Raw deals
Raw food cookbooks...I love the paradox they pose. If it's raw, then it can't be a cookbook, because there's no cooking involved. And if there's no cooking involved, then why do you need a cookbook in the first place?…
Shelf Life With Susie
Kitchen gardeners love EYB
Let's step away from the bookshelf and into the garden for a moment, shall we? I don't know if there is a time of year when I am more grateful for EYB than midsummer. This year especially, when a temperate spring and a…
Happy 4th!
It being the 4th, a lot of us are celebrating a different sort of independence--independence from the stove. We're going to cookouts and picnics and barbecues. We're getting buckets of fried chicken from wherever we…
Summer fruit cookbooks
I have a soft spot in my heart for fruit trees, but the feeling is not mutual. Over the years, we've tried to plant at least a dozen fruit trees on the property. Three have survived--two apples and a pear. The apples…
The baked and the beautiful
When it comes to books about cake, there are the ones you use and the ones you don't. There are the ones whose recipes you can, with a little attention, manage to produce yourself. And then there are the ones where you…
Cold and fizzy
Just before the tornadoes struck, we had a week of humid, sweat-soaked heat western Massachusetts. Then came the twisters. They broke the heat in the course of their rapid, destructive passage, and we were grateful, at…
To the sea! To the sea!
The urge kicks in no later than Memorial Day: to hear the ceaseless roar of waves, to sift the sand between your toes, to eat of the shelled and the finned (maybe washed down with a pint of the foamy). Here in the…
Love-hate relationship with a cookbook--and it's only day 1.
Today I'm wrestling with an intriguing newcomer: The Cook's Book of Intense Flavors, by Robert and Molly Krause. The premise of the book is fascinating: 101 unusual, vivid flavor combinations and recipes to go with…
What sells in summer?
Every so often I have a look at the bestseller lists for cookbooks. It keeps me honest--if the books people are buying aren't the books that I'm recommending, I should know why, even if that doesn't change my opinion…
"How" books
In today's mailbox were two bits of nonfiction from the shadowy waysides of the cookbook industry: food memoir and food exposé. I call them "how" books, as opposed to "how-to" books. That's because of their subtitles,…
Looking out for number one
It was just a little over a year ago, I think, that Judith Jones' little book came out--The Pleasures of Cooking For One seemed charming, quirky, contrarian in an age of conspicuous entertainment. But like any…
The Southern books are here
Like grill books, Mexican cooking books, and beach entertaining books, Southern cookbooks are usually published in late spring. There's a good reason--because that's when the rest of the country starts warming up enough…