From Costco to Barnes and Noble

My entry is early this month because we had a "Costco Experience" combined with a bonus trip to Barnes and Noble today that needs to be reported. You probably know what I mean about the Costco visit.  I have to gather an odd sort of energy to make that trip; don't you? The first thing that makes me anxiously competitive is finding a place to park. Shallow breathing begins as soon as we turn into the lot and start the line up for the "best" parking spot. Then there's the weird rush to get a cart and be the first one to show our card.  This is followed by the sudden and very weird need that arises to get to the sample tables first. Then I try not to lose patience with the people who are rude about making their way around the book tables. After all, I was there first and I'm traveling in the correct clockwise direction. I finger several books including the one I want to find at Barnes and Noble although I'm sure the price here is much cheaper.  Of course it is, but I can read it on my Nook for even less if it weren't for the fact that I still need to hold a book in my hands once in awhile for that true organic reading experience. Then it was off to find the shortest check-out line, if there ever is such a thing.

I did find the exact book at B and N but it was too expensive compared to the Nook price so I sighed and turned my attention to the cook books in the Bargain Books section.  I LOVE cookbooks and have owned hundreds of them in my lifetime.  I try to limit my current collection to just one long shelf in my pantry but that is getting pretty full.  I'll soon need to recycle or give some away. (Let me know if you'd like one or ten.)

My very first cookbook was The I Hate to Cook Book. My old friend Lee used it and she truly hated to cook although I really enjoyed fussing around in the kitchen even at the newly married age of 21. Still, Peg Bracken's lasagna recipe was hard to beat. I have added so many books since that first one.  I even have my Aunt Gracie's original The Joy of Cooking and have read Julia Child from cover to cover.  I don't do fancy cooking but I like to read those haute cuisine books because they teach me so much about food.  I'd just rather serve something traditionally American rather than a wedge of exotic fish plated over a squiggle of orange sauce and adorned with a sprig of arugula. I'm fascinated by crock pot cookery and acquired probably half of dozen cookbooks featuring that kind of food preparation until I realized that those recipes just imitate each other from book to book so I stopped buying them.  I like easy to fix recipes but don't like those four ingredient cookbooks.  They include too many recipes based on cream of mushroom soup.

The book I bought today is from the Taste of Home publishers called Country Cooking. I will read it at least two times from cover to cover if not three times.  I will promise myself to make at least one recipe from each section. If I don't, oh well, I got the reading's worth out of it. And just let me say that you can purchase cookbooks in the bargain section at B and N for less than the purchase price of magazines at the grocery store.

These all seem like strange musings from someone whose dinner menus are usually built around Dream Dinners.