Books.

There has been a lot of talk about books around the web at the moment. About old favourites, new favourites, and of course everyone's favourite, the public library.

So I thought for a bit of fun I would share with you just how out of hand my little cook book library is getting. We live in a small flat, and are both book obsessives, and so books are on shelves, on floors, on books, in cupboards, and always, always in hands. We have many genres, and are not snobs, "bath books" (those deemed comfort reads that do not suffer from damp fingers, rather revel in them) are tucked alongside classics, both new and old. My PhD related books take up almost the entire spare room (which is mostly to do with having to have at least three copies of all works by the author I was writing about, one for reading, one for annotating, and one first edition - oh and sometimes ones in languages I can't read, but simply wanted for the novelty!)

But it is the cookbooks that pose the most problems. They are of unusual and uneven sizes, and so do not uniformly suit one shelf. Nor is there space enough for all of them in the kitchen, so they are spread out all over the place like a grazing flock. And they move around. They go from being presents on show (in the living room), to bedside reading, to much splattered and in use, to pausing on the kitchen table before they make the rounds again. They are often found in cahoots with the craft books, conversing with the gardening section, or hanging out with the fantasy literature.

I dream of a house where I can have them all in one place, and yet I know it's much more fun this way.

Where do your cookbooks hang out?

A thank you, and a promise of things to come.

My Mum's amazing. Look what arrived for me in the post this morning! She's also rather naughty. We were innocently having a discussion on the phone a few nights ago about the cookbooks I'd seen on Amazon, when suddenly she asks me to confirm my postcode with her. I ask why, slightly suspiciously, and she says, because those books will be on their way. See, wonderful, amazing, but very naughty indeed - not entirely unlike her mother!

Thanks to her never-ending generosity and indulgence of her daughters obsessive book/baking/cooking habits, I now own the new Ottolenghi cookbook, the Nigel Slater "Kitchen Diaries", and Locatelli's "Made in Italy." The first will help my not only my veggie repertoire, but will add some great ideas to baking days, the second will prompt me in the right direction whilst continuing my seasonal cookery, and the final one will make me yearn for Italy even more than I already am, and will hopefully help cure my cravings with great food and stories. All three books are beautiful aesthetically too - which to me is important in all books, but particularly books about something as aesthetically pleasing as good food - and no doubt will become favourites for bedtime (and test match) reading very soon indeed.

So this is a public thank you to my Mum for the wonderful new additions to my ever-growing cookbook collection and a promise that all subsequent food adventures from them will dutifully be posted, and quite possible even be carried to the North when I go and visit.

Thank you Mum, you're the bestest.

Dedication to the cause (Or, bread and books)

We spent our lazy Sunday yesterday pursuing one of our favourite pastimes: buying books. There is something so wonderful about browsing in book shops, and I must admit that N and I do it very well indeed. So well in fact that seven hours can slip by with us barely noticing. Opps!

We returned to the flat very smug indeed with a bag full of lovely purchases, and the smell of secondhand bookshops lingering on our clothing. However, there was no incentive to cook (too many books to look at) and certainly no incentive to bake bread. We ordered a curry and settled down with the taped match in front of us and our newly acquired books littering our laps and sofa.

It was past half eight when we finished eating and I was so tempted to give in and just get some emergency store bought bread out of the freezer (we have three loaves in there from pre-baking resolutions which are agreed to be emergency loaves). But something in me just wouldn't give in. I knew we'd be going to bed late-ish and figured that bread would take a maximum of three hours with resting, proving and baking. So, with N ploughing through one of his new books and yelling match highlights at me down the flat I quickly threw ingredients into a bowl. Using the wonderful pecan and cranberry recipe (mentioned earlier somewhere in my bread making posts), as a guide I made a wholemeal nut and seed loaf using half pecans, half walnuts and a large handful of pumpkin seeds.

Since I know the proportions of flour, water, salt and yeast by heart now all I had to do was work out how much of the nuts and seeds to use (70g nuts, 30g seeds). I then left it to rest and prove as the recipe recommended and baked it for 40mins. By 11.45pm we had a lovely crusty new loaf ready for the morning and the smell of fresh bread to waft through the flat as we lay reading in bed.

It was great, and proves that a little dedication to the cause is always worth it. Books and bread, numbers two and three on my favourite things list.

Another successful lazy Sunday.