The Best Books (I'm hoping to read) in 2008

By Kathleen Daelemans

I’ve been waiting for Gayle King to call me for ever to tell me she needs to go over a few things. The call will go like something like this...

Fresh off the phone with you know who she'll buzz one of her own assistants, "Cindy, honey, it's Gayle, can you get Kathleen Daelemans on the phone, I've been meaning to call her for ages.

I'll be in my kitchen inventing a new dish that just happens to include every single favorite food of her childhood. The phone will ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. Of course I'll pick it up on the second ring.

"Hello?"
"Kathleen Daelemans?" her assistant will inquire.
"Who may I say is calling?" I'll ask.
"This is Cindy Handy for Ms. Gayle King. Is Ms. Daelemans in?"
"May I place you on hold? Ms. Daelemans is in the kitchen testing recipes," I'll say.

I'll put the phone underneath a stack of flour-sack cloths and fake scream, "Oh my God, Gayle King is finally calling!", to the cha cha. Twenty six letters and forty two emails to O magazine and Gayle King is finally calling. "God is good, cha cha cha!"

I hope there isn't anything in my teeth, is all I think in between, What if she's wired and the FBI is trying to arrest me for stalking? Confidence. Everything is fine. She thinks I'm talented and wants to hire me. Where's my Told-You-I'm-All-That lip gloss?

Oh-my-god-where's-the-last-letter-I-wrote-to-her? Shit, the curry is burning. I've made her wait too long. Where is the damn phone? Deep breath. Inhale in. Exhale out. Two count demi-plie...Last check of the teeth. And you're on... "Hi, this is Kathleen...

"Kathleen. Gayle. I've been meaning to call you. Love your work. Always wanted to meet you. I'm sure you get this all the time, but boy would I love to get you in my kitchen for a week!"

"Actually..."

"We need you over here at Hearst. There are donuts all over the break rooms. The cafeteria menu needs an overhaul and half the girls over here are young and on their own and could use a few good cooking lessons. Sound good?"

"Err uh..."

"Great. It's settled. I'll put Cindy back on and she'll work out the details with you. So nice talking to you, Catherine". Click.

You Don't Pay Me $150 Bucks An Hour For Nothing, Do Ya?

That's the voice of my shrink. I taped her saying that into one of those "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up", necklaces. I press the little button on it every time I start thinking negatively. I've been the recipient of blank stares and hostile looks and I think my new accessory has cost me one date so far, but it really helps a lot.

Okay, so when Gayle King really does call it will go like this:

"Kathleen, this is Gayle King calling from O Magazine. I have some great news for you. We've been looking to expand our food section and we'd really like to bring you on board. Your writing is hysterically funny, your message is powerful and we like that you're able to really empower women (and men) with the tools they need to cook for themselves and to teach their children to cook in a time when so few people really know how to cook or even know where the fresh fruits and vegetables they're consuming are grown or how they're grown and in what conditions. It's important work."

"As you elegantly put it in your...(sound of papers shuffling)...ah yes...in the 26th letter you sent (Picture a 40 something year old cook dying of embarrassment in front of God and Gayle King) Twenty Three letters, Kathleen? That's a record. Okay, here it is. You wrote, 'We're a nation of parents who don't cook raising a nation of children who don't know how to cook, enrolled in school systems that no longer teach home economics or cooking.'"

Insightful and true. You went on to say, "We are the cure for the childhood obesity epidemic. It begins with us teaching our children how to cook. We must care enough about ourselves and our own bodies or we haven't a hope of raising our children into healthy teens let alone into healthy adults.

Maintaining a healthy kitchen and good eating habits is a discipline that requires no more time or effort than maintaining proper grooming. Both are a privilege."

Gayle and I will chat awhile longer (she in her pedicure chair, me in my kitchen, with no seeds in my teeth, wearing killer lip gloss, trying to revive my burnt curry). We'll email back and forth and before long, I'll be a worker bee for O. Probably. That's what I'll be doing. Because Gayle, will no doubt, will like my curry. And people will do anything to get a good curry recipe.

O hh Don't You Know...

In the meantime, until Gayle has a chance to plow through her mail, I took a picture of the stack of books on my desk.

I have this fantasy that my books will be featured in one of those magazine centerfolds that features stars and the books they love (Gayle King can you hear me?).

And P.S. I do not race through magazines every month hoping to see if Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox and Dame Edna have any of my books laying around their homes in any one of the myriad of photo spreads they're featured in.

I don't sit there in Starbucks with a stack of magazines and a magnifying glass trying to read the book jackets on the book shelves in the background of the photos they're featured in for heavens sake.

But Jen, Court (I can call you Court, can't I?) Dame, it would really help a girl out if you could just throw one of my books on your coffee tables or maybe hold one up on a red carpet every now and then. In fact, the next time Joan says, Who are you wearing?  After you say Dolce and Gabana, roll in a quick, Cooking Thin.

Doesn't have to make a hot hoot of sense. Joan will think she's losing it, so she won't ask who Cooking Thin is, people will Google it later and I'll be able to pay my mortgage another month. I can get you as many copies as you need. Want. Just say the word. I know how you guys love, Um, appreciate Swag. And don't worry. My books are so totally biodegradable.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...

I've never been one to sit around and wait for things to happen in my career so while I'm waiting for Gayle, Opry, Jen, Court and Dame, I shot this Polaroid of my stack of books for Annie (Lebowitz). Obviously she's busy right now but at least she has the lay of the land for when she frees up. That Suri. Such a cutie. But what a time sucker. Any who...

The K List ...

You'll have to squint or email me for the title of the top book. This is a G rated blog.
You’ll see a darling book, Keeping Fit For Fun, you won't be able to buy because I got it at a garage sale for a dollar. I just love it. It’s got a cute picture of two school children on the front and chapters like, Jack’s Pony Cart, The Picnic Races and A Good Parade. There are questions in the back of each chapter.

Tessie and Pearlie, A Grandaughter’s Story by Joy Horowitz is a book I’m looking forward to reading. It’s on top of a stack of about 30 other books I’m looking forward to reading. My Mom has read Tessie and Pearlie and she really enjoyed it. She doesn’t give me books unless she knows that I’ll love them so I really can’t wait to break my arm. Or my leg. Or at least two fingers. It’s the only time I have time to read. When I get surgery or when I break a few bones.

 

A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson is a sweet little book I had to have. The drawings are beautiful. I’d love to own some of the original watercolors. The author spent a year in Japan and kept a diary. The book is the kind of book I imagine the Sex in the City girls might keep in their bathrooms, or parents might give college students going off to Japan. If a trip to Japan is on your life list, A Year in Japan is the kind of book that will ensure your success.

                                                                                                                        The second book on the pile, you must rush out and buy. It's out of print, so get your Google on. It's called, The I Hate to Cook Book, by Peg Bracken. She was a Goddess, among women and home cooks. Here's an excerpt...


“…Facts must be faced. Vegetables simply don’t taste as good as most other things do. And there isn’t a single vegetable, hot or cold, that stands on its on two feet the way a ripe peach does, or a strawberry. Even sweet corn needs butter and salt. It is interesting to note that vegetables beginning with A are the most self-sufficient: artichokes, asparagus, avocados, which have really slithered out of the fruit kingdom, no matter what the botonists say. But the farther down the alphabet you go, through rutabagas, spinach, and turnips, the more hopeless they become, given all the butter and salt you’ve got.)

Actually, the food experts know this, too, way down deep. You can tell they do, from the reliance they put on adjectives whenever they bump into a vegetable. “And with it serve a big bowl of tiny, buttery, fresh-from-the-garden beets!” they’ll cry. But they’re still only beets, and there’s no need to get so excited about it.

Never make the mistake of combining two rather repulsive vegetables in the hope that any good will come of it. Two wrongs never make a right. Once I knew a lady who cooked beg carrots hallowed out  their middles and filled the resultant canoes with canned peas.
    
In order to make most vegetables fit to eat, you must cover up the basic taste of the vitamins with calories. You use butter, oil, sour cream, nuts, chopped bacon, mushrooms and cheese as well as lemon juice, vinegar, herbs and a lot of other thing which we shall come to presently.

This is not only fattening, for the most part, but it is also a lot of trouble. You’re certainly not going to do it very often. There is no reason you should either. The children must learn sooner or later that life isn’t all about beer and skittles, and your husband knows it anyhow. It won’t hurt them a bit to eat their plain buttered vegetables at gun point, with a running commentary by you on what will happen to their teeth and complexions and bottoms if they don’t.

Moreover, there is a certain social cachet to serving your vegetables plain. Indeed if your entrée is in anyway fancy, the haute cuisine crowd frowns on anything but the simplest vegetable as an accompaniment, which should be a load off your mind and off your luck.

So just gird your loins and serve that big bowl of tiny, buttery, fresh-from-the-garden beets, murmuring---if you care to---“After all, there’s nothing like good butter, salt and course-ground pepper.” (Always be sure it’s coarse-ground, because a lot of people feel that anything peppered should look as though it had been fished out of a gravel pit.)”— by Peg Bracken

And for those of you new to my world, welcome. I'm the author of Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen, 200 Easy Recipes for Healthy Weight Loss. My second book is Getthing Thin and Loving Food, 200 Easy Recipes to Take You Where You Want to Be and then I wrote, Chef Kathleen's Cooking Thin Daybook, A 52 Week Plan to Lose Weight, Get Fit, and Eat Right.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Comments

[Melissa]

I grew up in CT and Gayle was our TV anchorwoman for years and years! Little did I know that she'd become so fantastic! She still looks exactly the same. If you want to score some points with her, ask how Hilton Kadderly is doing. (He was the weather guy for-ever there, too.)

[Sheri]

LOL @ title of top book on the stack! Sounds like something Dr. Oz would LOVE to read.