No, no, I've not turned to those kind of 'bytes', nor do I see my laptop as an 'assetizer'. It's just that my laptop now brings a wonderful deliciousness to my life, gives me visuals and descriptions to slurp over and makes life a spoon more yummy.
My gourmet cravings have been met from the most unexpected quarter - a drab, grey machine that (too) often transports me from the world of words and presentations to a haven of aromas and flavors. The teleportation is so effective that I have almost ceased missing the actual texture and taste of a divine dish on my palate; it's sublime enough to read the description, see the images jump out in high definition glory and drool over the recipe.
Long years ago, I would pore over those gorgeously mounted cookbooks, resplendent in their imported gloss and visual feasts. They would be too expensive to buy and the school library would be my stop for them. Behind wood and glass cabinets, they held a peculiar draw - prized, yet accessible. Every 'library period' I would treat myself to one of these confections. It was never enough to skim through them there, they needed to be issued and carried home gingerly in eager anticipation. Once home, I would furiously leaf through them and stick little pieces of paper (DIY bookmarks!) into pages that captured me. And then, once again, I would backtrack at a more leisurely pace and savor the contents.
Out would come my well-worn hardcover 'register' and painstakingly I would note recipe by recipe, ingredient by ingredient, method by method in laborious longhand. The irony of it was that at that time in life I neither had access to those exotic ingredients or the means to whip up those fantasies. God alone knows what I was doing for what time in the unknown future....
And then came the days when I had the means and the accesses. The endless poring over those longhand notes came to fruition and I started churning those recipes into wonderful (and sometimes far from wonderful) concoctions that we enjoyed.
Time moved on and the internet came into our lives bringing an infinite world of many treasures to explore and relish. Today, it gives me a curious thrill to quickly scan my favorite food sites, pick a recipe that catches my eye, do deep research on techniques across the web, click on a button and print a long sheet of ingredients and instructions out - all in a matter of seconds. It also has become a stress-buster and deliberate distraction to hover between food sites, learn a bit and drool a bit more.
The sheets of paper get filed away in my big black book today. Some of them find their way to the kitchen and to a delectable (with heart in my mouth!) dish. But even today, I hold on to that frayed register and once ever so often turn those pages back in time.... that nostalgia is as overpowering as today's convenience.
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