National Cookbook Month & Interlibrary Loan

 by Mary Ellen Valverde (mvalverd@stevens.edu)

Note to reader: although I wrote this blog post in October, I soon realized my post would not be up until November...so hopefully you don’t mind I’m still going to talk about cookbooks especially seeing as Thanksgiving is coming up and the holiday is all about food.  

While I was deciding on my next blog topic, my co-workers informed me that October was National Cookbook Month and I got really excited. Who doesn’t love cookbooks? Okay maybe not all college students do - I don’t think I did much cooking either now that I think about it as I only had enough money to make ramen noodles every night in college. But I’m hoping maybe you’d want to check out some cookbooks and maybe try a few recipes at home for Thanksgiving when your parents are buying the groceries or when you get great jobs and make tons of money.

There’s just something about cooking from scratch that gives me a sense of accomplishment once the meal is finished. Plus, cooking for yourself insures you have the quality of ingredients that you want as well as any substitutions that you may need. Being vegan, sometimes finding a cookbook I can use can be a bit more difficult. I don’t eat any animal products (including dairy and eggs) so I like to find cookbooks that use only the products I do eat. While searching our catalog, I found that our library only owned one vegan cookbook - which wasn’t surprising to me as mine is a very specific topic.

The good thing about our library’s catalog is that besides those from Stevens, it also shows books from other libraries around the country which you can request through Interlibrary Loan. I found a few books that looked interesting and decided to do an Interlibrary Loan to check them out before committing to buy one. One book that I found and heard great things about is Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz -

it’s supposed to be one of the staple cookbooks for vegans. I also am thinking of checking out Vegan Cooking for Carnivores by Roberto Martin to make a few things over the holidays that some of my meat eating family members might enjoy as well.

Finally, don't forget that now is the time to get a book or article from Interlibrary Loan or your final papers. We stop taking new requests by the second week of December in order to ensure delivery, so the sooner you get your request in, the better! Have any questions about ILL? Feel free to contact me!