beka stays hungry : for new cookbooks

If I could fill a room with cookbooks from top to bottom, I absolutely would.

However, since I live in a space where the only room that actually has a door is the bathroom (seriously), this dream will not be coming true any time soon. Which is totally fine, since I supplement my cookbook-looking needs with regular trips to Barnes & Noble to page through cookbooks for hours on end.

Beautiful food photography + creative recipes = vortex in which time has no meaning.

I feel like there has been a deluge of new, wonderful cookbooks published lately. Here are just a few I’m pining after:

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier

I’m so glad Ree met Marlboro Man and started cooking delicious things in Oklahoma. Her first cookbook was filled to the brim with decadent recipes and gorgeous photography, and I’m sure this one is filled with more of the same!

Joy the Baker

Joy the Baker is one of my favorite food blogs, so it only follows that her new cookbook will become a favorite as well. I mean, with a recipe for single lady pancakes, how can you go wrong?

One Girl Cookies

I kind of want to move to NYC just so I can go to One Girl Cookies any time I please. But since I don’t foresee a transplantation to the Big Apple anytime soon, I’ll have to settle for their cookbook instead…which is probably the better (and far less expensive) of the two options.

Weeknights with Giada

For some awful, unfathomable reason, the Food Network moved Giada at Home from it’s previously schedule slot at 1:30pm to a new, far less convenient, time. (AKA, a time when the kids I nanny for are not napping.) I miss you, Giada! The only solution I can think of is to purchase this cookbook asap. (Or, Giada, we could just be friends in real life. That’ll work too!)

So, that’s the short list. Any others you guys would add to the roster?

beka stays in rochester : bin and barrel

I spent some time with Lauren (hi, Lauren!) in between shooting family sessions in Chili last Saturday. She thought it would be fun to go to Bin and Barrel, an antique store in Churchville. I had never been and I love nothing more than a low priced glass jar in my life so that sounded like a fun field trip to me.

Upon entering the store I found approximately 18 glass items that I was ready to claim…but then…THEN…I saw this, lowly and unassuming, laying on the floor:

I think I almost burst a blood vessel.

That, my friends, is a tried-and-true cast iron skillet. And all for the low, low price of $12.

TWELVE DOLLARS!!!

I still can’t believe it.

You’d better buckle up for a litany of posts related to cast iron cookery. I foresee many pancakes, grilled sandwiches, and seared chicken and fish in my future.

Oh. my. word. Bin and Barrel, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

(Me and Castie up there? We’re already BFF’s.)