedes don't need that "e." Why not? Perhaps just to be irritating. Because I think the Swedish have a feud with the Norwegians. Or vice versa. Or both. I don't really get it... I pretty much consider everyone from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark to be the same peoples. (Note:  I am now likely banned from all of Scandinavia.)

The Frugal Gourmet's book is interesting, but, be forewarned, has a revolting-sounding recipe where the main ingredient is pork blood. I only note this because after reading that recipe before bed I had an actual nightmare about being unjustly accused of shoplifting pork blood from a small market and being chased down and killed by the ethnic grocers mafia. You can't make this stuff up, folks. Nightmarish blood recipe aside (and crossed out with dark marker) I'm thinking we can use a lot of the recipes to do some sort of geography/history lesson with our daughters while we enjoy dishes from different countries.

And Gertrude Crum's book? Well, Gertie (may I call you Gertie?), I find the idea of full menus so very appealing that I will continue to read your cookbook even though I find it annoyingly overly-specific about which wine to serve with the meals.  But I'm not sure I'll ever actually make one of your menus. I'm just not feeling the inspiration, I don't know why. I should. I mean, you have your cookbook arranged not only by full meals but also by season. I should be all over that. But instead I'm, like, "meh." Perhaps I'm intimidated by all the wine talk. Perhaps I need a little more wine in my life. Perhaps I like to  whine. It's a mystery that is unlikely to be solved.