a must-read

I've decided that I'm going to take a little jaunt into the realm of "food lit" - books and memoirs about cooking. I was not impressed at all with the book "Julie and Julia," which I read last summer. There was quite a bit about cooking, but mostly, the writer is just really crass and profane ... even when talking about the cooking, actually. I'm hoping that's an anomaly and I've built up a list of other food lit I want to read.

Our local library (amazingly enough) had "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" by Gesine Bullock-Prado, and I read it this past week in about 3 days. (With 3 small children around, that's moving fast for me.) LOVED it. From the first sentence, I was hooked. "I saw the devil at the age of 3 and he gave me chocolate. It changed my life forever." Awesome.

Long story short - she's Sandra Bullock's sister and worked with her in Hollywood. Got sick of LA and when their mom died of cancer, decided to do what she really loved - bake. So she moved to Vermont and opened a bakery. How cool is that? To just up and leave, and try something new. Anyway, so this book is her memoir about doing that, and it includes a number of fantastic-sounding recipes (minus her obsession with coffee - bleh - but we can get around that.)  Some of them are traditional desserts from Germany that sound oh so tasty! And I really like that she talks about desserts as things to be shared, and something to be special rather than inhaled in mass quantities as we gluttonous Americans tend to do.

I posted about the book on Facebook and talked about it with Adam and a couple of friends. Adam picked it up tonight and started reading it. He wasn't even halfway done when he said that he is not going to scan a couple of the recipes for me to keep - he wants to buy it. Done.

Ms. Bullock-Prado also has a blog, which I've added to the "food lovers unite" links in the sidebar. I'm all over trying to make my own English muffins - recipe on the blog, not in the book. I love them just out of the toaster, a little bit of a butter, and very thin slice of cheese that you just let sit until the heat of the muffin softens it. Then eat. Yum. And homemade English muffins? That has all the makings of a breakfast nirvana.