Food Porn

I read cookbooks for pleasure. Cookbooks and cooking magazines and gourmet food catalogs are pornography for foodies. I love to read the recipes and if there are pictures then it's even better. Now we add to the list of food porn the internet.

I have had a subscription to Bon Apetit since I was a teenager. My grandma got it for me because she knew how much I like to cook. Every month that issue would come and I would peruse it's glossy pages for recipes and photographs like a frat guy with a Playboy. ( I wish I could say I just read Bon Apetit for the articles but I'd be lying. And honestly, I wish it had a centerfold of like a cake or smorgasbord or something). And I save my favorite issues to read over and over again. Recently the magazine has undergone a bit if a 'makeover' and the magazine is better than ever with a little more everyday type food as well as the true gourmet stuff. I love it even more now, if that's possible.

I also love those little grocery store checkout cookbooks with the 'pictures of every recipe'. At one point in my life I had several hundred of them, stored in cardboard filing drawers, many of them with their pages marked with colored paperclips for the recipes I had made, or wanted to make someday. During my last move I got rid of them except a few well worn favorites. It's only because I'm a struggling writer that I don't keep collecting them but at four dollars a pop I can't afford them right now. So I just surreptitiously read them in the line at the checkout counter and make mental notes of any interesting recipes.

Don't even get me started on food catalogs. I read the Dean and Deluca catalog with almost religious devotion, drool over Harry and David and save my Zabar's catalogs for years. Heck, I even read the crappy Swiss Colony catalog at Christmas time just to see what's in the 'Super Tower of Treats'. Yes, I know I have a problem, but it's my problem, don't judge.

And now I search the internet for recipes. Many sites have pictures and I must constantly remind myself that licking my computer screen is probably not a good idea. So I will try to add more pictures of my recipes here on Gourmand Girl so that food porn lovers like me can enjoy.

The only thing that could make it better is if you could taste the food. Scratch and sniff was a start, but I saw a marketing campaign for juice that put one of those little strips (like the ones with the mouthwash or breath strips) into a magazine so you could 'taste' their product. Now we just need scientists to make one that tastes like white chocolate key lime pie to put next to the recipe and I'd be in high heaven.