Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia

There are days (increasingly rare days!) when I’m brimming over with ideas for blog posts. I made the lovely Emma of Miss Print help me come up with a theme for this week’s top ten post because I was just… out. Once I had the idea in hand it was easy to execute though, because... dear hearts, I LOVE COOKBOOKS. I started this site as a book blog (and of course cookbooks are books!), but my posts about food are always more popular than the ones about books. Cookbook reviews = happy medium. And I do love reading through a good cookbook. Here are some of my absolute favorites.

Top Ten Favorite Cookbooks

1. The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker – Starting with the absolute basics – this is the very first cookbook I ever cooked out of. That’s because it was my mother’s kitchen staple (and it’s now mine). I was so proud when I found a used hardback copy at the thrift shop for my own shelf!

2. The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book by Emily Elsen and Melissa Elsen – I became the de facto Thanksgiving pie baker sometime in the past decade, but I really upped my game after reading and becoming a disciple of this cookbook. +10 pie game.

3. Saved by Cake by Marian Keyes – Marian Keyes is an Irish novelist who deals with life-threatening depression through baking. Her cookbook shares both wonderful recipes and hilarious stories.

4. Hallelujah! The Welcome Table by Maya Angelou – I’d never read Angelou before, so I started with her cookbook (it seemed natural to me!). The recipes weren’t necessarily my thing, but the stories! Good lord, this is literature. I’d be happy to have this out on my coffee table any day/any time.

5. From Our Kitchen to Yours: Trinity Baptist Church edited by my dad – One of my dad’s first retirement projects was compiling and editing a church cookbook. Naturally, a bunch of our family recipes made their way into the volume. Sometimes instead of calling my mother for this or that recipe, I can just open up this volume (super convenient!).

6. The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas – My youngest brother got Type 1 diabetes at two years old. My mother spent 10 years trying every healthy cleanse/diet/recipe known to man in order to help manage his disease (she eventually gave up a bit on the diet front because nothing except insulin helped long-term). This is one of the “diet” cookbooks (it’s not a diet cookbook at all! Just vegetarian.) that actually had recipes the whole family liked – so my mom kept cooking out of it even after the crusade ended. I did another thrift store hunt and found this at a used book sale.

7. Home Baked by Yvette van Boven, photos by Oof Verschuren – I won an Abrams Instagram contest earlier this year, and they sent me this lovely cookbook (+ 2 other cookbooks, a baking bowl & a spatula)! It’s got gorgeous pictures and delicious baked goods – I can’t wait to test a few more recipes and share my review with you all!

8. Fika by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall – Ahhhh this cookbook is great. Hand-drawn illustrations, delicious Swedish baked goods, cultural history… definitely my type of thing. I even made the cardamom buns on Christmas morning!

9. Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen – Maybe the first cookbook I ever purchased as a result of following a food/lifestyle blog. One of my favorite early bloggers (this was back in… 2009?) bought this giant book and talked at length about seasonal cooking and preserving, and I just fell in love with the idea of it. At the time I had a shoebox of a kitchen and none of it was practical, but I still adore this doorstopper. It really lives up to its title, and Allen is like the godmother of modern Irish cooking.

10. The Broad Fork by Hugh Acheson, photos by Rinne Allen – This one was a Christmas gift from a dear friend, and it embodies that seasonal, vegetable-crazed cooking life we all live now. I don’t get to the farmer’s market as often as I should, but when I do I turn to this cookbook for guidance.

Do you have a favorite cookbook?

Interested in other food-related posts? Check out Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking!

Imagine hosting a dinner party EVERY Friday night.

If you’re like me, that sounds overwhelming and expensive (the time commitment alone!). On the other hand, invite me to a dinner party every Friday night and I will come. Two months ago my lovely friends Katie and Jared started their Friday Night Meatballs tradition. They were inspired by this article. The goal? Connect with friends, family, and friends-of-friends who they haven’t seen in a long time. Start a tradition that will bring them joy. Make and eat delicious food in good company. And so far, they’re making good on all of those goals. There’s also the nice side benefit that this event doesn’t feel like “going out.” Even if I’ve had a tough week, I can still muster the energy to head to Friday Night Meatballs. And the company is always fascinating.

photo courtesy of Jared!

So what IS Friday Night Meatballs?

It’s a dinner party at Katie & Jared’s on any given Friday night (unless they’re out of town). It starts at 7pm, and it’s open to anyone who can see the invite on their Facebook walls. It is capped at 10 adults, though additional children and dogs are welcome. The menu is always pasta and meatballs, but with advance notice the hosts can accommodate all kinds of dietary restrictions. You don’t have to bring anything, but wine, salad, and desserts are welcome.

What’s so special about the atmosphere? I think part of the charm is that it’s low fuss. Katie and Jared are about hospitality. Their home is open on Friday night no matter whether you’re a local and they see you every week, or you haven’t talked in years. And they really work to get the food right. Pre-Meatballs, dinner with Katie & Jared might involve making ravioli by hand, or checking out the newest DC fusion restaurant or ramen place. Now I feel like I can open their fridge, jump in and help with prep, and/or show up 30 minutes early just to chat. BASICALLY… we’re even better friends than we were (and I love that).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the really cool crowd (Jared’s in political radio, Katie works in international aid) that Friday Night Meatballs pulls. I’ve talked about marine policy, the history of food spying, alligator rescue squads, and bikini baristas with fellow dinner party members. So many good stories, so many interesting people! It’s the DC I always imagined was out there, but didn’t necessarily meet because I wasn’t in the right crowd.