The Notebook, 1985-2009. RIP.
I don’t know when it happened, exactly, or why, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve been fanatical about notebooks. When I was a child, I could never decide between spiral and stitch-bound for school (spiral always seemed to be sort of non-committal), and when I was old enough for a loose leaf, my father gave me a small, leather three-ring binder that his sister had given him when he was not yet ten. I still have it—it sits on my desk, filled with the same lined paper from 1974, which has not yet yellowed. For years, I’ve wanted to use it as my kitchen notebook, but I just can’t bring myself to; on the one hand, I worry that regular use will harm it after almost eighty years, and on the other, I worry that forcing utilitarianism upon it will somehow render it less meaningful to the universe. Which is just plain nuts, when it gets right down to it.
The other night, while enjoying the artist
Patrick McFarlin‘s book,
Life, which is a remarkable visual and textual exploration of that subject culled (I imagine) from the contents of McFarlin’s voluminous notebooks, I realized that this form of work—of art, really—is perhaps the most appealing to me because it’s a direct window into the mind of the artist. I remember seeing Dickens’ notebooks some years back, and I was fixated on the cross-outs and scribbles, and I felt the same way about DaVinci’s journals.
When it comes to the subject of food, and cooking, though, I find almost nothing more enticing to read than kitchen notebooks because they place the reader in the kitchen of the cook,
with the cook. Given the choice between M.F.K. Fisher’s narrative and her notebooks, I’d grab the latter first. My best college friend once sent me James and Kay Salter’s
Life is Meals, and after years of perusing it, the book now falls open to the entry about their old kitchen notebook. Recently, my colleague and fellow blogger,
Heidi Swanson, published a post about creating a new cookbook manuscript, and it was an amazing look at her creative process, involving lots of notebooks. And her
photo of all those notebooks? Oh Heidi.
So sultry.
I’ve kept a kitchen notebook for ages; my first one was an old Harvard Coop lab notebook into which I pasted everything from labels sweated off favorite wine bottles to clipped out Molly O’Neill recipes from the Times magazine section, to accounts of dinner parties and what I served, and what my guests liked, and what they didn’t:
Served paella to boss.
Ballast.
Years later, whenever Sue and I were given a recipe we liked, or I was testing something, it just got printed out, folded up, and stuck into the book with no rhyme or reason. A few months back, while visiting my mom in Manhattan, I found my fourth grade loose leaf buried in the depths of her den closet. Sturdy as hell (I remember it being a beast to carry to and from school), it seemed to be the perfect next kitchen notebook in the evolutionary process; with a hole punch, I could organize everything properly, and even protect the pages with plastic sheet protectors.
The new book, overstuffed.
Clearly, I’m delusional.
The biggest problem for me now is my Moleskine habit (and I know I’m not alone). I have at least one in every room, and in every bag. So far, only one has been filled up with ramblings, but that doesn’t keep me from acquiring them. Not long ago, my late cousin Harris’s girlfriend Lea came and visited us for an overnight, and asked me for a particular recipe; as I was talking, I noticed that she was writing it down in her little Moleskine, complete with pen and ink renderings of the prep and cooking techniques themselves. No wonder Harris loved her so much.
My father’s notebook
My next cookbook is currently simmering away, and I’ve already decided to throw caution to the wind and actually use my dad’s old leather binder as my project notebook. The subject matter would have made him smile, so it’s time.
I used to fill a black and white dappled cardboard stiff "Composition Book"s one after another. I started at the age of 12 and never looked back. You are not alone. This post made me smile. Thanks.
Thanks for posting. I love your blog (as you know!).
Just discovered your excellent blog via the Bostonia article (I'm a BU alum, too!). I'm also a devoted, hopeless notebook user who tried using a tape recorder to capture thoughts, inspirations, but went back to pen and paper. Thanks for making me feel less outdated.
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