Black and White.

It is a rainy gray morning here on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. I can not remember the last day I woke without the sun already blazing and the thermometer outside my window heading towards 100 degrees.

While sipping my coffee I grabbed a cookbook off the shelf, something I often do while sitting quietly. I reach for the same cookbooks over and over. They inspire and comfort. Their large glossy photographs seduce me into believing I will prepare a dinner just like my friends, Ina, Julia, Mollie, Dorie and Edna.

Usually by 4 o'clock in the afternoon I have gone to plan B, a salad and something grilled. I have bought the ingredients for plan A, have the best intentions but loose steam. Often I go to plan C, carrying out from a small catering shop and when plan D (Operation no Dishes) is needed we go to a little bar close by.

This morning I reached back behind my chair and pulled The Jewish Cook Book off the shelf.

The cover is a drawing rather than a photograph and it appears to be some sort of fowl on a platter surrounded by potatoes or maybe Matzoth Balls on a bed of kale that perfectly matches the green of the table cloth. I am charmed by the line across the bottom, in script, by Mildred Grosberg Bellin. In fact, I am charmed by the entire book. There are over 2,500 recipes written according to the Jewish dietary laws crammed on 359 pages. Not one photograph, just a treasure trove of fascinating recipes and preparation techniques. When was the last time you saw a recipe for Milk Toast?

"The Jewish Cook Book is a well-organized volume with a good index and a dizzily cosmopolitan glossary including both pupick and zabaglione." ~Cynthia Ozick

Mildred Grosberg Bellin graduated from Smith College in 1928, three years before Julia McWilliams Child. I wonder if they knew each other? Don't you just love maiden names?

What cinched this charmer for me is the most vivid description of how to seal jelly glass jars...with paraffin. I used to watch my Mother and grandmother do this in late summer every year. The grape arbor in my grandmother's garden was laden with concord grapes and it was time, to gather grapes and jars and make the jewel like jelly that lasted our family all winter. Any jar can be a jelly jar if you are sealing with paraffin. I find this immensely freeing. No more trips for overpriced jars that have traveled across the ocean, no more trying to keep Ball jar lids together, oh happy days.

Okay, here is the line that has me itching to go buy paraffin: "To mark jelly glasses sealed with paraffin, have the labels ready on narrow slips of paper not quite as long as the diameter of the top of a glass, and when the paraffin is partially set, but still soft, lay each label on and press gently."

You now know what I will be doing on this drizzly day by the Chesapeake Bay.