Comfort Foods

What a great thing for the fall, a potato cookbook. -ae

Last week I went through a box of recipes I had clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle. I found recipes dating back to the late 90's! I wish I was as good at organizing as I am at hoarding. Reviewing all those clippings, I can safely say I had saved more recipes written by Marlena Spieler than from anyone else. Spieler has been a writer for the Chronicle for ages and has written tons of cookbooks to boot. 

So imagine my pleasure at receiving a review copy of Marlena Spieler's latest book, called Yummy Potatoes 65 Downright Delicious Recipes. And on the same day I posted one of my yummy potato recipes! Potatoes on the brain. I cannot tell you how delectable most of her recipes look! There are Breakfast Potatoes, Tapas, Meze and Antipasti, Soups, Salads, Mashes, Baked, Fried, Sides and a category called "Potatoes for Dinner!" I swear the exclamation point is hers, not mine, but it might as well be mine.

When I was in college I had a vegetarian friend who ate the same thing every single day for lunch, “a meatless burger.”  It wasn’t a chewy veggie burger or a hearty black bean burger. Oh, no, her meatless burger consisted of lettuce, tomato, mayo, and a single slice of American cheese piled neatly on a hamburger bun. Every day for four years. It was tragic.

It’s too bad Andrea Lynn’s new book, I Love Trader Joe's College Cookbook: 150 Cheap and Easy Gourmet Recipes wasn’t out then. I would have bought it for her. She would have loved it, especially the chapters on “Sandwiches & Salads” and “Vegetarian Main Meals” that include tasty options such as Almond Butter and Banana Sandwiches, Teriyaki Tofu with Baby Broccoli.

All of Lynn’s recipes feature Trader Joe’s signature products, so you won’t have to trek from market to market searching for items. It’s really a one-stop-shopping cookbook ideal for both cash- and time-strapped college students. And kitchen novices. And working moms and dads. And anyone looking for easy recipes and trying to save money.

This spring, during a trip to Long Island, I managed to fullfil one of my lifetime travel ambitions.

Yes, I would like to one day look at the dusty pyramids of Egypt. Yes, I hope that I will eventually stand in some remote part of Alaska and stare, mesmerized, at the Northern Lights. But for me, this time round, it was all about a house. Or rather, an International House. Of Pancakes.

That's right: my inner list titled 'experiences I would dearly like to have during my life' included breakfast in a branch of IHOP. You see, I am a collector. Not of stamps, or coins, or copies of old NASA magazines, but of breakfasting experiences. I love the first meal of the day. I love how it is at once a meal and a ritual. I love that it gives us a chance, before the spell of sleep is forgotten, to sit and savour some of the most delicious and yet pleasingly simple foods available. I love to think about what all this means.

For eight years I have run a website, The London Review of Breakfasts, whose sole purpose is to take breakfast more seriously than anyone else – comically seriously, some have alleged. It contains accounts not just of my breakfasts, but the breakfasts of others; dispatches from cafes, diners and restaurants sent from places like London (where I'm from), the USA (breakfast-serving joints anywhere from California to Ohio), Malawi, Denmark, Mongolia, Haiti…

This quick book review will most likely be biased. I’m cool with that. And I’m owning my bias in a big way, here’s why:

1. My husband works out of state several weeks a month.
2. I am from Texas. Mr. Yonan is from Texas.
3. Mr. Yonan is affable, sweet and smart, and has a chapter on tacos.
4. Tacos.

While 1 through 4 are major reasons why I love this book so much, they’re not the only reasons why Joe Yonan’s Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One is currently rocking my kitchen. I met Joe, the Food & Travel editor for The Washington Post, in person last year at IACP when I was presenting a talk on food photography. You can imagine my surprise when we started chatting about being from small Texas towns, and if you’re from a small Texas town there are some things that only others could from Texas could understand and appreciate. Plus Joe spent time in Austin, my 2^nd hometown, so you can see the affinity I have for Joe.