The 60 Minute Chef

“Gone is the Brownstone front. Gone are the cook and the kitchen maid, the butler and the second man and the upstairs girl. Gone are the days when they would work from noon to midnight that the Judge’s guests might be fed.

Let them go, says Carol. All she has kept from those days are the two dozen marrow forks and a conviction that one’s friends must be fed, and fed only the best.”

~The 60 Minute Chef, 1947

Ex Libris Anonymous makes these delicious “book journals,” salvaging covers and pages from vintage books to create unique notebooks. I picked mine up the other day at Park Slope’s Cog and Pearl. Though I work in digital media and basically have an iPhone glued to my hand, I’m big on pen and paper. I find that some ideas are better organized, saved, and remembered when written down versus typed and sent off into the internet abyss, by e-mail, bookmark, application, or tweet.

I nabbed The 60 Minute Chef “book journal” since I was in the market for a food notebook in particular. I wanted a place to jot down recipes (“Mom’s Stuffed Pepper”), notes (“Look into food photography classes at ICP“), and lists (“Brunch Places that MUST be tried”).  The 60 Minute Chef was the perfect canvas for all of this and more (love me some doodling!) and it was adorable to boot.  The first few pages included gems like the above quote and recipes for various “dunks.”  It was so quirky and old-school. I had to take it home.

I’m tempted to buy the original, too. This Carol character is a riot. One more for the road:

“Weak coffee is eye-wash. Every cup of coffee you ever really enjoyed was strong and fragrant. Nothing less than double the proportion of 1 level table spoon to a cup will suit Carol.”

A girl after my own heart.