Image source Handwritten Recipes
Confession: cooking and baking are not my strong points, but I have a bit of a hoarding problem when it comes to saving recipes found during my daily perusal of food blogs, magazines and newspapers, with plans of whipping them up in the kitchen of my dreams one day. Even worse, there’s a folder in my Gmail inbox filled with recipe links – another, less environmentally harmful, form of hoarding.
Recipe pack rat problem on the table, it was no surprise that coming across Michael Popek’s blog-turned-cookbook, Handwritten Recipes, made my heart flutter. The writer and New York used bookstore owner spends his free time documenting ancient recipes found between the pages of paperbacks and hardcovers on his shop’s shelves. Some of the directions are found in the cookbooks they came from, and others, like “Nana’s Condensed Milk Salad Dressing,” show a little glimmer into the culinary hobbies kept by serious non-fiction readers.
Over the past month, Popek’s little blog has garnered some big name press. The folks at Bon Appetit dig it, and it was among a list of recommended reading by The New York Times’ dining section staff. Now, hundreds of bloggers and home cooks are finding inspiration in Popek’s posts as well, and sending him their own versions of the recipes he’s discovered.
I can’t get enough. Of course, a couple of the pencil-written instructions have made their way into my “to cook one day” Gmail folder. But while I wait for that distant day, I’m willing to put money on a big-screen debut of Handwritten Recipes (Julie and Julia style) within the next couple years. I can see it now: flashbacks to the lives of past recipe writers, a peek into the home kitchens of writers and cooks who saw something sentimental in Michael Popek’s creation, and an underlying plot of Popek’s cozy used bookstore business and slowly but surely growing fame.
Producers – I’m open to discussion on my cut of the proceeds when this story hits theaters.
Posted by Mary
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