Waffles

Today's post will be at my new blog Seeking Sanctuary at World's End. I'm going to slowly move this blog over there. I'll be posting regularly here until the beginning of August and then at that time, I'll post exclusively at Seeking Sanctuary - this will lessen my load and help me get back to enjoying my books instead of feeling like I need to rush through them all the time.

Healthy in a Hurry by Karen Ansel

The problem with cookbooks is they are very subjective.  There’s nothing particularly wrong with this book – the pictures are engaging and the recipes are interesting but they didn’t do anything for me.  The recipes were far too simplistic and would not satisfy my family.  I liked the idea of the book.

This would be perfect for someone just leaving home or for someone who has just started using healthier foods.  This is not a family cookbook.  Many of the recipes do not make substantial meals – lots of appetizer like foods which appear quick but for a large group would actually make more work. 

There are great ideas here and I love the colors and textures of the foods offered.

Home Baked Comfort by Kim Laidlaw

Beautiful book.  The recipes are elegant and stunning.  The pictures captivate the reader and leave you craving something hot and amazing out of the oven.  The recipes work in seasonal fruits at the peak of perfection.  The crusts are crisp and golden while the breads are soft and aromatic.

The instructions are simple with fairly common ingredients.

A nice touch is the brief interviews of various bakers from around the country.  Each offer their own perspective of baking and share a recipe.  Grab a cup of coffee and pour over this book as if you were visiting with a friend.  Kim Laidlaw has put together a book that was meant to be handed down to future generations – preferably covered in stains with sticky pages.

Family Camping Cookbook by Tiff and Jim Easton

Not sure I would recommend this book as much as Camp Cooking in the Wild but there is merit to owning this book.  I like that the Easton’s included information on how to incorporate foraged foods.  To me, that’s a big plus because I love to forage.  Their recipes are far more simple, as well, which is nice when you are cooking with children.

I like that they offer menus with shopping lists to make preparation super simple.  Not only that but they offer different menus based on age.  They even offer a vegetarian alternative. 

The book is broken up into environments such as the beach or the woods.  While much of the food is easy to prepare – they encourage a wide range of flavors and styles of cooking.  I never thought about grilling a butterflied leg of lamb while camping but I love the idea.  The more I look at the recipes the more I love this book.  I love ethnic food and this book is full of kid friendly foreign foods that we can make while out on vacation or adapt to make at home.

Camp Cooking in the Wild by Mark Scriver

This is the perfect book for those learning to cook while camping or for those who want to do more than just roasted hot dogs while out in the wilderness.  The first part of the book focuses on learning the basics – what equipment, how to plan and pack your meals. 

Then comes the recipes.  They range from Effort Level 1 to Effort Level 4.  What I like best is that these are recipes that you would make at home.  It shows how you can cook like you normally do when you’re out in the wilderness.  You may not cook their recipes because you’ll learn how to cook your own.  I rather like that.

This is a great beginner book and a wonderful gift idea for those who want to spend more time outdoors but just don’t have the skills yet.

Cooking from the Farmer’s Market by Jodi Liano

A beautiful book from Williams Sonoma, Cooking from the Farmer’s Market did not disappoint.  The photography is colorful and enticing.  The recipes are varied enough that there is sure to be enough to warrant owning the book.

I was a little put off by the assumption that all Farmer’s Markets are the same.  I’ve been rather stunned to learn that’s not true as I follow blogs that offer seasonal cooking.  I live in Washington and, though we have an amazing farmer’s market, our seasons and variety of produce do not match what is offered in this book.

With that said, that doesn’t mean I can’t find the produce at our local Co-op.  I do appreciate encouraging local produce and learning to eat those foods. 

This would be a perfect book for those who have joined a CSA or get Bountiful Baskets.  I’m always trying to figure how to use some of the unique produce we get each week.

Edible Party Bouquets by Fox Chapel Publishing

When this title came up in the NetGalley catalog, I couldn't wait to review it.  I love the idea of edible bouquets and I'm always telling my husband that he should go into the business.  He's amazing when it comes to prepping beautiful food for parties (just wish he'd do it more often and perhaps would consider going into business).
This book totally blew me out of the water.  The bouquets were amazing.  The best part - they were all fairly simple.  The most complicated designs were created using cookie cutters making the work so easy. 
Not only were there fruit bouquets but Fox Chapel Publishing stretched the gamut by designing bouquets made of cinnamon rolls, wraps, mini pies, and tortilla chips.  Many of the designs were fully edible.
If you love to play with your food, this is the book for you.  Most of the bouquets don't require more than the food and skewers.  Some have you make foods from scratch while others have you use store bought ingredients such as a tree made out of chocolate covered mint cookies.
I'm thinking this might be a future Christmas gift for my husband and already gives me the best ideas for future party foods.

The Naked Foods Cookbook by Margaret Floyd and James Barry

The concept of naked eating is to eat clean, whole, unprocessed foods. The authors ask that you investigate your food before bringing it into your kitchen. This is not only a good practice for the environment but will allow the preparer to create more healthy dishes. The first few chapters of this cookbook explain the concept of eating naked as well as how to stock your kitchen and preparation methods. The recipes contained have vegetarian versions and all are gluten-free. The authors are supportive of raw organic milks but include ways to make dairy free milks at home. I liked that the recipes varied from raw to cooked and included vegetarian and meat ideas. The recipes are all rated based on difficulty and easy to find. The book ends with sample menus and food seasons. All in all this is a good book for those who are investigating eating raw, vegan or unprocessed.

The World in Your Lunch Box by Claire Eamer

The first thing I noticed with this book is the illustrations. They remind me of Roald Dahl books. The illustrators are different but the feeling of childish glee was the same.
The next thing I noticed was the subject (okay maybe it was the other way around but who knows). How could I resist a book about food? Food is great but learning about food is even better. This book comes across as a school assignment. The unidentified main character has to catalog everything that is eaten for lunch and research some of the ingredients.
The research covers science and history. The facts are amusing and interesting. I couldn’t put the book down. The illustrations were funny and so full of character that I often forgot that I was reading a non-fiction book.
This one makes me want to pull out the Roald Dahl cookbooks and have a go at some fun foods. It, also, makes me want to investigate my own lunches. Who wouldn’t want tortillas with peanut butter and bananas – I think I’m now hungry.
This is a great addition to any library from a homeschool to grade school. I’m thinking it might be a fun one for my freshman boy who loves cooking as much as his mama.

Lake Eden Cookbook by Joanne Fluke

I cannot wait to get my own copy of this book. I loved borrowing it from the library but what a wonderful cookbook. For those who enjoy the Hannah Swenson mysteries this is a must have. There's a sweet short story about a cookie exchange party with all the characters.
The story introduces each section of recipes. The majority are from all the previous books which is really nice since I can never remember which book had which recipe and I don't own them all. This would allow me to pass along my books and still have all the recipes.
There are a handful of new recipes from the "party" and that's fun too. I really can't wait to dig in and play.

Simple Asian Meals by Nina Simonds

One cannot truly understand the wonder that is Asian food until they have had it homemade. There is something about the complexity of flavors and smells that is lost in most dining experiences. Nina Simonds offers simple and yet delicious alternatives to eating out. Her meals are easy enough for the least experienced cook. The book is filled with flavors that inspire a handful of recipes.
I like that she doesn’t offer tons of recipes but instead offers ways to alter the recipes she has listed. Cooking becomes comfortable when we are invited to experiment. I loved that she encouraged spices and that most of her flavors are easily attainable for those in the United States.
She finishes the book with Asian inspired desserts that complete the simple design. They are not overly sweet and most require little time to make them (she offers a recipe to make your own ice cream bon bons – I know what I am making this summer).
The last thing she did that I liked was dot the book with little trivia about the nutrition of the foods and Chinese medicine. It completed the whole picture of what the dish would be like for me. My ARC was in black and white which made me a little sad because the book is filled with beautiful pictures that could only get better in color.

The Food52 Cookbook by Amanda Hesser

Little did I know when I picked this book up that I was going to be completely swept away. First Food52 is a website created by the authors to support home cooking. I could spend a day there just looking over their dinner and a movie section.
The cookbook represents a year's worth of recipes that the authors gathered from their website. These are not just any recipes but the winners of a variety of contests they hold.
The recipes are real world recipes - sophisticated and yet homey. I can imagine my family eating these foods at the dinner table. I pictured my son enjoying buttery cookies and exotic soups and loving them.
I can't even begin to pick out a favorite and I'm sure my days will be consumed with fitting these recipes into our menus.
I liked that the recipes stretched beyond my comfort level but not so much that I was intimidated. The cookbook its self is open and honest like sitting down with friends to talk food.
The recipes are adult but can easily be served to children (minus the numerous inventive cocktails). I like that there are whole foods in these recipes and they are not too complicated. This is definetely one that is going on my shelf at home.

The 25 Greatest Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur

I remember my first Top Secret Recipes experience. A friend had loaned me her copy of this cookbook which had a recipe for something we had been talking about (I believe it was a candy). I can't remember what the recipe was because a few pages in and I was in love. Todd Wilbur has become famous for breaking down popular processed foods so that the average cook can make them in their kitchen. After many books, Todd is coming out with a greatest hits (a first in cookbook history).
This book is only available in e-book and is designed to help smooth the way for those who love e-books. This is the first Top Secret Recipes book to go digital.
If you are not familiar with Top Secret Recipes, recommend this book as a great introduction. If you are already a fan, this is a condensed version with his most popular recipes.
The recipes range from popular sweets like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Oreos to restaurant standards like McDonald's Big Mac and Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin' Onion. Each recipe comes with a short introduction to the company and the dish.

Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale by Michael Pooley

I make up my own version of cider and have for years but I really want to learn how to use a ciderpress. When the opportunity to review this book came up, I jumped at it and hoped I could make use of the information while I still have access to apples.
This is a well written book on making cider. It defines apple qualities, press options and finishes with fermenting choices and recipes for using the cider.
The only complaint I have is that the author is from England and the apple selection is available in the UK and not the United States. That won't stop me from using the press information, it just means more experimenting with the apple choices I have (which here is Washington is vast).
There are plenty of instructions for making a ciderpress but I may cheat and purchase one. Regardless of where the press comes, I still can't wait to play with the recipes at the back of the book - fish baked in cider, yummy!

The Treats Truck Baking Book by Kim Ima

I love baking and cookbooks but one thing that has always bothered me is when an author creates a new recipe instead of altering one. I have read so many cookbooks that have dozens of pages of recipes that vary only one or two ingredients. This is not the case wi Kim Ima's book. She offers a recipe and then follows it with several alternative ideas. She has so many ideas. I love the mix and match format of her book.
She encourages experimentation with flavors and combinations. She takes cookies to a new level when she uses them to create dishes such as Dessert Nachos. She takes vanilla cake and makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (something I can't wait to try).
She has a concoction she calls Movie Treats Cake that layers Junior Mints, Raisinets, and Milk Duds between vanilla cake and buttercream frosting and then covers the whole thing with popcorn and Red Vines (I'll be making this soon, too).
I love her ideas and creative concepts of taking a plain chocolate cookie and turns it into something homey and exotic at the same time.
If you love desserts, especially ones designed to be shared, this is the book for you.

The Supernatural Kids Cookbook by Nancy Mehagian

I would love to say that this is the perfect cookbook for all children, however I believe that the concept will be lost on many children. I love the idea behind this book. Any child can be supernatural with the right nutrition but I think most will pick up this book with the impression that the recipes are more about fantasy than health food. (That's what I thought - with all the themed cookbooks out there I thought this would include things like worms with blood sauce instead of whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce).
It's not a bad thing. The cookbook is well designed with fun illustrations and pages of good instruction. This is a wonderful first cookbook for children. The author includes instructions on how to steam vegetables, chop an onion and cook brown rice.
I really liked the week of salad and sandwich ideas.
Nancy Mehagian encourages whole foods and creating a better way to eat. Sadly, I think this book will become a case of preaching to the choir. Those who already have an interest in eating like this are the ones more likely to pick the cookbook up. Those who love Moosewood Cookbooks will love this one as well.

Simply Great Breads by Daniel Leader

So many bread books are filled with the same recipe repeated over and over with a few alterations. They make the reader feel cheated out of new and exciting recipes. That is not the case with this bread book.
The variation of recipes is nice, a sampling of bread recipes from pancakes to challah to flatbread to doughnuts to monkey bread. There are great stories with the recipes and cultural explanations as needed. I loved the bounce from sweet to savory but more so I liked the small sections after each recipe that explained different ways you could make the bread.
I loved the addition of non-bread recipes such as the three jam recipes after the Jelly-filled Berliners (a stuffed doughnut).
This is definitely one book for my shelves. I can't wait to get elbow deep in flour and try the recipes. I have been wanting to make crumpets and bagels so I know what I am doing this weekend.

Homemade Sodas by Andy Schloss

In this day and age of endless chemical laden sodas, one begins to dream of a simpler time. A time when soda was made with real sugar. A time when flavors of soda actually tasted like something nature made. I remember my parents had purchased a home soda maker from Schwan's when I was a child. I loved the idea of making my own soda. Even today, I collect recipes for all natural homebrewed sodas but brewing my own is intimidating. I could make it, it's not that hard but I always feel like I need someone to hold my hand through the process.
Enter Andy Schloss and his new book Homemade Sodas. The book starts out with clear instructions for making and brewing your own sodas. He talks about the history of soda and how ingredients have changed. The pictures call to the reader to remember the better times. Times when drinking coke was a treat not a necessity.
Andy Schloss then moves into the drinks, slowly, starting with sparkling waters. Easy to create mixes that combine with sparkling water to make a refreshing spa-like drink. He moves onto fruit based drinks some mixed with seltzer, others carbonated with a soda siphon and eventually to brewing.
What I loved about this book is he gives you all three options most of the time. You can make the soda with seltzer, through a soda siphon or brew it. For me, that gives me the chance to work my way up to brewing. If we like the flavor with the seltzer then we know we'll like the brewed variety. And it gives me the chance to chicken out if I still can't talk myself into homebrewing.
Some of the soda concoctions sound highbrow - like honey cardamon or fizzy honeydew. They can be off putting for your average soda drinker but those with a sense of adventure can only see the beginning of possibilities.
Don't worry Andy Schloss has offered a few "normal" recipes from Orange Crush to Cola to Very Cherry Cola to several types of root beer.
This book has recipes for everyone from the soda drinker to the organic concoction drinker. I will definitely be making some cola extract and see if I can wean my boys off the canned stuff and to the homemade varieties. Now all I need is a recipe for Mellow Yellow and we just may give up store-bought soda all together.

Cutie Pies by Dani Cone

Dani Cone owns and operates High 5 Pie in Seattle Washington. Cutie Pies is a culmination of her work as a pie expert.
Her pies come in six "varieties" - cutie pies, petit 5's, pie jars, flipsides, pie pops and full-sized pies. Cutie pies are baked in standard muffin tin. Petit 5's in mini-muffin pans. Pie jars are pies baked in half pint canning jars. Flipsides are similar to turnovers. But Pie Pops are what caused me to really want to share this book. They're little pies served on sticks like lollipops(so cute!!!!).
Her recipe collection bounced from sweet to savory making this the most inclusive pie cookbook I have seen.
Dani offers such a selection that not only makes me want to go home and bake but find my way across the state to Seattle just to try High 5 Pies (anyone want to send me one, my birthday is in two weeks).
What I like best about Cutie Pies is that this book touches on all the pie needs one could have. The crust recipes vary from an ordinary crust to a graham cracker to a vegan to a gluten free. For those not on special diets this might not seem that important but for someone who might make a pie for someone with a gluten allergy or is vegan - it's nice to have the options. I love that I can make the gluten free crust and stuff it in a sterilized canning jar for the cutest treat out there.
This book makes me wish my son was still in elementary school so I can send pie pops to a class party.
I feel like I should share some recipes here but my tastes run more to the four cheese and onion pie variety. Who ever thought of a mac and cheese pie? Yum! Wait- Mac and Cheese on a stick. Hmm I've got some free time coming up this weekend so pies might be in my future.

America I Am Pass it Down Cookbook by Chef Jeff Henderson and Ramin Ganeshram

It's not uncommon for me to get excited about a recipe, but a cookbook is a different story. I can easily find something in a book that makes me glad I picked it up but I haven't had a whole book get me interested like this one. America I Am is a line of books catering to the history of African Americans. Pass It Down shares African American recipes old and new.
I'm not African American but there was something about the description of this cookbook that I liked. It's old Southern recipes (hubby's family is from the south) and maybe something I could add to my growing collection of recipes for my husband. What I didn't expect is a look into the life and history of food for those who came from Africa to America. I learned more than I thought possible from a cookbook.
To start with, the book talks about how plantation owners choose slaves from various regions of Africa for their knowledge of certain crops, rice being a big one. Now I'm no agricultural dummy but that surprised me. I didn't even know we grew rice in the US. That was it, I was hooked in the history of food in America.
Then came the next "story" about a man who converted to Judaism and re-discovered his heritage through food. That was it, I couldn't put it down. We forget, in this day and age of fast food and busy schedules, how much of our history comes from the kitchen. This book was a great reminder. There were tales of food as a catalyst for civil rights. Cooking and gardens as tools to better communities. Ways to teach our children to not only cook but to preserve their history.
As if that wasn't enough, there are amazing Soul Food recipes. Many I can't wait to try in my own kitchen. My favorites - recipes written by George Washington Carver to promote peanuts (peanut doughnuts, anyone?). I have to admit he has got to be my favorite unrecognized historical figure. I owe that man most of my diet since, to me, peanut butter is a must and it made my pregnancy that much easier. I may have to find a time machine and send that man a letter of thanks (or maybe to his descendants).
You know, I may be a foodie and I love learning about food in history but this book should be required reading for everyone who calls themself an American. We have so much to thank those who came before us and to honor them, we need to remember what we have that they gave us.