Half Baked: cookbooks

I planned to start the New Year with a recipe for oatmeal pancakes and cranberry maple syrup. On New Years Eve my computer decided it was done. It crashed, no stores were open, I had to live without a computer for a couple of days. In my distraught state, I never made my pancakes. I will but that's not what this post is about.
~~Most~~ Some of the time when blogging, I have a plan, see a recipe, get an idea, etc. and then set about to blog about whatever it is that I've decided would be a good post. I'll make something specifically because I want to put it on my blog, such as, the oatmeal pancakes. It doesn't always happen like this, sometimes the process happens in reverse. It's more like, by seat of the pants blogging (I'm a frequent flier). I make something, like it, take a picture and voila, unplanned blog post. I sure your shocked by this admission!
I admit this happens a lot. If I make something and like it, I usually end up blogging about it, and hope that someone out there likes it too. Sometimes a few readers will leave me a nice comment, occasionally another blogger will post a link on their blog. Whether or not it was a well planned and thought out post or simply a by the seat of the pants last minute post, that's usually the extent of it. Which is perfectly fine. I love the comments and links are even better. It's great to know that someone else enjoyed the recipe as well.
Anyway that's exactly what happened when I made the Fresh Corn Salad that I blogged about way back in May of 2009. I had corn, needed to use it, mixed it with some other stuff in the fridge and had it for dinner. Hubs and I both really liked it so I made it again the very next day. This time I took a picture of it before we devoured it. It was one of those posts that I hadn't planned but the salad was delish and it turned into a blog post. A few weeks after I posted the recipe, I got an email from someone saying that they worked with Molly O'Neill. Molly O'Neill is was a food columnist for the New York Times and had written 3 cookbooks. She was writing a new cookbook featuring the food of America. The email said that they loved the fresh corn salad recipe I had posted on my blog. Would I please send them my phone number because they may want to talk to me about the recipe. At first I thought that this was some kind of scam or something. I mean really, you like that corn salad recipe? After all it was just a last minute addition to the blog. There are other recipes on my blog that I'd spent much more time and effort on. After taking a day or two to decided, I sent her my phone number. A few days later, a very nice woman from Ms. O'Neill's office calls and asks if I have time for a phone interview. I agree to do it, still kind of wondering where all this was going. She asked me all kinds of questions about my life, where I'm from, what my food background is and so on. She asked me about where/how the corn salad recipe came about. Was it an old family recipe, was it something I served often, etc... Ummm well, no it's not an old family recipe. I mean sure I grew up eating corn based salads, but I just happened to have a lot of corn and some really ripe tomatoes on hand. I threw in the feta because I had it, and the basil seemed like a good idea too. There you have it, corn salad. We talked for a few more minutes, she explained to me that she was gathering info for Molly O'Neills cookbook. The cookbook was going to be a compilation of recipes and stories from across America. She said she didn't know if my recipe would end up making it into the cookbook or not. She was just getting my information and Ms. O'Neill would make the final decisions about what would be included in the cookbook. She thanked me for my time and that was that.

Fast forward to Dec. 2010. I'm pushing my cart, containing a 7 lb bag of confectioner's sugar and 4 lbs of butter, my usual purchases, through Sam's Club. I can't walk through Sam's without going down the book aisle and flipping through a cookbook or two. I love Christmas time because they usually have lots of newly released cookbooks. I picked up one or two cookbooks before I noticed this very large cookbook titled, One Big Table. The title caught my interest so I picked it up. I saw the authors name was Molly O'Neill. That name sounded familiar. Wasn't that the name of the author that I did that phone interview for way back when. I'd completely forgotten about that interview until I saw this book. "Oh well I guess my recipe didn't make the cut," was my thought because I'd never heard anything back from her office. I started flipping through the book and noticed the index was divided by state. Out of curiosity, I turned to Alabama...and right there it listed my hometown. No way! I flipped back to the page listed and there was my Fresh Sweet Corn Recipe along with a short bio about me! In the book it said that they'd gone through over 20,000 recipes and picked just 600 for the book. OMG! I wanted to grab the person next to me and say "My corn salad recipe is in this cookbook!!" Common sense kicked in and I didn't run around shouting "That's me on page 137." Instead, I picked up the book, put it in my cart and casually headed for the check-out. I did probably have a big goofy grin on my face, however!

Happy New Year! Wishing you all a healthy, happy year! I guess I should resolve to plan more and fly by the seat of my pants less, but you know what, so far so good!

I purchased this cookbook, "Enoteca" by Joyce Goldstein, last week-end. It's a beautiful book full of wonderful, simple Italian dishes. I love that with each recipe she includes wine recommendations. I was itching to try out some of the recipes, so in our usual Sunday fashion, the hubby and I set about to find a good dish to make for dinner. Some people play golf or engage in some other hobby,not us. Sunday afternoons are when we like to find something we've never made before, usually something Italian, and try making it for dinner. Well, I usually come up with some ideas and run them by the hubby and judging by his responses, narrow down the list. An "um well if that's what you want" translates to "I'm not very excited about it but I'll eat it". I try to find something that elicits a response somewhere between "ooh that sounds great", or "Oh make that!!!" If our meal involves making pasta my husband always volunteers for the job. It's somehow manly. Maybe because he gets to use a machine? Anyway, the rest of the prep falls to me which is fine because this way we don't argue on the best method to chop an onion, saute etc...
So this week-end I was excited to try a recipe in our new cookbook. We decided on Cannelloni with spinach, ricotta and prosciutto filling in a rich tomato sauce. I was a little surprised when this met with much enthusiasm from hubby as the recipe contains very little in the way of meat content. Which is the usual standard by which dinner (and all other meal) decisions are made. He may have been distracted by the pasta making opportunity and missed the fact that meat was not really involved. Whatever the case the pasta turned out beautifully and lack of meat was barely noticed. Hubby said it was a very good "vegetarian dish." I pointed out that I don't think vegetarian's eat prosciutto, but the meat/vegetable ratio still makes this a vegetarian dish in his eyes.

The sauce components