This was prepared before the COVID-19 Pandemic became an emergency in the United States. This post is about our rating system going forward as we continue to review cookbooks and support cookbook writers during a difficult time.
2020 is a new year, and while it’s been three months since the new year began, there is obviously still time for change. I want to make a change here at Eating Normal, and I want your opinion. I want to start rating our monthly cookbooks. A few weeks ago, I asked you what you wanted to be considered when I started rating our cookbooks. A few of you responded on facebook, and you’ve been heard. Here are our categories: Accessibility When we talk about accessibility in terms of a cookbook, we’re talking about what it takes to make the things inside. Do you need a lot of special equipment? Can you get the ingredients without a two hour research period at your computer? Eating Normal is for home cooks, and I want you to know if these books have a place in your home. This is the most easily identified rating that will help my readers. Difficulty Are there techniques in the cookbook that an average cook might struggle with, or do I just need to know how to boil water? Does the writer explain those hard things, or do they expect you to know it? We all need a challenge once and awhile in the kitchen. We also need someone to teach us how to overcome those challenges. Eating Normal will assess the general difficulty of the recipes in each cookbook and how well the writer helps guide you to rate the difficulty of the book. Originality No one needs seven different versions of relatively the same recipe piling up in their cookbook repertoire, except for me. My job is to help make sure you aren’t buying the same cookbook with a different chef’s name on it. Creative, interesting recipes will give points in originality to each cookbook. Almost every cookbook will have some kind of chicken recipe, etc, but we want different flavors and combinations. By their powers combined, we have created the first iteration of our Eating Normal rating scale. This is open to adjustment over the coming months as we actually try to rate cookbooks against these scales. They may not work for every cookbook, and there may be areas that I want to address that these three do not adequately address. For now, it’ll have to do. This rating scale will make its first appearance during our final review of Japanese Home Cooking by Sonoko Sakai, coming out in a few days. We already have a few articles out about our experience with the book, and there are still more to come.. Take a look around! We’ve hit a huge burst of posts toward the end of March now that my initial panic has passed and I can make myself do things.
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This article was written before the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread aggressively within the United States. Please keep that in mind while reading. ----------------- Saturday morning came. It was the one day this week where I wouldn’t hate myself for heating up my kitchen with my oven for an hour making bread. Wisconsin is about to get its first taste of spring with some near 50 degree weather, and my second story apartment heats up like no one’s business the minute the weather gets over 35. I couldn’t start a Japanese cookbook in good conscience with anything but the milk bread recipe, especially when it is actually present in the book. We’ve all seen what’s going on in the world around us right now. We have all panic bought two weeks worth of groceries and made fun of people getting too much toilet paper. We’ve watched restaurants close entirely or switch to delivery and carry out only. The world is a little darker than usual right now. There is no end in sight, but we all have to eat. What we do know right now is that businesses and people are suffering as a result of the great measures we have to take to slow the spread of COVID-19, but we can help.
Keep in mind that some of these tips will mostly apply to people like me who are at lower risk. Social distancing is important for everyone, but we are safer while trying to support people who are struggling right now. A lot has been said about how we have all seen this before. I’m a child of the nineties. I saw swine flu and ebola and SARS and West Nile Virus. I remember the general concern in the air, but I lived in a place where all of these things felt so far away. I don’t think I knew anyone who ever got swine flu at the time. Ebola never exploded like we were all terrified of. There is conflicting information out there about the current pandemic that has us all frightened, and I want to believe the people that tell me not to be afraid.
But I am afraid. I’m afraid for my older relatives and my friends with chronic health conditions. I’m scared of all of the cancellations pouring in every single day from the NBA to the Overwatch League to Disneyworld. My every day life has already been disrupted in some small way by the abrupt ending of sporting events nationwide. Every time my boss calls us together in the office, I feel my heart leap in a mini panic attack. This month has already been a challenge in terms of cooking from our cookbook of the month. I know when i initially posted about my choice, I knew that sourcing the ingredients would be a problem for me and probably most of my readers. Most of the traffic here comes from the Midwest if my Facebook commenters are any indicator, and the Midwest is not the most friendly location in the world to find specialty dried seaweeds at the supermarket. Any specialty grocer could be as much as two hours away if you want to drive. So, how do we conquer this hurdle when we want to take on a cuisine as challenging as that of Japan? There is always Amazon. We use it for everything, and now that they are partnered with Whole Foods, folks in bigger cities can even use it for their everyday groceries. My first weekend researching this month’s cookbook, I spent more than fifty dollars on Amazon in order to source some of the core ingredients mentioned within the first few pages of the book. It’s fast, and it’s easy. When their boxes arrived in my mailbox, however, I wondered if there was a better way that I had honestly just ignored up until now. |
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