On my list of reasons to be sad about leaving my job to stay home with the baby is that I no longer have access to cast-off copies of new cookbooks. One of the last ones I got my hands on before leaving was Molly Stevens' All About Braising, which I've really been enjoying. I made a pot roast and the peperonata from it, and tonight I took some liberties with a Moroccan-spiced lamb chop recipe (more about that later).

The upshot of that is that, for the first time in a while, I'm picking out my own cookbooks. Todd bought me two for V-day: Julia and Jacque Cooking at Home and The Slow Mediterranian Kitchen. David Leite posted an interview with Paula Wolfert, the author of the latter cookbook, on his Leite's Culinaria. recently. In it they complained about how everyone's interested in food but no one cooks anymore. So it's ironic that I've really enjoyed reading her cookbook but have yet to make anything from it. But, as she says in the interview, it is the reading material that makes her cookbook unique. Someone could steal her topic but never reproduce the results. Kind of like some recipes (bread, for one).