Cookbooks galore

Shockingly, I finished my first non-academic book and have opened number two.  Ok ok, so it's my fourth book on food waste and garbage but who's counting?  My time abroad has taught me to live with less, and now that I'm doing my thesis work on composting and food waste, I've gotten a bit out of control with my obsession.  Our friends are having a garage sale next weekend and although it appears we have little to sell, we do.  If we don't use it, it's going.  An unused desk lamp, plastic mixing bowls, and non-functional dinner plates will all meet their fate.  However, I've met my match.

The cookbook shelf in our kitchen is packed full of my collection.  I've received some wonderful books as gifts and have acquired some amazing church cookbooks from my late Grandmother Hazel.  Last month at an end of the semester potluck I won a first edition 1961 New York Times cookbook.  There is something go great about them and they all tell an interesting story.  This one in particular falls open to certain pages that have been well used.  What did this cook like in particular on page 438? Was is the green mayonnaise or the mona lisa dressing?  Other books from my Grandmother have notes written in the margins which I adore.  Mine have also begun to tell stories themselves, like the spinach splattered pages of my Indian cookbook when a blender mishap caused a sprinkler-like affect of green.  Oops.

None the less, I can't part with them.  Even if I did, I'd try and compost the pages.

.... the photo above is our first tray of finished worm compost, the product of months of hard labor by our hundreds of little red worm children. Nice work guys, into the garden you go!