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November 16, 2003
Entry: "Orchard, Cooking 1, 2, 3"

Yesterday I fell in love with the cookbook Cooking 1, 2, 3 which is part of this series by Rozanne Gold. All the recipies have only 3 ingredients. Yesterday's beer bread and sweet potato/rutabaga (yes rutabaga) soup came out fabulous. Tasty and cheap and fairly easy. But today my love wavered when we made a really unappealing parsnip concoction that turned out to be a waste of good whiskey.

Even so, I love cookbooks. I love looking for new recipies and then foraging at the store... putting it all together... It's part magic, part science experiment, part art project, and part dinner. What a fabulous activity.

Also today... before and after the parsnip failure... I read the book Orchard by Larry Watson. It's a wonderful sad romantical suspense with a fantastic female lead character. It's short and elegant, which is just how I love novels to be. It weaves the story together with character developement and a tense inevitability... short chapters chronologically out of order, but still clear and appropriate. I'm not crazy about the ending. I would have rathered the book end with its climax. But it's still a wonderful read. Sparks lots of thoughts about art, identity, specifically a woman's identity and beauty. Anyway. A very good novel. Keeps you wanting more through to the end.