Cooking Magazine Addictions
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 12:56PM
There’s a crazy amount of snail mail that comes stuffing its way into my mailbox. I feel sorry for my mailman when I see him drive up. He leans over tugs open the door of the black metal box, heaves a stack of mail (90% of which are cooking magazines) out of his bag, and tries to fold the bundle in half so it fits inside with a shove. If I time it right and catch him, I sheepishly walk down the stairs shake my head, shrug my shoulders and mouth, “I’m sorry.” He shakes his head back, smiles and mouths… “Don’t worry” and drives off. I’ll remember him this holiday season with a surprise plate of cookies inside the mailbox when he delivers all the Christmas catalogs and special addition magazines that come flying through the post.
The other day, after Mr. Postman drove off, I picked up the mail and noticed a new cooking magazine in the pile…addressed to my mother. This shouldn’t be. We have a subscription moratorium imposed at the moment trying to economize. But there is something so nice about a cooking magazine. I couldn’t wait to flip through it, what’s one more subscription? I asked Mom about this rogue magazine and she assured me that “they just keep sending them to us.” I’ll be on the look out next month; we might have to ease the moratorium if this proves to be a good one.
Anyway, Mom’s Test Kitchen this week comes from Country Cooking Magazine this week. Simple peas meet great big taste…it was a very nice side dish. So click over to Mom’s page for the results.
I have a few new upcoming posts for It's All Delicious and over on Not Just Eggs. A new cookie recipe for here and chicken Parmesan for NJE…oh - also, my favorite meatball recipe (ooh, which could turn into a kitchen competition…hmmm we’ll see). They should be up tomorrow and Thursday.
Thanks to all who have subscribed to my feed. The numbers keep growing and I’ll keep cooking!
Reader Comments (1)
First, a bit about this girl I have come to love. Sally and I grew up in the same small New York town. We were both cheerleaders. We both went to proms (her 4 to my 1). We went to different high schools, but we dated the same guy -- we think at the same time -- and we both eventually got over him and married and had children. We both threw fabulous dinner parties and were both fabulously in love with cooking and cooking mags, and we moved to Hilton Head the very same year for the very same reason: our children. We had lived ridiculously similar lives, but we had never met until I was asked to tutor her son, who attended the same athletic private school as mine -- her son golf, mine tennis -- in American Literature. When I asked my young British student one day where his American mom was from, he told me: "A tiny little town in upstate New York. My mum taught me how to spell it, but I'm sure you've never heard of it." I said: "Oh, go ahead, try me." When he spelled POUGHKEEPSIE, I -- in a very non-American Lit tutor but very upstate New York high school girl way -- said, "Shut up!"
Five years later, I am proud and privileged to count Sally Kerr Dineen as one of my very best friends. It broke my heart to have to leave her and the Island in June to come back to Denver to be with my own son, a Not Just Eggs newbie, who is settling down and wanted his mom nearby. And though I am happy to be cooking once again for my own son, I have to confess, I miss my best friend dearly. I miss her cooking. Her kitchen. You have to experience the bliss that is found there. The comraderie. The love. The family. The mess. I miss her son Luke and her daughter Sophie, who were my surrogate children while my son was in college. I miss her mom. Another surrogate for me. I miss the fresh South Carolina shrimp. And sipping Sonoma Cutrer in Sea Pines with Sally on a beautifully sunny spring afternoon, watching the boats come and go, as we talk about mothering, cooking, and what we are going to be when we finally decide to grow up. (Never.)
A note to people new to Sally and It's All Delicious: It IS all delicious. Her love for life is catching. Her love for cooking. Her love for her family. She helped me, as a divorcee and empty-nester, to find my love for liife again ... and for the most part, it happened in her kitchen, surrounded by her friends and her children and their friends.
We had such fun.
And so I am somewhat cowed now to add my humble recipes to It's All Delicious, but I am also a former upstate New York cheerleader, and I love a good competition, so I am throwing my non-professional toque into the ring ... starting with a chocolate cake that honors our mothers and grandmothers.
However, at the moment, after writing about my friendship with Sally, I Ifind myself a bit too melancholy -- I miss my Island buddy -- to write even a simple recipe.
But, Sal, it's coming tomorrow.
And let me just say: Ghiradelli has nothing on Hershey.
Love
Cindy