I took the picture above in my new kitchen in Arizona. The vintage bird nesting tins I got for a steal at a flea market in New York (the one on Avenue A and 10th St., for those of you out there looking). Earlier this month, I saw the full set (there are four; I only have three) at a shop in Wisconsin for at least ten times what I paid. It’s a little bit of a sadistic moment when something like that happens.

On the shelf below the tins are my and Dan’s cookbooks, commingling. You can probably tell whose are whose. Dan’s a classic cooking kind of guy: he brought the Bittman, Cook’s Illustrated, Practical Gastronomy, and Silver Spoon tomes to the marriage. He bakes a mean loaf of bread, can roast a lamb shank (not that I’ve eaten it), and taught me that butter isn’t all bad. (Remind me sometime to post his recipe for baked tomatoes. Mind-blowing.) Of course, that leaves Barbara Kafka’s Vegetable Love, and my all-time favorite, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. You have probably guessed by now that the two vegan cookbooks are mine. And the Veracruzean book? That was a joint purchase, a new book we’ve decided would christen, in a way, our new, southwestern kitchen.

At the end of the row of cookbooks is Dan’s pasta maker, that glimmering chrome contraption that we use as a bookend when Dan’s not cranking out some seriously good linguine. In another study of contrasts, Dan’s Fear of Wine (which is actually quite helpful) sits back-to-back with my New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, a 1970s vegan-hippie-punk-commune staple. The Emile Henry souffle ceramic is his; the vintage tin platter mine.