Like anyone else who’s ever gone away for more than a week, I came home to a lot of mail… most of it junk. But, having forgotten the promise made by a friend, I found a pleasant surprise amid the bills and circulars — a new cookbook. In fact, there was not just one, but two cookbooks waiting for me upon my return.

Now, I already have a lot of cookbooks. No, not as many as those folks who wax poetically that they’ve been collecting cookbooks since the year of the flood and have subsequently had to build a special wing on their home just to shelter them. But, enough that I don’t really need another cookbook; especially since lately I seem to use online recipe sites more frequently than reaching for one of my printed tomes. Yet, there they were.

The first came to me from wine colleagues, Jeff Jensen and Mike DeSimone, by way of their publisher. Their latest book –The Fire Island Cookbook – is a collection of menus, one for each weekend of the summer, along with suggested wine pairings. Although Fire Island is the title’s stated destination, the recipes are culled from around the world and are appropriate for any summer supper – whether enjoyed in your Hamptons share, island retreat or suburban backyard.

Flipping through the book, we picked a page at random and found ourselves preparing a shopping list for seafood and sausage paella. Since it was just the two of us, we chose to forgo the other menu items and also halved the recipe regarding the rice itself, while being more lavish with the seafood. Even with the revision, it was all paella all the time for the next few meals (but, since the dish was as tasty as it was, we had no complaints). If you’ve never made paella before (I’ll admit to having been a paella virgin, myself), it is actually made just like risotto, but with a lot of flavorful spices.

We chose to ignore Jeff and Mike‘s wine pairing recommendation simply because we had a lot of wine waiting to be opened, but it’s a nice bit of information for them to have included, making it easy for the wine novice to easily find a pairing for the meal. A few weeks later, we tackled two more recipes, pulling an appetizer of grilled romaine from one meal and a Tequila-marinated steak from another, and pairing the meat with a Malbec as suggested.

The second, extremely unexpected volume was a gift from my husband. He had attended a literary event at the New York Public Library during my absence (the quintessential bachelor, no?) and had obtained a signed copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest publication for me, At Home on the Range.

According to my husband, Elizabeth Gilbert does not look like Julia Roberts. I know that I shouldn’t be surprised the author doesn’t resemble the actress who portrayed her in the film version of her Eat, Pray, Love book, but I am. Regardless of whom she does or does not resemble, it was apparently quite a humorous event. John Hodgman (of the Mac commercial, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, The Daily Show fame) interviewed Ms. Gilbert, but since they have been friends for years, it was more like a conversation replete with inside jokes than a usual interview.

The important gist of the discussion is that, once upon a time, Elizabeth’s great-grandmother, Margaret Yardley Potter, wrote a cookbook, which was ahead of its time with its focus on nose-to-tail eating; reliance on fresh, local ingredients (as opposed to the modern conveniences of canned or frozen items); and unusual (for the period) cuisine such as, believe it or not, pizza. Curating recipes from unlikely sources such as shopkeepers and obstetric nurses, Potter crafted a cookbook that reads more like a letter from grandma than the Galloping Gourmet, but is made all the more entertaining for this novel approach.

Having only formally discovered this piece of family heritage recently, Elizabeth has republished At Home on the Range, along with the insertion of an Introduction and a few helpful hints with the recipes. With a goal of having these recipes reach a more amenable audience than when the book was first launched, rather than profit, all proceeds from the sale of the book will benefit Scholar Match. In this regard, you are helping you to feed the mind of the next generation while feeding yourself.