With our move to Chicago less than a month away, I am suddenly overwhelmed and find myself lost in packing boxes…or more just lost. How did I manage to do this when we moved to Paris while working full time? I suppose caffeine played a huge role and while I have relegated myself to one cup a day, I’m seriously screwed.
Half of the cookbook collection is packed up awaiting a trip to the post office to be shipped media mail, far cheaper than the professional moving company. So far the count is 300 books and growing …I’m afraid to do the math on the cost for fear that I will go into heart failure, as I certain it will resemble the GNP for a small nation. I knew when I married my husband that he came with a collection of cookbooks, fondly known in our house as – “food porn”. However, I’m not sure I ever really imagined having to move them. Oh sure we moved a few boxes to Paris with us and naturally he acquired more as he found a little antique cookbook vendor along the Rue de something; compliments of Chef LG for giving him the address! But now that I sit here, in my living room with boxes upon boxes surrounding me, I’m faced with the full realization that my husband is a cookbook junkie. I also now realize that when he asks me if I need the 17 black sweaters I have, all different and yet all very close to the same, I will simply smile and say “do you need all those cookbooks”.
In between packing and enjoying the spring weather, I still need to finish my personal statement for Loyola. This task eludes me and haunts me in the wee hours of the night. It seems to come to me in snippets while I shower or workout but as soon as I hit the keyboard the words hide from me and my thoughts turn to mush. While looking for inspiration the other day, and by inspiration I mean wandering aimlessly on the web, I found myself on one of my favorite food blogs run by KQED; Bay Area Bites it’s a great site overall and yet another reason to support public television. On this particular day there was an article on the “McDonaldization of Taste”, a subject near and dear to my heart as I do believe that fast food has forever altered and pocked our society on many levels….don’t get me wrong, I am a friend of the Double, double animal style at In-N-Out , but at some level I know that it is promoting our unhealthy eating habits and supporting the extinction of family dinners -- but it tastes so damn good! This article was spurned by a new book; How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and Psychology of Food, by Leon Rappoport. I encourage you to check out the article, I guarantee it’ll generate some thought.