Cooking Book

I can get behind any cook book that doesn't bother too much about the recipes. I like free form, how-to-make-things instructions. And of course, preferably written by a novelist or poet.

Wisconsin poet, Lorine Niedecker's Cooking Book is more of a description of American folk cooking than a cookbook. Handwritten and given as a gift to a friend in a red autograph book, Cooking Book is incredibly charming. It's written simply, with a sense of humor. It's a conversation between Niedecker and her husband, Al, picking up on his memories of how things used to be cooked. Here are some of the endearing lines:

"The fact that I didn't know much about cooking should entitle me to write a book about it."

"Then grill the brats till 'nice' and and brown, then put 'em into the beer and onion mixture and let simmer for about an hour"

"The name Pigs in a Blanket covers a multitude of sins. Al knew it somewhere, sometime to have been beef wrapped in a cabbage leaf. A mix-up in the animal kingdom." (These are Pigeons! That name is also a mix-up in the animal kingdom.)