Lazy about lunch
I just realized today while once again punting on lunch--a quarter of a honeydew, a chicken-apple sausage, and an iced decaf--that while I use recipes almost every night for dinner, I almost never crack a cookbook for…
Susie
Don't Try This At Home. On Second Thought, Go Ahead!
In 2005, Jane and Michael Stern published Roadfood, an adoring and adorable guide to dives and obscure eateries across America. I loved the Sterns' vision of a life lived driving from one delicious thing to the next…
Independence, locavore style
Kitchen Gardeners International, the terrific local-food organization whose advocacy helped to establish the White House vegetable garden, used to run a wonderful event called Food Independence Day. Folks from all over…
Popular vs. timeless
Just because it's fun to check in with the rest of the world from time to time, here's the 5 best-selling cookbooks on Amazon today. (I'll just list the titles, on the principle that sometimes it's OK to judge a book by…
5 kitchen things I can't do without
Each of us has a different approach to kitchen equipment. Some of us--whether because we're just starting out as cooks, or we live alone, or because we're minimalists or purists--have a fairly austere selection: a…
Adrienne Kane
After my recent run-ins with pie recipes that didn't work, it was a relief and a joy to work with Adrienne Kane's United States of Pie. As I read it, I found myself wondering where Kane found so many obscure and…
Teen and "student" cookbooks: really necessary?
Summer's just about upon us, and even the latest high school and college graduations are finishing up. Each year, I wonder: how many of those new graduates are getting cookbooks as presents? And how many of those…
Pops: Cake or Ice?
As long as I could remember, "pops" were something you bought off a truck--some kind of unnaturally-colored ice on a stick you didn't know whether to lick or bite, but ate anyway after a swim on a hot day. Then, I…
The end of baking season?
It started happening last week already. I'd planned to bake a couple loaves of bread for sandwiches. But around mid-morning, when I got around to pulling down the flour and finding the yeast, it was already muggy and…
"Having it all in one place": a good enough reason to keep a cookbook?
In the days before I developed a systematic winnowing process for choosing my favorite cookbooks, I often found myself making a familiar argument, as I stood - book in hand - over the discard pile. "But having all these…
Book News Shelf Life With Susie
Going without: are photos essential in a cookbook?
Remember the old, unillustrated days of cookbooks, when you opened to a page of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or Joy, and your eyes always fell on an unbroken page of solid words? Oh, you might get a diagram of…
Three cheers for garden cookbooks!
With spring firmly underway and greenery springing up in every direction, I'd like to say a few words in praise of one of my favorite types of cookbooks--kitchen garden books. Unlike, say, grill books or preserving…