I'm back

Wow! I've had a pretty busy last few days! I didn't do any cooking, although we ate out quite a bit, some of it was really good and some of it was just ennh. I'm beginning to stop believing the hype when it comes to dining out in NY. The real gems always seem to be the establishments that hardly ever get talked about or written about, and I've decided I need to frequent those places more and the trendy places less.

I spent a lot of time with family... which is good...but tiring. I bought 3 new cookbooks from the Goodwill Store for 50 cents each and I'm pretty chuffed about that. "The Art of French Cooking" by Fernande Garvin first published in 1958, "Specialties of the House" published in 1957 by Simon and Schuster and "How to cook and Eat in Chinese" by Buwei Yang Chao first published in 1945. I love these old cookbooks, some of them are really great resources for recipes and information and some of them are just fun to read. The information in them can seem so dated compared to the modern and disposable times we now live in. I often wonder if people reading these books back then really did half the things the Authors said they should be doing, like using chafing dishes to cook, serve and entertain. I know for sure my Mom never had a chafing dish...because if she had, it probably would have been expensive and that meant it would have been covered in plastic and put on display in the living room...(where we were forbidden from entering except on holidays) she probably would have never used it for serving and entertaining even if she had one, the less dishes to have to wash the better...and who can blame her?

I'll get back to cooking soon, I just need to get myself settled back into my regular groove, do some laundry and food shopping and then I'm good to go. I've been reading up on souffles, I've never made one before, it might be time to try.