Great Chefs Calendar : AROUND HOME : Notes on Remote-Control Airplanes and Steamer Chairs

YOU KNOW how hard it is to cook while you’re turning the pages of a book. The instruction you need is on the next page, but your hands are covered with eggs and flour and you can’t figure out how to get there without spoiling the book. The perfect solution, of course, is to hang the recipe on the wall. Unfortunately, too few recipes come ready to frame.

The fact that the “Great Chefs of America Calendar” has recipes ready for hanging is only a part of the beauty. The full-color photographs of each dish are mouthwateringly beautiful. There are nice pictures of each featured chef. And the recipes are wonderful.

January belongs to Jimmy Schmidt of the Rattlesnake Club, who offers venison with mustards and chiles. April brings Alice Waters’ salmon carpaccio strewn with rose petals and Johnny jump-up blossoms. May belongs to Wolfgang Puck’s decadent chocolate raspberry terrine. June has a summery photograph of lobster and scallops in corn husks with vanilla butter by Mark Miller (the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe). Fall blows in with an extraordinary pumpkin stuffed with lobster mousse by Jean-Louis Palladin, of the Watergate in Washington.

But this is more than just a bunch of pretty pictures hanging around your kitchen. The calendar was produced by S.O.S., a network of restaurants dedicated to helping the hungry, and the proceeds go to help feed those who don’t have enough to eat.

( “Great Chefs” calendar costs $11.50 (postpaid). At Long’s drug store in Thousand Oaks, at Raku in Santa Barbara, Jundt’s Pharmacy in La Canada Flintridge, Upstart Crow and Co. in San Diego, and Ultimate Invitation in Newport Beach. Or order from S.O.S. at (800) 222-1767.