About ProseBooks

This first publication from Prosebooks, the Table One Collection, is a dream come true for me. It is the culmination of years of cooking and creative fun in the kitchen with family and good friends. It is the need for me to remember and preserve these good times, special occasions, delicious meals, delightful wines and enlivened conversations around a table that prompted me to publish this book. I, like many of you, collect and record recipes, document special events, write anecdotes about meals and occasions, and save recipes and kitchen ideas by the basic cut and paste method. I have done this for years and I simply used a large blank ringed book. I wanted that book to help me organize my culinary life and instead it became cumbersome and inefficient to use. It was more frustrating than fun. I had no indexing system and no place to put recipes I cut out of magazines or newspapers. I just threw items in that book willy-nilly with no way of adding pages. Now that book is held together with an elastic band. Not my ideal, but I thought I had a good idea. I wanted a book to hold recipes and memories that I could use with ease every day and more importantly a book I could hand down to the next generation of cooks in the family. I kept thinking there had to be something out there to meet my needs.

I had very little success in the big bookstores. However, I was more successful searching the Internet. I ordered several different “recipe organizers” but ultimately I was very disappointed. I found these books were either too small, too big, too unwieldly, too proprietary, or too limited with their pages, with no ability to add more pages. The designs were generally unappealing, the paper and bindings of inconsistent quality and in most cases I found them to be difficult to use. I thought I could do a better job because I really enjoyed cooking and working in the kitchen and I knew what I needed, as well as what I think other cooks would need. That is what I set out to do.

I wanted to be able to store, record and preserve my recipes in a book that I would love to open everyday, yet, at the same time be comfortable storing elegantly on a bookshelf. I wanted something that was appealing to not only my sense of style and design but to others as well, something of quality, something I could touch and handle with pleasure. I feel I have done that with this first publication of Prosebooks Table One Collection. Function, style and endurance. I hope you agree.

Don’t be afraid to use your Table One Collection. It is meant to be used everyday. Make it yours. Don’t worry about cooking stains, wine rings or bent tabs. These are signs of use and love. These will all add character and meaning to your Table One Collection. As good wine improves with age your Table One Collection becomes more valuable to you, your family, and your friends with time as well. As you use it and add recipes, anecdotes, pictures, memories etc you are writing a history…a culinary history of your kitchen and the pleasurable memories you created there. I honestly can think of no better tribute than a family member or friend using a recipe from my Prosebooks Table One Collection for one of their meals, thinking of me or a special occasion we shared together.

The words that you write in your Table One Collection will literally be “prose from your pantry for your pantry.” Your culinary creations from meat loaf to Beef Wellington can be preserved forever.

Create an heirloom! Write your own cookbook!