A plea to cookbook publishers:

Please please please please please stop making lovely, informative cookbooks that can only be easily read on a fucking coffee-table. Its not fair to us who aren’t just there for the food porn.

I’m looking at you, Ad Hoc at Home, from which I had to COPY DOWN RECIPES INTO A SMALLER BOOK because the sheer size and weight of the tome had no place to rest in my little kitchen.

At least the great cookbooks of yore, and even the very sizeable How to Cook Everything is compact enough to put on one of those cookbook holder things.

I’m looking at you, Oh so Lovely My Nepenthe and Falling Cloudberries, with your beautiful pictures and lovely memories, and recipes I would cook from IF ONLY YOUR FUCKING PAGES STAYED OPEN. 

I mean, really?

And oh, Besh, my favorite. I can’t wait to cook from your book, but first I shall have to take a nap, because the effort of merely trying to hold your cookbook and leaf through its recipes is making me Le Tired.

I reiterate:

Publishers, Designers, Cookbook Writers: Pictures and Hardcovers are very, very nice. But don’t lose sight of what a cookbook is originally meant for - to be used.

Now if you excuse me, I’m going to pump up my biceps so that I can read Blackberry Farm in bed.