DAILY RAMBLING

Yesterday turned out quite well, once you got past the nine hours of excruciating boredom at the office. My copy of Sethra Lavode arrived, as well as The Year's Best Food Writing 2003, ordered of course to get the free shipping from Amazon.com (a clever idea of theirs, I must say, and I must also say that I don't feel too much guilt about buying from them this time, because Sethra isn't available in hardcover at normal bookstores anymore, and I have to have my hardcover editions).

We also got our taxes done and found ourselves anticipating a small but pleasant refund, enough that we might actually be able to go out for dinner without having uncomfortable clairvoyant flashes of our bank balance. But back to books....

I am actually going to set Sethra aside for a bit, save it for a weekend perhaps when I have nothing much to do, and then immerse myself. I've been waiting for it for a long time, and a few more weeks won't hurt. At the end of Lord of Castle Black I was quite pleasantly aggravated with the author for ending the story at such a point, and I don't mind prolonging it a bit.

And of course I have another new book to read, too. Obviously, I should not be buying books at all, given the state of our collection (there was quite a nice piece on the Saucy food zine site having to do with books yesterday, and I had to sternly resist the impulse to go out and look for the book they were talking about, which actually sounded quite interesting), but I am easily convinced that once in a while won't hurt. And I'm almost finished with England in the Late(r?) Middle Ages -- I'm not entirely sure of the title and this format makes pauses to look things up rather difficult. Perhaps next week I'll give myself a bit more leeway. In any case I'm almost finished with it, and have quite enjoyed it, indeed am rather astonished to find myself now almost understanding -- at least at a basic level -- the politics of the time and the confused and confusing chain of kings. Bravo to the author.

Food appears to be taking over my leisure hours in a way that surprises me. I've enjoyed food for quite some time, of course, and have been somewhat proud of my cooking over the years, but have never really until lately been much interested in reading about it, except for a few "history of cooking" type books. It's not too difficult to figure out that the energy my work is not currently demanding is being sublimated into other things, and I wonder if this is a temporary thing. I'm reading a few food blogs, looking at the writing in magazines rather than only the recipes, and now buying books that consist purely of people talking about food. I'm looking forward to spring because I want to shop at farmer's markets. I'm trying to buy organic produce, and getting used to the goth girls at the supermarket looking at me as if I were yuppie scum. I feel guilty about having prepared foods and anything with trans-fats in it in the household. I've joined a monthly cooking club, though have only managed to attend one meeting so far. I'm making a mental commitment to try more new recipes, to be a bit more daring in the kitchen.

This can probably be taken too far, of course, and I'm trying not to. Food people can really be quite boring, so I'd rather not fall into that particular pit. But in the meantime, it's giving me something to do, and I suppose it's not a bad thing to take one's hobbies seriously.

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