CookShelfI guess there's no two ways around it: chefs live more interesting lives than the rest of us. On the whole, that's because their lives are also harder: late hours, low pay, high stress, a demanding public. With success…
Every once in a while I open a cookbook envelope and find something so, so, so strange I just have to drop everything and tell you about it. That happened this week, when out popped: Zombie Cupcakes! Unless you've been…
One of the peculiarities of being a cookbook reviewer is that you're forever looking into the near future of food as the new press releases roll in. Invariably, they offer tantalizing glimpses of seasonal foods that are…
A few weeks ago, you might recall, I was struggling with the Kaiser Roll Quandary--and, thanks to EYB, had found and got ready to test some hamburger buns from The Commonsense Kitchen. Well, what with one thing and…
It may not be the heaviest or even the largest cookbook we have indexed but Larousse Gastronomique is certainly the winner in terms of number of recipes. We have just added the index and there are 3,880 recipes. We had…
It takes a certain amount of guts, if you'll excuse me, to publish a book about meat in January, when the typical cookbook features words like "lean," "slim," and "salad". But on the other hand, it *is* the dead of…
Did you know, EYB friends, that EYB is good not only for cataloging your gazillion recipes, but also for helping you create entirely new ones? That's what happened to me today. I was trying to come up with a Chinese…
I love baking in midwinter, don't you? The heat of the oven, the smell of yeast, the golden brown perfection of baked goods...did I mention the heat of the oven? I got a kaiser roll stamp for Christmas, and I'm trying…
Well, the holiday rush of cookbooks is past and the publishers are looking ahead to spring. This week the mail held the galleys of spring--April cookbooks in their raw, pre-edited state. I don't test recipes from…
Happy New Year, everybody! Mine started inauspiciously. 5 minutes to midnight found me with a throbbing Class A headache, passing up a hoarded bottle of Veuve Cliquot for some sparkling non-alcoholic cider. It's not…
