Many people confess to reading cookbooks “like novels,” that is, cover-to-cover, usually in bed and often with no real intention of preparing the dishes the author describes. The late, beloved food writer Laurie Colwin once wrote, “You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want not to be hungry; and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved….Cookbooks say to the person who’s reading them, ‘If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others. You will make everybody feel better.’”

I certainly understand.  Food is a comfort.  When I am happy – or stressed – food comes into play.  When I want to show others that I care about them, I long to feed them.  Sometimes I find comfort in reading the food-words of others.  I think it’s why so many talk about what they have eaten in blog posts, where the old joke was “I had a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.”     It isn’t that we have nothing else to say, it’s that we want to share with the nameless faces out there a part of our comfort.

For Christmas 2007, I purchased myself one item:  Mario Batali’s Molto Italiano.  And it resides, not in my kitchen where most cookbooks live, but among the books in my bedroom.  I have yet to make a single item from this lovely book, but I have read it, like the article suggested, cover to cover like a novel.  One day, I will make a special meal from these pages.  In the meantime I have enjoyed the reading of it, savoring the words and imagining the ingredients in my hands as I prepare them to nourish the ones that I love.