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Hey y'all -
I can't believe I'm actually here, writing these words on paper. When I received the call asking me to put together a cookbook, I assumed it was a joke and hung up the phone. It wasn't until two more calls, an email, and a buzz at the apartment that I let myself believe this was for real. As soon as I did, I remember sitting in stunned silence while a man sat in front of me and said "Yes, Eric, you."
I thought I was going to burst into hysterical sobs when he left, but if you're a follower of my vlog, you'd know the skepticism runs deep in my blood. I forgot about how the vlog had been gaining popularity of its own accord in recent months, so I convinced myself that the only reason this was happening for real was due to my boyfriend's coming out, which had happened only a week before the first phone call. When I told Jack this, he laughed at me like he does when I'm in one of my ridiculous moods, and told me not only did my soon-to-be publisher have no idea who he was, he'd actually called him John on the way out the door. This had nothing to do with Jack Zimmermann, which made it so much more frightening.
It was real. I was going to make a cookbook. My second thought was "Oh Lord, I've never written down a recipe in my life."
I've been baking since I've been walking and while to many out there baking is an exact science in which half a cup of sugar is half a cup of sugar leveled with a knife and added at just the right time, to me it's always been "That looks right" and my eyes have never failed me. I spent the next month painstakingly documenting my process and writing down measurements and ingredients (Jack tried to help, bless, but a lot of his notes just said "1 T" for both tablespoons and teaspoons so the first time I made a pie following one of the recipes he wrote, it was an actual disaster). Finally I had a collection of fifty different recipes of pie and cobbler and jam and tarts, and from them this cookbook was born.
Each one of these recipes holds a special memory for me, be it the first cheesecake I remember making with my Moo Maw (page 22), the Chili Peach Jam that won me my first blue ribbon at the county fair (page 45), or the Maple Glazed Apple Crumb Pie I made with Jack the first time I realized that I loved him (page 15).
When you spend most of your life in the kitchen, most of your memories come from that room, that flour, those tins, that smell, and I'm so thankful that I get to share the best of my memories with you.
Eric Bittle