Cookbooks I Found at the Bawlmer Book Festival

I haven’t had any time to write about the delicious food I had or the many books I bought at the Baltimore Book Festival. I went mainly to see Tim Gunn, he of Project Runway and Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. Doofus boy only realized as he got in the looooooong line to see him that I needed a copy of his new book! And they were out of them at his table. So I just went into a nearby booth and snapped a photo (a little tacky, but oh well). After that I went book huntin', and then sought out some sustenance, finding it at adjacent wine and soul food booths (fried fish, greens and sweet potatoes? Hush my mouth, that's good!)

Between giving up on Il Gunn and similarly giving up on a walk to the top of Mt. Vernon’s Washington Monument, I bought myself some cookbooks, among several other books. Also that day: a 2005 Frommer’s travel guide to Atlanta (20 cents) in case I can scrounge up the moolah, the book Dry by Augusten Burroughs (same price), and a fake travel guide to the mystical country of Phaic Tan (get it?) for $4.

Among my neat new cookbooks:

The New York Cabbie Cookbook by Mary Ellen Winston and Holly Garrison (Philadelphia: 2003, Running Press). Cost to me: $3

What a good way to cram an international, multicultural array of recipes into one cookbook: ask New York cabbies for their favorite recipes from their homelands (including the United States). Over 120 recipes from Greek avgolemono to Egyptian fried porgy to Senegalese egg and beef stew with veggies.

Food Editors’ Hometown Favorites Cookbook edited by Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Jane Baker ( USA: 1984, Dial Publishing Co.). Cost to me: $3

Just like the cabbie book does for international recipes, so this book does for regional US cuisine. And like that book, it is organized not by locale but by type of dish – meat, veggie, soup, dessert, etc. Collected from newspapers and food reviewers all over America.

The Onion Book: Bounty of Culture, Cultivation and Cuisine by Carolyn Dille and Susan Belsinger (Loveland, CO: 1996, Interweave Press). Cost to me: 20¢

Tons of onion recipes, both showcasing them as the main ingredient and as a key background player in another dish. Not much more to it than that. NB: this copy is signed by Susan Belsinger! In ink!

All New Sophie Leavitt’s Penny Pincher’s Cookbook by Sophie Leavitt (Hanover, PA: 1978, published by the author). Cost to me: 20¢

Tons of recipes, laid out not with ingredients followed by procedures, but all mixed together. Presumably, it is written specifically to save y’all (and me) money!

One more y’all should get: Adam Roberts’ The Amateur Gourmet book. Not quite a cookbook, more like a book-length version of his blog. Funny. I bought this at Books-A-Million, not the Book Fair.

Other photos:

The Elegance gave me wine - and left a not-so-subtle hint about a tip (I wasn't going to leave one because I wasn't too thrilled about their service, but the reaction to my stiffing them on the tip was so funny that I gave in). The "FRIED FISH - FRIED SHRIMP" folks gave me, well, fried fish. And greens and sweet t'paters. Mmmm.

Books for everybody!

This was the beginning of the line for Tim Gunn. And these people remembered to bring books!