It all started when I wandered into my local Barnes & Noble when a friend was delayed for lunch and I needed to kill time. They were advertising 50% off all hardback books for that day only - and there in the cookbook section were six of Ina Garten's cookbooks right in a row. I had been wanting to cook my way through all of someone's cookbooks - and there Ina was. (Just like she was there for me during much of quarantine with great, simple recipes and huge Cosmos!)
I ordered the remainder of the cookbooks not stocked in the store on Amazon. All are here and I'm ready for my new year's culinary adventure!
It's not going to be perfect. She doesn't like cilantro, for one thing. That's not going to work for me. She's also, it must be excused, a Yankee. New Year's Day in the South, for example, demands black-eyed peas and collard greens - and her cookbook index returns no recipes for either. February demands king cake concoctions of all sorts, and Ida isn't helping us there. Though I have not cooked many of her recipes, friends swear her cookbooks are no-fail standards that can always be counted on, so I'm excited to begin, even if we need to stray and improvise now and then.
(By the way, if you are an Ina fan too, you can buy signed copies of her cookbooks on her website for the list price. Sweet!)
