OK, now that you have books on hand to get your vegetable garden growing this year (or maybe joined a local CSA), you may want to pick up one or two cookbooks (is it possible to have too many
good cookbooks?) for inspiration on how to consume all that produce this summer. Even if you aren't gardening yourself, there should be at least one title below that appeals, whether you want to eat more locally produced foods, try an exotic new recipe or just lose a little weight without resorting to processed, frozen dinners for every meal.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (
$1.99 Kindle,
B&N,
Kobo), by Barbara Kingsolver [HarperCollins], is practically the bible of the local food movement.
Book Description
Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.
"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."
Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.
"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."
The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America (
$1.99 Kindle,
B&N,
Kobo), by Hannah Nordhaus [HarperCollins], is one I'd recommend to anyone that eats and is concerned both about the cost of food (everything from squash to almonds) and getting food locally. I know that our bees declined at the same time and for seemingly no reason (and that continues - we don't have bees at all after the winter, some years).
Book Description
Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America’s foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations. In luminous, razor-sharp prose, Nordhaus explores the vital role that honeybees play in American agribusiness, the maintenance of our food chain, and the very future of the nation. With an intimate focus and incisive reporting, in a book perfect for fans of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire,and John McPhee’s Oranges, Nordhaus’s stunning exposé illuminates one the most critical issues facing the world today,offering insight, information, and, ultimately, hope.
Cooking Light Pick Fresh Cookbook: Creating Big Flavors from the Freshest Produce (
$4.99 Kindle), by Mary Beth Burner Shaddix and the Editors of Cooking Light Magazine [Oxmoor House]
Book Description
Cooking Light Pick Fresh Cookbook shares the secrets to buying, growing, and cooking your favorite fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Bursting with beautiful color photographs, this book is an invaluable resource for home cooks, novice gardeners, and food lovers alike. Cooking Light Pick Fresh Cookbook includes:
- More than 200 full-color photos
- Organized by fruits, vegetables, and herbs makes it easy to find recipes and information for the fresh produce you have right now
- 150+ recipes that utilize the fresh taste of the season's best produce in main dishes, sides, salads, dessert, and more
- Easy getting-started gardening tips from Mary Beth Shaddix, Cooking Light's expert gardener, for growing your own fruits and vegetables, whether it's in your backyard or on your windowsill
- A complete nutritional analysis for each recipe
How To Eat (
$1.99 Kindle,
B&N), by Nigella Lawson [Hyperion]; I bought this a couple of years ago, on sale, but you can now get it for half what I paid.
Book Description
Through her wildly popular television shows, her five bestselling cookbooks, her line of kitchenware, and her frequent media appearances, Nigella Lawson has emerged as one of the food world's most seductive personalities. How to Eat is the book that started it all--Nigella's signature, all-purposed cookbook, brimming with easygoing mealtime strategies and 350 mouthwatering recipes, from a truly sublime Tarragon French Roast Chicken to a totally decadent Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake. Here is Nigella's total (and totally irresistible) approach to food--the book that lays bare her secrets for finding pleasure in the simple things that we cook and eat every day.
The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home: Easy Techniques for the Freshest Flavors in Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Relishes, Salsas, Sauces, and Frozen and Dried Fruits and Vegetables (
$2.99 Kindle,
B&N), by Janet Chadwick [Storey Publishing]
Book Description
A wonderful thing is happening in home kitchens. People are rediscovering the joys of locally produced foods and reducing the amount of the grocery budget that's spent on packaged items, out-of-season produce, and heavily processed foods. But fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables don't stay fresh and delicious forever - they must be eaten now . . . or preserved for later.
For all the vegetable gardeners facing baskets overflowing with bright tomatoes, and for all the dedicated farmers' market fans and CSA members, The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home has the simple solutions that turn overwhelming bounty into neatly canned tomatoes, jars of jams and jellies, and crispy-tart relishes and pickles.
Organized in a friendly, food-by-food format, readers will find freezing, drying, canning, and storing instructions for each vegetable, fruit, and herb. In many cases, several ways to freeze or can a food are described, and there are often other preserving suggestions as well, such as making juice or fruit leather.
Everything is written with busy people in mind: these are the quickest, most efficient methods for preserving summer's bounty. Up-to-date information and clear, step-by-step instructions show even absolute beginners the way to a fully stocked pantry.
Sweet on Texas: Lovable Confections from the Lone Star State (
$3.03 Kindle,
B&N, $3.49
Kobo), by Robert M. Peacock and Denise Gee [Chronicle Book]
Book Description
This tantalizing tome features a hearty helping of must-eat recipes and must-meet dessert devotees, garnished with their fascinating stories. Learn about local Texan bakeries, the youngest pastry chef in the state, and the proper way to organize a Southern cookie swap. Divided into four tasty Texas regions, this cookbook features the big flavors of sweet treats like Deep Chocolate Meringue Pie, Citrus-Kissed Fig Ice Cream, Deep-Fried Coca-Cola, and Sweet Pineapple Tamales. With more than 60 classic and brand spankin' new recipes for cakes, cookies, puddings, cobblers, ice cream, pies, and pastries, Sweet on Texas is a sugar-coated tour through the culinary wonderland of the Lone Star State.
Make It Fast, Cook It Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking (
$1.99 Kindle,
B&N), by Stephanie O'Dea [Hyperion], is another one I bought at twice the current price! This cookbook does double duty: not only can you find recipes to use up your garden produce, you can use them to cook your meals while you are out gardening! Also of note: all the recipes are gluten free!
Book Description
Make It Fast, Cook It Slow is the first cookbook from Stephanie O'Dea, the extremely popular slow cooking blogger: affordable, delicious, nutritious, and gluten-free recipes to delight the entire family.
In December 2007, Stephanie O'Dea made a New Year's resolution: she'd use her slow cooker every single day for an entire year, and write about it on her very popular blog. The result: more than three million visitors, and more than 300 fabulous, easy-to-make, family-pleasing recipes, including:
- Breakfast Risotto
- Vietnamese Roast Chicken
- Tomatoes and Goat Cheese with Balsamic Cranberry Syrup
- Falafel
- Philly Cheesesteaks
- CrÈme Brulee
--and much more. Make It Fast, Cook It Slow is the perfect cookbook for easy, quick prep, inexpensive ingredients, and meals that taste like you spent hours at the stove.
In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite: 150 Recipes and Stories About the Food You Love (
$1.99 Kindle,
B&N), by Melissa Clark [Hyperion], I also bought last year (but at only a dollar more than this year's sale price). Even if you don't buy the entire book, be sure to check out the Amazon page, where you'll find a complete recipe for
Spiced Chipotle Honey Chicken Breasts with Sweet Potatoes.
Book Description
“A Good Appetite,” Melissa Clark’s weekly feature in the New York Times Dining Section, is about dishes that are easy to cook and that speak to everyone, either stirring a memory or creating one. Now, Clark takes the same freewheeling yet well-informed approach that has won her countless fans and applies it to one hundred and fifty delicious, simply sophisticated recipes.
Clark prefaces each recipe with the story of its creation—the missteps as well as the strokes of genius—to inspire improvisation in her readers. So when discussing her recipe for Crisp Chicken Schnitzel, she offers plenty of tried-and-true tips learned from an Austrian chef; and in My Mother’s Lemon Pot Roast, she gives the same high-quality advice, but culled from her own family’s kitchen.
Memorable chapters reflect the way so many of us like to eat: Things with Cheese (think Baked Camembert with Walnut Crumble and Ginger Marmalade), The Farmers’ Market and Me (Roasted Spiced Cauliflower and Almonds), It Tastes Like Chicken (Garlic and Thyme–Roasted Chicken with Crispy Drippings Croutons), and many more delectable but not overly complicated dishes.
In addition, Clark writes with Laurie Colwin–esque warmth and humor about the relationship that we have with our favorite foods, about the satisfaction of cooking a meal where everyone wants seconds, and about the pleasures of eating. From stories of trips to France with her parents, growing up (where she and her sister were required to sit on unwieldy tuna Nicoise sandwiches to make them more manageable), to bribing a fellow customer for the last piece of dessert at the farmers’ market, Melissa’s stories will delight any reader who starts thinking about what’s for dinner as soon as breakfast is cleared away. This is a cookbook to read, to savor, and most important, to cook delicious, rewarding meals from.
The Belly Fat Diet Cookbook: 105 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Lose Your Belly, Shed Excess Weight, Improve Health (
$2.51 Kindle, $4.99
Kobo), by John Chatham [Rockridge University Press], is a companion to
The Belly Fat Diet (
$4.99 Kindle,
B&N,
Kobo), but starts out with enough of the basis of the diet before jumping into recipes that you can probably skip the second title, completely. Note that unlike some of
his Paleo diet cookbooks, many of the recipes in this one are not gluten free (and if you are new to a GF diet, there is gluten hiding in the spelt and bulgar, amongst other ingredients), although many can be easily adapted (by using GF oats, for example).
Book Description
Trim away your belly fat with a healthy and delicious diet.
Achieving a flat stomach is not about doing hundreds of crunches or worrying about how much you eat; it's about what you eat. The Belly Fat Diet Cookbook provides delicious recipes and teaches you how to eat more, weigh less, and achieve a flat belly.
- Enjoy your favorite healthful dishes from breakfast to dessert, including Green Smoothies, Chicken Stir Fry, Baked Kale and Sweet Potato Chips, Almond Encrusted Salmon, and Berry Parfait.
- Learn the dangers of excess belly fat from its harmful impacts on your liver, to increasing your risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and a stroke.
- The Belly Fat Diet Cookbook offers 105 healthy recipes, tips for a successful transition to the belly fat diet, and the Belly Fat Diet Shopping Guide to help you minimize your intake of sugar and processed carbohydrates.
Lose weight and lose your belly with The Belly Fat Diet Cookbook--a sustainable path to a longer, healthier, and leaner life.
In his latest work, bestselling author John Chatham blasts the myths surrounding belly fat. The groundbreaking research in The Belly Fat Diet Cookbook reveals a science-based approach to healthy eating and looking good, and it doesn't involve starving yourself.
The Belly Fat Diet Cookbook: 105 Delicious Recipes to Lose Your Belly, Shed Excess Weight and Improve Health provides an easy-to-follow health solution that gets fast, visible, long-lasting results from the inside out.
