Dos Hombres, a Mexican restaurant in Colorado Springs, recently tweeted a quote from the writer Laurie Colwin: “One of the delights of life is eating with friends, second to that is talking about eating.” The quote, from the foreword to “Home Cooking,” her first collection of essays on food, continues “And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.” Colwin was a wonderful storyteller, and I can well imagine that she told and listened to many wonderful stories about food and many other matters over good meals with her friends and family.
This week I wrote about Laurie Colwin and her books as part of my Read This! series in which I recommend books that I really, really love and want everyone in the world to read. As Christmas approaches, with opportunities and occasions for those very delights of life about which Colwin wrote so many lovely essays, I’m still thinking about her, as well as about some other writers’ wonderful books on food that I posted about last week.
During the end-of-the-year holidays, it’s traditional not only to make and share special foods and meals with family and friends but also to look forward to the New Year and make plans and resolutions. Why not take some time to include some reading plans for the year to come?
Inspired partly by rereading Laurie Colwin, here are three books from my reading list that I hope to get to in 2011. All are well-known as landmarks of culinary writing, and all three writers had colorful and fascinating lives–a storyteller’s dream.
1) My Life In France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme.
2) The Art of Eating, by M.F.K. Fisher.
3) Italian Cooking, by Elizabeth David, which Colwin particularly recommends–or any of David’s other books, none of which I’ve read.
What foods are you making and sharing for the holidays, and are there any food books on your reading list?