You know I’ve got a thing about books, and cookbooks are no exception.

Surrounding my desk in the kitchen I’ve got generous shelf space, and they are crowded with all manner of cookbooks. The cookbooks on my shelves fall into two categories – cookbooks that remind me of great meals, and cookbooks from which I cook great meals. I love to bring home a cookbook as a memento of trip somewhere special. I have stacks of cookbooks that read more like they belong in a travel section – there’s the Michael Mina cookbook with the lobster pot pie recipe, Alice Waters from Chez Panisse, Gundel to remind me of the paprikash we savored in Budapest, Dishoom in London, from the first time we ever tried Indian food and the waiter kept bringing dish after dish, each one better than the previous, the Palace Café in New Orleans, Eataly (from the Eataly in Italy, which felt slightly sacrilegious to visit but was actually a marvel), French Laundry from the wine country.

I pull these cookbooks off the high shelves from time to time, but – truth be told- it is to revisit the memories of those adventures. I feel far too intimidated to try to cook any of the recipes, not only because I fear that I lack the skill to pull them off, but that a failure might also inadvertently dislodge the memory of the perfect meal that inspired me to buy the cookbook in the first place.

On the easier to reach shelves in my kitchen, you’ll find the ones from which I do cook. The old and the new Joy of Cooking, two editions of Ruth Reichl’s Gourmet, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the Silver Spoon in multiple versions, every one of the Barefoot Contessa – the ones I cut my teeth on and learned the basics. The Italian wedding soup that is our Christmas lunch tradition is an embellishment of Ina Garten’s recipe, and the cookbook opens immediately to its page due to the years of accumulated spills and stains. Then there are the ones from the stages I’ve gone through – Canyon Ranch and Lake Austin for tasty, healthy food. Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking from the aftermath of cooking classes in Italy, from which I fleetingly thought that all our pasta would be freshly made, easy as it seemingly was to make. 1080 Recipes, now simply called Spain, but still the bible of Spanish cooking, giving rise to a very brief interlude after a trip to Barcelona where I was convinced that mastering tapas would inspire me to entertain more.

A funny side story about 1080 Recipes: when our daughter was in third grade, she announced that she needed a recipe from a traditional dish for the unit on food they were completing in her Spanish class. We pulled 1080 Recipes off the shelf and she painstakingly copied the list of more than 25 ingredients and the two pages of detailed instructions for traditional seafood paella. We both puffed a little with pride at the effort, not content with something more simple. Ah, but the thing about pride is that it is kissing cousins with karma, and the next day I learned that all the students were to prepare their dish – enough for the whole grade, 45 students in all – and bring it to their feast by 10am the following morning. Egad. I was loathe to admit it then, but I’ll confess now that we enlisted the help of our talented chef friend who did the lion’s share of the work for us at 6am while we took in just how over our heads we were. When my son came up through the same class two years later, we remembered well the lesson pride has cost us and selected a tasty empanada recipe which we prepared several nights in advance, popped in the freezer, and only had heating left to do the morning of the feast. We all did later take a series of paella classes, determined to shake the shame we felt at not being able to produce it in our own right the first go-round.

But I digress.

I think part of why I love a cookbook is because I love to share a meal with people, and I’m somehow wired to believe that cooking a meal for someone is a way to show love. It’s a funny characteristic, though, because I am a child of the 70s and 80s, where packaged food was very in vogue. We ate TV dinners on weekends, luncheon meat and American cheese sandwiches on white bread, canned vegetables, instant potatoes and coffee, crystallized lemonade, cakes from a box and frosting from a tub. We had a small garden that my father painstakingly tended that produced peppers and tomatoes and strawberries, but otherwise – like many of us from that generation – the novelty and convenience of processed food made it a staple of our diets.

But I’d always watched my grandmother cook – so effortlessly adept at dishes that turned out to be quite complicated when I tried them myself, but herself someone who rarely ate processed foods – and it planted seeds of interest in learning to master it for myself. There were plentiful rows of fruit preserves, homemade pickled and hand-canned vegetables on the screened-in porch of her farmhouse, and she could concoct the most delicious meals from what appeared to be a modest pantry of staples.

We weren’t particularly adventurous eaters growing up, and it wasn’t until I came to college that I started to get curious about different cuisines. Once I did, though, it was truly like a whole new world had opened up. I’ve never been able to decide whether I pity or envy people who have a utilitarian relationship with food – you know the ones: food is fuel is their mantra. Not me. I think about what I want to eat all day. When I’m washing my face in the morning, I’m thinking of the cup of coffee I’m going to make, with freshly-ground beans from that espresso café in the center of Rome that I buy in bulk to justify the shipping. I dabble with breakfast at home, delighted when I’ve got freshly baked muffins under the cake dome, or Saturday mornings when we make pancakes from scratch or fry bacon until it was crisp. I love to meet a friend for lunch somewhere tasty, but even if I don’t, I consider it a waste to get a boring salad or half-hearted sandwich. And I’ve likely been thinking about dinner all day long – fish or pasta, steaks or soup, grains or potatoes, vegetables or salad, dessert for sure.

I have to admit I got lazy about cooking while the children were away at school. But one birdie has returned to the nest and the other will soon arrive, and we’ve been cooking up a storm. I love to buy cookbooks for the shop just as much as I love to buy art books and coffee table books, and we’ve got a bounty of them from every cuisine and level of difficulty. Some of my favorites are the North African, Indian and Thai cookbooks, which incorporate so many of our delicious Diaspora spices (I’m on pins and needles waiting for her cookbook next year). A perennial favorite is the Flamingo Estate cookbook, brimming with light, tasty meals featuring so many fresh vegetables. Speaking of, we’ve got lots of vegetarian cookbooks of all cuisines, which I’m particularly drawn to these days. I don’t think I could ever fully commit to being a vegetarian, but I’m trying to be more intentional about eating more veggies. We’ve also got a broad representation of the flavors of Texas and Mexico, perfect for your own kitchen or that make beautiful hostess or birthday gifts.