Armchair Adventures
Lushly photographed on coated stock, ruinously priced, and as heavy as a KitchenAid mixer--you know what I'm talking about: coffee-table cookbooks. You tell yourself this will be the last one, truly, and yet there you…
Shelf Life With Susie
Crust craze: Dinner's in the oven!
If there's one thing I love about the end of the summer, it's turning the oven back on again. And if there's one thing I like about an oven, it's getting to make dinner under, inside, or on top of a crust. My son's…
Never mind what I eat...what do you eat???
Although new food books arrive at my house every day, very rarely does one stop me in my tracks. But that's what happened when I opened the familiar cardboard envelope and found What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.…
Hostess with the mostest (...or not!)
Entertaining-focused cookbooks come out twice a year--before summer and for the holidays (even if their party suggestions are not season-sensitive). I always leaf through the summer ones with the slightly dislocated…
We Scream for Ice Cream
97 degrees - that's the high today, and that's here in New England. Even the most dedicated home cook has mixed feelings about cooking in weather like this. All I want to do is sit in a hammock with a book while someone…
Loco for local
The summer cookbooks have been rolling in and holy guacamole! It's farmer's markets and local foods, left and right. And it's not just the cookbook authors and advocates anymore. There's Fast, Fresh & Green by Susie…
Spring fever
Is it my imagination, or has it been the longest, sweetest spring in recent memory? A couple of months ago, at a time when the frozen ground usually still rings like iron when struck by a futile hoe, I had lettuce…
Lighting the fire
The last snow was only a week and a half ago, and already this year's grill books are arriving. I don't blame the publicists for wanting to hasten the warm weather. Last week, I bought my own first sack of charcoal for…
Oven Thermometers
As a cookbook reviewer, I sometimes have to measure where it would usually be perfectly fine to guess. I don't always like having to measure 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, but I do it...I've got 5 sizes of measuring cups, a…
Susie's Breads
People have strong feelings about that ancient skill, the baking of bread. There are those who avoid it like the plague because yeast is smelly and inscrutable, kneading is messy, and who has time to wait for a 3-hour…
Gender studies in the kitchen.
Today, something funny came in the mail, and it set me thinking. 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know, from the editors of Glamour Magazine (who else!?), is a blithely feminine romp. The recipes have titles like "Wake Up…
Slow cookers
OK, I came late to the game when it comes to slow cookers. As a person who's home and in the kitchen most of the time anyway, I didn't need a device that could do the cooking by itself for hours and hours. I was the…