the Book that Started Everything

My mother's copy was dog eared and stained with a dozen delicious batters. They yellowed her pages with the remnants of delicious desserts. Many of those stains were made by me as I breathlessly whipped egg whites and boiled sugar to a magical temperature in my mother's kitchen, giddy with the responsibility of preparing a dessert worthy of closing one of my mother's meals.

I would have been terrified had I not been in Lenotre's hands. With his formal, almost clinical, instructions, he demystified the fanciest French confections. From brioche to the Concorde, all seemed within reach, carefully measured and meted out. Armed with this bible of baking written by one of the forefathers of French patisserie, anyone could achieve greatness.

As I packed for college that night, my mother came to find me with a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. She tucked it into my suitcase and asked me to wait until I got to the States to open it. I was surrounded by piles of clothes for every season, wondering how I would fit my fall, winter, and spring clothes in the two suitcases the airline alloted me. I gave her a quick smile and returned to my packing.

Twenty-four hours, and a lifetime later, I found the package again. I sat atop of my stiff new bed in my sterile dorm room, and imagined my family sleeping in their beds in the middle of the Parisian night. When I finally choked back my homesickness enough to rip the brown paper open, I beheld an old friend. Gaston Lenotre, beaming at me under his white toque, atop of my very own, brand spanking new, copy of Faites Votre Patisserie Comme Lenotre.

And although a communal microwave was the only cooking facility at our disposal in my Freshman dorm, I clutched my very first cookbook to my chest like a fine treasure. Then I proudly displayed it on my shelf, a promise of all the meals I would prepare in my new life. It represented home and family, more than any picture or mementos. And now, close to twenty years and over a dozen moves later, it still is the first book I place on my bookshelf, the one cookbook I could not live without.

Tonight's Sunday Scribblings prompt is: the Book that Changed Everything. An interesting prompt... give it some thought... and then please share!