I have to confess, I have an addiction. It took me a while to come to terms with it and now I am here, and I can admit it. I have an addiction! I am addicted to cookbooks. They pull me away from the real world with the endless array of recipes, they lure me with a page after page of amazing, mouthwatering pictures, they speak to me in a powerful language of grams and cups. Yes, there's no denying it. I am addicted! I don't know how many cookbooks I own. Not too many by my standards and way too many by my boyfriend's. The good news is that I actually use them, the bad news is that I only use a few of them. Still, I comfort myself with the thoughts that in time I'll put each one of them to a good use.
And for now I open a few of them over and over again. The Big Book of Bread is at the top of my list with 365 recipes of breads. So if I bake one new recipe each week I still have seven years of new recipes; and let's face it, most likely it'll take me a few years longer to go through all of them. Then there's a series of Barefoot Contessa books. My relationship with Ina started out a little bit rocky, I couldn't stand her television show, she annoyed me so much. But still I couldn't switch the channel. And then I fell in love with her recipes, so full of life, excitement about food, flavour, texture. So full of cream and butter and sugar! Her Barefoot at Home is my most used book.
Last weekend I had to stay home and do a lot of dreadful house chores. So in between, I cooked and I baked and I ate. And finally being home and doing loads of laundry didn't seem so terrible.
California BLTMalted Grain Bread
