1. Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico
By Diana Kennedy, $4 at Read, Eat, Drink (R.E.D.)
Stop by this downtown thrift shop for $4 cookbooks. In this one, Kennedy crisscrossed Mexico and discovered homey comestibles and white tablecloth refinement while introducing 1978 America to corn smut.
2. Victuals
By Ronni Lundy, $32.50 at Chop Suey Books
Seasoned volumes are available at Chop Suey, but find this new cookbook fresh-pressed and an ode to hard-scrapple East Coasters. The recipes are clear, and the goods easily acquired, although some require a forager, the Internet or Ellwood Thompson’s.
3. Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki
By Martin and Rebecca Cate, $30 at Fountain Bookstore online
This tiki tome seriously addresses the Polynesian cocktail party in the U.S.A. (where it was born), plus historic and modern Mai Tai snuggeries and how to set up an epic home tiki bar.
4. The Spice Companion
By Lior Lev Sercarz, $40 at Chop Suey Books
This is my secret weapon for countering esoteric ingredients on restaurant menus. Find definitions, plus uses for bubble-gum-scented mastic as well as Guajillo peppers: two components currently infiltrating Richmond.
5. The Wine Bible
By Karen MacNeil, $25 at Fountain Bookstore
Part oenological history, part grape encyclopedia, this narrative is cut with “romance,” an industry term for the true tales and flowery anecdotes that sell juice. It’s my most borrowed title and fittingly the only paperback on the list.