As I first mentioned last week, March is National Nutrition Month®, and I’ll be devoting a post each Monday to good nutrition.  This week, I’ve decided that I’m going to leave my young urban professional ways behind (at least one night a week), and cook at home instead of eating out.  Here’s the thing: I love to cook, I really do.  Food to me is not just something delicious to eat and fuel my body, but it’s also a rich cultural artifact that says a lot about a family, a people, a region, a way of life, etc.  This is why I’ve always love reading cookbooks.  I rarely cook using a recipe, but I have a huge collection of cookbooks, and I can read a good cookbook like a novel.  They’re not just recipe manuals (at least good ones aren’t), but they’re both histories and current snapshots of how people live and what they value.

I love cookbooks almost as much as I love going out to eat.  Every night.  With few exceptions.  You see, I work.  A lot.  And then I go to the gym most nights (or at least I try to now).  And I try to hang out with friends.  And I write in my spare time – this blog and other things.  So that means I have a life which I really love, but that leaves me good and exhausted at the end of a day.  And I’d be happy to cook to unwind, but cooking brings with it something else that I just can’t stomach at the end of a long day – cleaning the kitchen.

One day, I have a fantasy that I’ll find » Read more: Announcing Chad’s Cookbook Reviews