February = Onions

Popping into Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks in the West Village is a dangerous proposition: Bonnie is so likable and easy to talk to and the store is so charming and packed with fascinating vintage cookbooks, you can’t leave without buying something. In fact, I have a souvenir from every visit I’ve made to Bonnie’s: there’s Claudia Roden’s “Middle Eastern Food,” Craig Claiborne’s A Feast Made For Laughter, and–most recently–the calendar you see above.

I didn’t go into Bonnie’s with the intention of buying a calendar, but there it was on the floor, and as Bonnie and I chatted about her favorite food book–Delia Lutes’ The Country Kitchen which Bonnie recommended as gift for Clotilde when she came to town and which Clotilde subsequently named her favorite food book of 2008–I lifted it up and instantly decided to buy it.

I mean, how could I not? Look how good it looks on my wall:

The calendar is published and distributed by Cavallini & Co. in San Francisco; and, according to the back, it features: “A vibrant collection of rarely-seen vegetable prints from the Album Benary (1876 – 1886)…from the collection at the National Agricultural Library.”

I imagine Benary is a person as each print has a name at the bottom: Ernst Benary, Erfurt.

I like this Benary and his prints and so I told Bonnie I was buying the calendar.

“Oh good,” said Bonnie, “the woman who brought that calendar in keeps asking if I’ve sold it yet and now I’ll finally be able to say yes.”

See how sneaky she is? There I was, innocent old me, no intention of buying a calendar and now I have this work of art hanging on my wall.

Seriously, though, I love it: don’t you? And whenever a certain month’s print is worth sharing, I’ll share it here. Thanks Bonnie for brightening up a year that even President Obama thinks will be a tough one; if more people visited your store, our economy would fix itself.