Well-Designed, Well-Made, Beautiful, and Delicious
By David Rosen, President, O’More College of Design
We live in an age where all information is at our fingertips. Literally. A touch of a screen will get us what we need.
Recently I remembered a chili recipe in the iconic Moosewood cookbook that I wanted to prepare, and, lo and behold, I could find it at the Moosewood website along with comments, questions and answers from people who use the cookbook: “Can you substitute quinoa for bulgur?” Sure!
I was so exited that I checked to see what else I could find. You can find James Beard’s recipes at his foundation. Or you can get them at the New York Times. Julia Child? Elizabeth David? Okay, she doesn’t have her own site, but you can find her recipes. And you can certainly find the Joy of Cooking or Fanny Farmer or Mark Bittman or just about anyone.
I am sure there is an app for that, or dozens. And dozens.
At the end of the excitement of finding that I could free myself from the bookcase of accumulated cooking instructions, I wasn’t feeling so excited.
At the office, I tell my team that I don’t want to be awash in transient pages. I want to see their work on the screen of my tablet, portable or smart phone, where all ephemera should be seen. However, because I am antediluvian enough to use the word “antediluvian,” I also like to hold a physical newspaper, even though I tend to peruse the news, ephemera deluxe, on my electronic devices.
When it comes down to it, I like paper. I like good paper. I like “the hand,” the way it can feel to the touch. I like its varied surface. I like the way it takes the print. I buy books. I do buy paperbacks, which I read and then return to circulation. But I like the hard-bound copy (usually a first edition) of something that I will want to read again or pass along to someone I love.
I don’t want to follow a Moosewood recipe on my computer screen. I want to touch the page with my hand or spoon, dog-ear it if I like, write in it, and then pass it along too.
In early December, I participated in the ritual unearthing of a pocket-sized, 16-page, letterpress edition of holiday cookery that was privately printed in the early 20th century in a 10-copy run by some quirky ancestor who thought the family needed to remember a few things about the old ways. The page on Maryland Style Eggnog—which is brandy, rum, bourbon stirred ever so slowly into egg yolks, sugar added, the stiffened whites meticulous folded in and then a gallon of heavy cream—is yellow with time, splattered Jackson Pollock-like with ingredients and festooned in pencil scratchings that take issue with some of the measurements and describe how the whites will stand in stiff peaks or stick to an inverted wooden spoon.
The joy of cooking is also the joy of connection. It is feeling that you are part of a history and part of traditions and cultures. The pages of a cookbook make that connection real and all the information in this information-rich age can’t touch it. Literally. Can’t touch it.
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