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Have I mentioned that I love cookbooks? I love the luscious writing, the completely, ridiculously aspirational recipes (Hello, French Laundry Cookbook), and the full-color photos which I always imagine that if I can justgetcloseenough, I will be able to smell the truffles wafting right through the paper. It’s porn for foodies. I want to lick the page. I haven’t yet, but there have been a couple of close calls.

My most recent foray into food porn is with The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper, by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift, the co-creators of the James Beard Award-winning and eponymously-named show from American Public Media. I was a little on the fence about this one at first. Although I love me some public radio, sometimes it veers over to the uber-quirky, or the “we take ourselves waaaaaay seriously” side of reporting/informing/entertaining. And although this book does take itself fairly seriously (the tone tries almost too hard to be casual, resulting in the opposite effect, if that makes any sense), it is extremely easy to follow, with recipes that even I could probably put together. The ingredients used aren’t overwhelming (i.e., they can be found in your local grocery store for the most part, even here in O-H, I-O), and in the kitchen tools and gadgets section, they do a great job of telling you what you really need, and what you can utterly live without.

One of the most interesting things about this book is the way it emphasizes using organic ingredients as much as possible. Rather than getting preachy about why we should do this (serious foodie = no likee the preaching. Remember, many of these folks are the same ones who enjoy a nice force-fed duck liver. Therefore, preaching = irritating and not hugely compelling), they instead write about how organic ingredients can add to the flavor of food by allowing cooks to use the whole ingredient, skins and such included. There are also a large number of vegetarian options, or ways to convert many of the recipes into vegetarian meals. But my favorite part may be the shortcut sections they include in every area of the book. No time to make stock (even the great Cheaters Homemade Broth recipe)? Not to worry. They review the best tasting stocks to be found on your grocer’s shelves. They give the same treatment to other ingredients, like canned tomatoes, beans, and similar pantry staples that most of us do not have time to mess with by the time we get home from work.

Another fun part aspect of How to Eat Supper is the general design of the book. You can tell the writers had a good time when they were putting it together. Neat little asides pop up all over the place, including food quotes (my favorite being: “I am not a vegetarian because I love animals, I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. — A. Whitney Brown), interesting food facts, suggestions on building your own library of cookbooks based on subject, and short excerpts of interviews with some of the well-known personalities who have graced The Splendid Table studios over the years.

Overall, this is the type of book that makes me think even I can figure out this whole cooking thing. Perhaps someday I’ll even adopt Sally Swift’s annual resolution, to cook her way through a new book over the course of the new year. If I do someday get up the cojones to do it, I think this may be the book that gets me there.

I am a food freak, I admit it. I’ve become somewhat better over the last couple of years, thanks to my husband’s obsession with sports. He addicted me to things like the NFL, that had really never held much interest to me before 2002. Anyway, just because my food freakiness is slightly better, doesn’t mean it’s cured. Although I spend less time watching Food Network, I find that I spend just as much time reading books about food. I love chefs, I like reading about what they do, what they make, how they put it all together (attention: this does not mean Rachel Ray). I like reading about individual foods, and tracing their origins (afterall, there is a whole book about salt. Yes. Salt). I like cookbooks, even if I can’t really make anything in my own kitchen (I do own a kickin’ knife set, though). I enjoy books about cooking technique (I long ago crowned myself the best theoretical cooker this side of the Rocky Mountains). And if a restaurant really captures my attention, and someone’s gone and written a book about it, I am very likely to read it. Which brings me to Alinea.

Alinea, the restaurant, is the creation of chef Grant Achatz (rhymes with jackets). A seemingly not-so-huge, no-so-celebrity chef sort of place, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. And the food! I must eat there. It’s been on my list for two years, since I read about Achatz in one of Michael Ruhlman’s books (Ruhlman opens Alinea (the book) with an interesting and lengthy essay), while he was still chef at Trio in Evanston, IL. However, Alinea is expensive for a peon like me; the shorter of the two tasting menus is $145 per person, not including wine. But my understanding is that it’s as close to a life-changing experience as one can get from a restaurant. At least, for a dorky food nerd like me. It supposedly may even be, may God strike me down where I sit if I am lying, more amazing that Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Yountville, CA.

Did I really just type that? Perish the thought.

Anyway, I can’t say whether it’s better or not, seeing as I am not rich and therefore unable to find $400-$600 dollars for me and my husband to dine in either of these establishments, but I can get just a little bit of a taste, pun intended, for what Achatz is trying to achieve at Alinea by reading his book. Part science experient gone terribly right, part art, and part just delicious, amazing, evocative creations that I can only hope pass over my palate someday, the book really is amazing. The food photography alone is worth the purchase, as long as you’re OK drooling all over yourself. But reading others’ takes on Alinea, and getting inside Achatz’s head, and finding out how he comes up with his individual dishes and menus makes the $50 retail price a little easier to…uh…stomach?

Honestly, I wanted to lick the page. But, I refrained. It was property of the Cuyahoga County Library, after all.