Cookbooks in Current Rotation

I don't know about you, but I go through cookbook phases, in which I have a little love affair with a book's recipes and author. And I love buying cookbooks, so I have quite a collection. Here are the cookbooks in current rotation:

The Homemade Pantry is my go-to for all the from-scratch cooking I've been doing lately; from my foray into yogurt making to the fresh lasagna noodles I made for Christmas and last night's pizza dough. Alana's writes super-simple directions that are easy to follow -- you can tell she makes these often, and is not just perfecting them in a test kitchen and moving on. Plus, she includes little memoirs of the recipe origins or her experiences with them. I'm planning on trying the homemade ketchup and mayo someday, and Dave has been begging me to make the pastries (homemade "PopTarts") that are on the cover. Seriously, it's the best. Get a copy.

It's All Good is Gwynnie's new cookbook that is all healthy meals. Yes, there's a few crazy ingredients (who eats cornichons outside of France?) but the majority sound simple and delicious: such as roasted garbanzo beans, a French white bean dish and turkey chili. It's new, so I'm loving it.

I have a stockpile of little Everyday Food magazine that I was finally able to thin out, thanks to this collection of Light recipes. And because I'm watching my calories, this book has been invaluable for simple, yummy meals. But the BEST thing about this book is it's divided by season! Which is amazing. It's the middle of winter, so I'm lacking in good tomatoes, but avocados are a-plenty, so I'm all about low-cal Tex-Mex. This book has been kicking around for a few years, and I'd made a few things out of it -- but it's in heavy rotation these days thanks to my little diet program. Loving it.

Cookbooks That I Currently Love
What cookbooks are you using?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The $80 Kitchen Pantry Update

Image
It took two days and about $80 in supplies, and now our kitchen pantry is REBORN! Here's a quick review of the project in pictures, starting with the BEFORE pictures: My main issue with the wire shelves were bottles or anything "thin" would tip over. And with my commitment to bulk, I wanted to store glass containers in here but knew they wouldn't be "safe." I foresaw broken glass at some point. Plus, it's a great space, so I knew I could add more storage space if I was strategic. Last, wire shelves are ugly. So then I demo'd the pantry and painted the walls (which was just primer) with leftover paint from the rest of the house. It's called Polar Bear. I paid an electrician to install an outlet at "counter height" in the pantry, so I could move the dumb microwave off the counter. (The electrician did a slew of other small jobs around the house, not just this outlet, including a motion-activated light in this pantry. Tres Fancy
Keep reading »

Family Calendar Improvement

Image
 Made a quick improvement at the start of the school year that I'm pretty excited about.  And yes, I'm probably the only one excited about it, but here goes ...  Here's our "command central" in our kitchen. This is a good landing spot, and a central place to all look at the family calendar ... it's that huge wipe board in the middle of the photo. All our activities are supposed to be written on here and our electronic family calendar on Google.  (Brief aside: my family is the WORST at writing their plans down in either calendar and Dave still doesn't share his events on our Google Shared Family Calendar consistently, which makes me nuts. And they all ask me "what are we doing today?" instead of looking at the calendar, usually directly behind me. But, that's another post.) I went to so much trouble putting this little area together and that huge calendar with wobbly writing was really killing the sophisticated look of that space. PLUS, we don
Keep reading »

Basement Shiplap Project

Image
The guys left me all the unused shiplap from the bathroom and I've been trying to think about where to use it. I had so many ideas but not a lot of shiplap, so I eventually settled on this corner of our basement. It's where the exercise mats and treadmill live, right behind the sofa. And also where the Marvel-themed bathroom with shiplap is located. So it made sense. It took much of a rainy Sunday to cut and nail up the new boards ...    I even had enough to do on the "backsplash" of our little kitchenette in the basement I've been slowly building out.  Next up will be to patch all the nail holes and calk around the edges for a clean look. And then the best part ... picking out paint color. Since this is a "free" project, I'm hoping I can find a color in my paint cabinet.  I'll keep you posted. 
Keep reading »