I Eat Words

I possess a weakness for bookstores. Barnes & Noble gives me butterflies, and I mourned the closing of Borders. But oh, independent bookstores make me weak in the knees. They are the 6th Avenue of my reading dreams. And I've always admired a well-stocked library. I've felt most comfortable and at home between the quiet and narrow rows of collections, musty with age and use. I don't have an e-reader, but don't know if I want one. I appreciate the tactile and emotional connection with pages, spines and hard covers. I prefer paying a horn-rimmed glasses-wearing cashier for my books.

And in these places, I tend to head toward familiar shelves: shelves holding food writing tomes. Elation filled my bookworm heart when I found Rabelais in Portland. Or strolled the aisles of Strand Bookstore in New York City. Or browsed the cookbooks in Berkeley's Pegasus. Or revisit Amherst Books and Food for Thought in Amherst again and again. I imagine one day to live in a home with a study, wall to wall with shelves holding beautiful and classical works. Only a well-used kitchen where the sunlight streams across a worn wood floor or a farmers market bursting with wooden baskets filled with butternut squash and bunches of kale trumps this sense of place.

I just purchased Best Food Writing 2011 and What Einstein Told His Cook. I recently completed Bird by Bird, and while it is not a volume of food writing, it is still a text about writing (and life, for that matter): the struggle and success of it all.

I've also recently discovered Cook's Illustrated, and cannot seem to part from my monthly edition of Eating Well.

So when I'm not trolling Pinterest, stalking Twitter or reading Facebook status updates, you will find me curled up on the couch reading.

Question of the Day: What are some of your favorite food writing texts? Magazines? Collections?