Today is Day 1 of the Atmospheric River and High Wind Warning with Highway 1 scheduled to close tonight at 5 p.m., and remain closed likely, until Wednesday morning, so I decided to spend this hermit time by cleaning out the corners and organizing the clutter. The kitchen pantry was today’s project while the southeast wind gyres within this cañon and swirls around to batter the cabin’s east and north sides.

In the kitchen pantry is where I keep my cookbooks. I’m only keeping a few of the tried and true food bibles: The Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison, Field of Greens by Annie Somerville, The New Basics Cookbook by Rosso and Lukins, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, Joy of Cooking and Betty Crocker’s classic cookbook, the Los Angeles Times California Cookbook, Pascal Rigo‘s The American Boulangerie, and the chef who introduced me to cooking in season, Joyce Goldstein‘s The Mediterranean Kitchen and Italian Slow and Savory.

I’m keeping My Nepenthe by Romney Steele, The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook by the three founders, The Homesteader’s Kitchen by Robin Burnside, but I’ve decided to relocate two out-of-print recipe books: the Big Sur Historical Society’s Recipes for Living in Big Sur and the utterly original Cows, Poets & Other Loves compiled by Caryl Hill and Deborah Weston.

Cows, Poets, & Other Loves is “A Food Book By and About Artists.” The Introduction explains that “Caryl Hill and Deborah Weston know most of the most interesting people who live on the Monterey Peninsula. As a gift to the community, they decided to gather their friends’ recipes.”

The recipes are sorted not by Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Entrées, Desert, rather by, Adventurers, Illustrators, Chefs, Painters, Musicians, Sculptors, Photographers, Crafts Persons, Healers, Writers, Politicians, Entertainers, Dancers, Jewelers, and Highrollers.

Recipes of these most of the most interesting people include Kim Novak’s Enchiladas del Sur, Sam Farr’s Salmon Over Coals, Jack Curtis’ Methigleium (Honey Wine), and, a potpourri to steam and made of rose petals, orange flowers, chamomile, white willow bark (for aches and pains) by Rainboe Joyce Bovee.

“Fifty years ago you lived in Carmel because you wrote, you photographed, you painted, you were a student of tide pools, or you liked to just sit on fine sand and stare out to sea,” writes John Todd in the forward to Cows, Poets & Other Loves. “Life was small, people were close, and nature grew a lot of interesting things meant to be eaten.”

Good Luck locating your copy of Cows, Poets & Other Loves.