RCPL has thousands of cookbooks in its collection. As the summer winds down, why not seek inspiration in the pages of one of these beautiful books? The list below is just a taste. Come into one of our locations and browse to your heart’s content.

     >> Read more

Have you heard about the newest hippest food magazine?  It's sold out two printings thus far and had a glowing review in the New York Times - a new magazine with heft, detail, and no ads.  It's called    >> Read more

    >> Read more

The flourishing microbrew and craft beer industry has made beer culture in the US a lot more interesting than it was a few decades ago, when a handful of giant firms such as Anheuser Busch and Miller dominated the market.  In a sense, this proliferation of choice is a return to America’s past, when hundreds of small breweries, many founded by immigrants, thrived throughout the country.&nbs    >> Read more

The South Carolina Book Festival was held several weeks ago in Columbia, and our coworkers who went report that “a good time was had by all,” especially those who attended the presentations by the cook book and gardening authors. This year, authors Nathalie Dupree and Patricia Moore-Pastides (and moderator Amanda McNulty!) entertained the crowd with their presentations.    >> Read more

Recently I was working in my kitchen with the television tuned in to the Martha Stewart program, Everyday Food.    >> Read more

I am not impressed by financial writers who advise readers to “stop going to Starbucks” or “pack your lunch every day” as a way to save money.  For the beginning budgeter, those tips can be useful, but what about the rest of us?  I’ve already cut my cable, stopped eating out, and I purchase my clothes secondhand.  What am I missing?    >> Read more

Today, beer fans will be converging on the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center for the World Beer Festival.  Attendees at either of the two sessions will have the chance to taste over 200 different beers from all over the world.  There will be live music, workshops on pairing beer with foods, and seminars on tasting beers.  The festival is celebrating its third year in Columbia and is a production of All About Beer magazine.     >> Read more

Do you need holiday baking ideas? One great thing about this time of year is getting to try all those home-baked goodies.

Rarely do we take the time make cookies that don't come out of a plastic package anymore, so now is the time to try some recipes. And spread the joy; swap your homemade cookies with a friend!    >> Read more

Raise your hand if you find yourself mindlessly eating. How about if you are full, but find yourself wanting more food.  Ever eat something special just because it's there?  If you haven't raised your hand yet, then you're doing pretty well.  I wish I was in that category, but my hand is raised.  I feel that sometimes, I have lack of self-control when it comes to food.     >> Read more

One of my grandmothers came from Russia.  The family owned a bakery in the Ukraine in the late 1880’s.  As the story goes, Cossacks constantly came in and stole bread.  One by one, my grandmother and her sisters came to America.  I’m lucky that my grandmother passed down an appreciation of good baking and breads.  Breads are so varied and rich.  Have you ever pined for a crusty loaf of brown pumpernickel or a light Swedish rye?  How about some old-fashioned oatmeal bread, a slice of sweet raisin or a loaf of warm, hearty potato bread?    >> Read more

I went on a recent binge of books about food. Chefs who can write are rare, but when they do write about food in a compelling way, it is a great combination of ingredients.

Its been out a while, but I also finally got to Kitchen confidential: adventures in the culinary underbelly, by Anthony Bourdain. This one is a fun, though by no means gentle read. Bourdain lets us in on what it takes to run a top-tier restaurant, and it is an eye-opener.    >> Read more

An older gentleman approached the Reference desk today and asked for a pound cake recipe and a frosting recipe. He explained: “I’ve always worked on Saturdays. Now, I have Saturdays off. I want to learn to bake, and I want to bake a pound cake.” What wonderful determination he has and what fun to help him find the book he needs!

     >> Read more

Everybody's talking about backyard chickens!  Evidently it's what all the cool kids are doing these days, and Columbia's City Council is even now debating allowing people in the city to keep them.  Frankly, I don't see what the problem is - what possible issue can come up that isn't already covered by the noise and animal control laws we currently have?  (And no roosters!)  I won't name names, but a certain city councilman was concerned about "hens impeding traffic".  Think about that for a moment - it's always good to start the day off with a smile.    >> Read more

Those of us with allergies do the allergy salute all spring and fall.  You’ve probably seen it, the hand across the nose as we try to stop the itching.  Our eyes water and feel like things are pricking them.  We feel tired and listless.    >> Read more

Last time we talked about "personality" cooking magazines.  Now I'll finally tell you what my idea of a great food magazine is.

Cook's Illustrated is the only cooking magazine I subscribe to.  It's an amazing achievement among magazines - there are no ads.  None at all.  That means that when they review a product, you can really trust their opinion - you know they didn't have to worry about any advertiser's feelings.  It's put out by the people from America's Test Kitchen on PBS, and if you're familiar with the TV show then the format of the magazine will come as no surprise.  Every recipe has been dissected and experimented upon until they think they've come up with the absolute best "whatever" - the latest issue has beef stroganoff, chewy brownies, bread pudding, leek-potato soup, polenta, pan seared chicken breasts, and more. 

The product reviews are the best in the genre, and user-submitted kitchen tips are excellent.  (Having trouble getting the tomato paste out of the can?  Use your can opener to open both ends and push the whole thing through from the bottom.)  The website is absolutely fantastic, although it does require a separate subscription.  It offers a full archive of everything that's ever been in the magazine plus bonus recipes and reviews.  I use it all the time when I need a new food gadget and only want the best.  (Another feature - the best isn't always the most expensive.  Far from it, in fact.) 

Multiple versions of every recipe are exhaustively tested both by staff and by volunteer testers.  I signed up to test recipes a few years ago, so every few months I get an e-mail with a recipe and a survey.  It's a lot of fun - some are great, some are... less great.  You feel a little sense of accomplishment when you see a version of something you tested make it to the magazine.  (I suppose that none of the versions of the enchiladas verde were any good - it got a big thumbs down from us, at any rate.  Maybe they're still working on it.)  Right now I've got shumai pork steamed dumplings in my inbox - I'm going to give them a try when I have the time to do it.

We've got Cooks Illustrated bound from 2002 to the present, so stop by and take a look at it! 

These cooking magazines I've profiled in the last week are just the tip of the iceberg here in the Periodicals Department.  We've got food periodicals coming out our ears - I didn't even touch on Clean Eating, Everyday Food, Southern Living, Vegetarian Times...  we've got it all.  If you're looking for a specific recipe, be sure to ask us!    >> Read more

Last time, we talked about homestyle cooking magazines.  Now, let's go over a few of the "personality" cooking magazines that have proliferated in recent years.

Cooking with Paula Deen has a special place in my heart, because as you all know I have a weakness for butter.  I have a deep affection for this magazine because I've always thought that if I were on the cover of my own magazine, this is exactly how I'd look - kind of stiff, kind of uncomfortable, with a little "oh please don't take my picture" in my eyes.  Of course, the recipes are good, hearty Southern fare for the most part.  There are a lot of them, which I like.  There are some travel and personality pieces - I can take them or leave them - and some product guides which tend to be very pretty but a little superficial.  All in all, if you like the TV show you'll like the magazine and vice versa.

Everyday with Rachael Ray is similar in format - lots of recipes and some extra stuff.  Frankly I do not care what kind of tinted moisturizer Rachael Ray thinks I need, but the cooking product guides are pretty in-depth, so it's a wash.  The recipes look pretty good and are quite varied, but most of the "extra stuff" just gets on my nerves.  Possibly because it puts me in mind of Rachael Ray's annoying laugh.  It's funny - just like her shows, I like the actual cooking stuff (30 Minute Meals) and hate everything else (every single other show she's on). 

Personally, I don't think you should need some celebrity chef to put on the cover of your magazine - the food should stand on its own.  Next time, I'll talk about my favorite cooking magazine of all time - it's the one I subscribe to!    >> Read more

Last time, we talked a bit about some of the fancy-pants food magazines we get here at the library.  Now, I'd like to go over a few that have a more down-home style to them.

Taste of Home is the place to go for comfort food for busy cooks.  The tagline is "Real food from real home cooks", and there's a lot of focus on inexpensive meals (the index at the back gives the cost per serving!) and simple preparation.  I like Taste of Home for its Tuesday night dinner focus, but I do find that the recipes feature a lot more prepared foods than I would personally prefer, and sometimes it's hard to tell the ads from the content.  Each recipe has a color picture, which I like, and the directions are always clear and well written.  Plus, unlike some of these magazines, prep times and servings are always clearly noted.

We also get Taste of Home Simple & Delicious, which is a version of its parent magazine with even faster and simpler recipes.  It offers meals organized by the time it takes to make them and has a lot of information on efficient menu planning, which I like.  Unfortunately, Simple & Delicious has even more prepared food ingredients than Taste of Home.  However, I like the fact that they understand that a meal that involves fifteen minutes of prep and eight hours of unattended cooking is still simple and quick.  Like Taste of Home, every recipe has a photograph and is listed in an index on the last page.  

Both of these magazines are really designed for somebody who wants to cook stuff out of them.  There aren't a bunch of floofy articles or travel pieces or interviews - there's food, and plenty of it.  It reminds me of how much better the Food Network used to be when it had cooking shows instead of reality, travel, and lifestyle stuff.

One other great thing about both of these magazines is that each issue has several of its recipes cut down to a meal for two people available on the website.  As somebody who doesn't have a bunch of kids to feed, I find this to be a really helpful feature.

Next up - food magazines by personalities!    >> Read more

Did you read the article in The State on Wednesday about food magazines?  It was on the front page of the Life and Style section, and it gave a pretty good rundown of the popular food magazines since the death of that grand old lady, Gourmet.  

Now, you know I love food magazines.  (And cookbooks.  I have a whole bookshelf just for cookbooks.  I have a shocking number of cookbooks from which I have never cooked a single dish, too.  I read them like novels and fantasize about cooking from them.  It's a sickness.)  So I thought I'd give you my own rundown of the main food magazines we get here in the Periodicals Department, and I'm sure you'll notice I don't always agree with The State.  This will be a multi-part series, so hang on to your chef's hats!

Bon Appetit is supposed to be carrying Gourmet's mantle, I guess.  I never saw much difference between the two, when it came down to it.  The emphasis in Bon Appetit is on exotic ingredients, elaborate preparations, and aspirational lifestyle articles.  Many people don't realize that both Bon Appetit and Gourmet archive recipes at epicurious.com, which is really how I prefer to get them.  The web recipes have ratings and reviews by other cooks, so you know which ones are winners and which ones are duds.  I have to say, I've cooked some great stuff from Bon Appetit... but I've also come up with some real losers, too.  The best thing about Bon Appetit, which I miss about Gourmet as well, is the amazing food photography.  The food always looks so amazing that it gets you really excited about cooking.

Saveur is like a slightly less stuffy Bon Appetit - a little friendlier, but still very self-consciously sophisticated.  The recipes are varied, but I'd give the same caveat that they tend to feature difficult to find or expensive ingredients and complex technique.  Saveur, like many recent food magazines, has jumped on the locavore trend with both feet - the words "artisanal", "fresh", "authentic" and "seasonal" are so frequently used in these magazines that it starts to feel a bit cliched.  Still, like Bon Appetit, the recipes and articles are exciting and beautifully photographed. 

Both of these will introduce you to new ingredients and make you wish you could travel to all these amazing restaurants, so even if you don't cook a thing out of them you'll enjoy the reading experience.

Next up - homestyle cooking magazines!    >> Read more

Do you want wealth and good luck in 2010? Better start your year off right with a traditional New Year’s feast! Cultures all over the world eat certain foods every New Year’s Day to ensure a year of good luck and fortune.

In Japan, toshikoshi sobo, or buckwheat noodles, are eaten as a symbol of long life. In Greece, St. Basil’s Cake (Vasilopitta) is a New Year’s traditon. A large coin is baked into the cake; whoever finds the coin in his piece of cake is said to have good luck the whole year long. As the clock strikes midnight in Spain on New Year’s Eve, people eat twelve grapes, one for each chime of the hour.

In the South, we have our own traditional New Year’s food: pork, greens and Hoppin’ John.     >> Read more

We've done a few posts recently using our bound magazine resources, and some of you thought it was pretty cool that you could come to the library and look at Life and Look from the 50s and 60s.  Did you know that we can go quite a bit farther than that?  Between our bound magazines and microfilm holdings, we have several titles that go all the way back to the 19th century.  You can come to the Periodicals Department and take a look at The State back to 1891, Harper's New Monthly from 1888, New England Magazine from 1831, Atlantic Monthly from 1857 and several others.  Today I'm going to tell you a bit about Godey's Lady's Book, which we have from 1843 to 1870 with some gaps.  One reason I like this title so much is that we have it in bound volumes rather than microfilm, so it's easier to browse and the tinted pictures are in color.

Godey's was published for a wide female audience.  It was the most popular magazine of its day, although it was fairly expensive - subscribers paid $3 a year.  In comparison, The Saturday Evening Post was only $2 for an annual subscription.  Women all over the country subscribed, from big cities to rural farms. 

So what did you get for your three dollars?  A lot, actually.  The magazine is incredibly eclectic and gives lots of entertainment and advice per month.  Isolated rural woman particularly looked forward to the magazine for its fashion plates, recipes and literature.  Let's go through a typical issue, December 1859 (a century and a half ago to the day!), and take a look at what Godey's has to offer.

At the front of every issue there's a tinted fashion plate and several other drawings of the latest fashions.  That's how these ladies got their fashion groove on - there are no patterns or instructions, just drawings of what the new dresses looked like.  Some of them do have descriptions: "Dress of Queen's purple reps; the bottom of the skirt has a bias border of moss velvet, a still deeper shade of purple, the upper edge of which is waved or scalloped; the sleeves are trimmed with the same, and scarf-shaped lappets, edged with black lace, fall below the waist."  Got all that?  You looked at the pictures and you just whipped one up yourself, or took some elements from the drawings and made over an old dress to be more stylish.  It's easy to forget how skilled these women were at needlework, sewing and other domestic arts - trust me, making this stuff was obviously not for the faint of heart.  In addition, every issue has patterns (not usually instructions, just drawings) for embroidery motifs, filet crochet and other 19th century fiber arts.  

Then there's a piece of sheet music for the piano (this one's a sentimental song titled "How Pleasant 'Tis to Live") and a large literary section.  The stories are generally serialized and quite lengthy - I'm sure you'd wait with baited breath from month to month to find out what happened next.  There are also serialized drawing lessons for you to work on from month to month.  When the drawing lessons have finished they might be replaced with other serialized instructional segments - some years there are serial lessons on cutting down adult clothing for children, for example.  Then some more pictures of clothing you're supposed to make - this time for your kids -  and some crochet.  Finally, something with instructions I understand!  The Crochet Coronet Basket has a crochet pattern just like a modern one.  (No, I didn't make it for you.  Don't get greedy.)

The last section is, to me, the most interesting - "Receipts, &c."  Of course, "receipts" is an old-fashioned way to say "recipes", but there's more than just recipes in this section.  You'll find home remedies, major first aid instruction, skin care, laundry advice and more.  There's even a column of household hints and recipes sent in by readers. 

My original intention was to try making one of the skin creams and report on how well it works, but upon closer inspection it seems I'd have to start out by harpooning a sperm whale.  Since that was counterindicted, instead I decided to make one of the recipes for you.  This one is in every single December issue I looked at, so it must be very popular.  It's for Twelfth Cake or Christmas Cake.

To two pounds of flour well sifted unite
Of loaf-sugar ounces sixteen;
Two pounds of fresh butter, with eighteen fine eggs,
And four pounds of currants washed clean;
Eight ounces of almonds well blanched and cut small,
The same weight of citron sliced;
Of orange and lemon-peel candied one pound
And a gill of pale brandy uniced;
A large nutmeg grated; exact half an ounce
Of allspice, but only a quarter
Of mace, coriander and ginger well ground,
Or pounded to dust in a mortar.
An important addition is cinnamon, which
Is better increased than diminished;
The fourth of an ounce is sufficient.  Now this
May be baked four good hours till finished.

Well, as poetry it's not much, but let's see how it bakes up!  Click the title of the post to see the results of the Great Sesquicentennial Christmas Cake Experiment!    >> Read more

It's a grim slog, my friends.  That turkey is not looking any more beautiful as the days go on.  It takes up a whole shelf in the fridge.  Nobody wants to look at it anymore.  But for you, gentle reader, we push on. Once more, into the breach!

We're trying out recipes for your leftover turkey from all sorts of periodicals.  To read our first two leftover suppers, click here and here.

This time we're going to dip into USA Today.  On November 23, they got the editors of Eating Well and Cooking Light to offer some healthier recipes for your Thanksgiving leftovers.  They include Greek salad pitas with feta spread and turkey, creamy carrot and sweet potato soup, and cream of turkey and wild rice soup. 

We're doing the turkey soup.  I did appreciate their attempts to give you something to do with leftovers other than turkey - yesterday's samosas also used up some mashed potatoes, but often these articles focus solely on the bird.

The recipe:

Saute some celery, carrots and shallots.  (Okay, they also wanted mushrooms, but we didn't have any and we don't really like them.)  Throw in a quarter cup of flour and salt and pepper for a few more minutes.  Add four cups of reduced sodium chicken broth and bring to a boil, scraping up all the good stuff.  Add a cup of quick-cooking wild rice and simmer until it's done, 5-7 minutes.  Throw in three cups or so of your turkey, half a cup of sour cream and some parsley if you have it and cook until heated through.

The results:

The verdict:

Much better than the turkey soups I've had before.  It had a nice meaty consistency to it and the rice added a very nice nutty flavor.  Thumbs up all around. 

This one actually did away with some turkey!  Enough for us to say guiltlessly that we are done.  We'll boil it and make it stock, because we refuse to look at it for one more day.

What did we learn?  Well, all the recipes were actually quite good, but every single one of them made me think, you know, this would be better with chicken.  In fact, I think I'll revisit some of them the next time I roast a chicken and need something to make the next day. 

I was honestly hoping some of them would be awful so I could make fun of them, but no - they were all good ideas.  However, the soup is the only one I'd really say wasn't trying to hide the essential turkiness of the turkey.  They'll all go in my post-Thanksgiving armory for next year.

You can see any of these articles at the Periodicals Department.  We have them in print, and you can see both the Real Simple and the USA Today articles through one of our databases.  Ask us how!

My best tip?  For Christmas, do beef tenderloin instead.

    >> Read more

I know.  You don't even want to think about it lurking in your fridge, do you?  Okay, maybe some of you just loooove picking over a turkey carcass - this post isn't for you.  This is for the rest of us who just can't face that thing, but yet the family barely touched it and there's still seven pounds of meat on the carcass.  You've already had all the turkey sandwiches you can stand.  You're done with Thanksgiving in its original form and now you just can't bear to throw the bird away with one breast still on it.  We can help!

I'm going to be your guinea pig.  I know that by the time these go up, it will be too late for your turkey, but there's always Christmas and the freezer and next year.  I've picked out some recipes from those omnipresent "what to do with the leftovers" articles you see every year around the holidays, and I'll tell you if you should try it or not.  (I am not making turkey tetrazzini.  Don't even go there.) 

We'll do one a day for dinner until that thing up there is finished, one way or another, and at the end we'll make stock together.  Actually, my mom will do a lot of it, since I sprained my foot on the way back from Thanksgiving dinner and I am not going to try to negotiate a grocery store on crutches.  Go Mom!

Today we're looking at Bon Appetit's November issue.  The article on page 73 is "Leftovers Done Right," and of course the pictures are gorgeous.  There are recipes for turkey pot pie, barbeque pulled-turkey sandwiches and turkey empanadas.  You can see a slideshow with the recipes on their Web site, if you like.  We're making the sandwiches.

The recipe:

The recipe is really a recipe for barbeque sauce and cole slaw, and while both were fine, if I were to do it again I'd either use my own recipe or use a storebought sauce that I know I like.  The sauce was okay - tomato puree, bacon, cider vinegar, brown sugar, chili powder and cumin - but it wasn't awesome enough to go through the trouble of making it from scratch.  The slaw is very basic - just mayo, cider vinegar and celery seeds on your cabbage.  

The results:

Kind of messy, but that's what you get with a barbeque sandwich.

The verdict: 

Pretty good!  My dad said "It hides the turkey pretty well," which is pretty much what you want here.  It was easy, even with making your own sauce, and it was pretty tasty (although like all barbeque sandwiches, it completely disintegrated by the end and had to be finished with a fork.)  With a good premade sauce it would be even easier, and let's be honest - the whole point of figuring out what to do with the rest of the turkey is to not go to the grocery store and to not put a lot of work into cooking anything.  I just made a feast for eight on Thursday, and there's no way I'm going out of my way for the leftovers.

I'll give it four out of five stars.  I'd make it again, but I think their approach is a little odd for leftovers.

The drawback:

It only takes two cups of turkey to serve four, which didn't even make a dent.

Next up: turkey samosas!  (With added "can't find ingredients at the grocery store" fun!)  Don't miss it!

Periodicals is your one stop shop for recipes!  We get all the usual magazines (Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Good Housekeeping, Southern Living, Weight Watchers, Vegetarian Times) as well seasonal special issues and recipe sources you might never have considered.
      >> Read more

Do you ever drive past houses and wonder what the people in them are up to?  I like to think that all the people behind the curtains in my neighborhood are doing cool and interesting things, but the boring truth is that they're probably just watching American Idol. 

We, on the other hand, are weirdoes.  Nobody in my house has ever even seen an episode of American Idol.  In fact, we have become those annoying people who have cancelled their cable and bore everybody at dinner parties by talking about how much they don't miss regular TV.  It could be worse - we could be the couple who look down their noses at you and make sure you know they wouldn't even dream of having a TV in the house at all.  (We have to have a TV because otherwise the furniture would all point in the wrong direction.)  Instead, we signed up for the 7-at-a-time Netflix plan and hooked up a computer to our TV set so we can watch Jack Benny and Jimmy Durante online in comfort and style.

So recently we were watching The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (excuse me, the Carnation Evaporated Milk George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Brought to You by Carnation Evaporated Milk - From Contented Cows!  And now a word from our sponsor, Carnation Evaporated Milk!) and, as usual, the show stops right in the middle to make sure you know all about what you could be doing right this minute with Carnation Evaporated Milk!  The action of the show comes to a halt while Gracie takes a tray of custard cups out of the oven to show you this amazing custard she made with the recipe in this week's Life magazine!  (It's the one with Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower on the cover!  Go tear it out right now and buy some Carnation Evaporated Milk!)  By the time they were done eating the stuff, they'd made us want the custard so much I agreed to use the bound Periodicals collection to find the recipe and make it.

Click the title of this post to find out how I found the recipe and how it turned out!
    >> Read more

It seems that everybody who went to see Julie & Julia immediately went out and bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the seminal 1961 cookbook by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.  And well they should - it's one of the most influential American cookbooks, and it brought French cuisine within reach of American cooks who had, at the time, been using a lot of condensed soups and other things that come in cans.  

There have been a lot of articles lately, then, on the phenomenon of the book's recent popularity and whether you, yourself, the home cook, ought to go buy it.  An article in the New York Times brings up some of the "problems" with the book - okay, I admit it.  There's a lot of butter.  And a lot of cream.  And when I say a lot of butter, I mean a lot of butter.  Hey, Julia Child lived to be almost 92 - do you want to live forever?  Is 92 not enough for you?

Slate really ticked me off with an article called "Don't Buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking" - that bit of advice is what drove me to write this blog post.  The author, Regina Schrambling, thinks you'll never cook from it - that the recipes don't work for our modern, busy lifestyles, that they're too complicated, that they require too much patience (heaven forbid), that they're fussy and that they're dated.  Well, yes, some of them are dated - a lot of recipes in the book are for a style of entertaining that has gone the way of the dodo.  If I go to your party and you have some sort of chicken aspic on the table, I'm going to go home and spread rumors about you and your meat Jello.  And I'll also grant that they're a little French for American tastes - there's a whole chapter on sweetbreads and brains, and I don't even know where to buy brains in Columbia.  (Don't e-mail me to let me know - I'm okay with ignorance on this matter.  I'd try brains at the Best Brain Restaurant in the World, but I doubt my first attempt at cooking them myself would endear them to me.) 

But don't buy it because the recipes are too hard?  For one thing, that's just not true - they may be complicated and long, but generally they are not actually technically difficult.  They're extremely well explained, and I assure you that if you follow the directions you will get the expected result - they're very precise and exhausively tested.  (They're not even all long - the omlettes cook in 40 seconds, although they do require technique.)  Take a look at the title.  If you don't want to master the art of french cooking, which one assumes would take some time and effort, then no, don't buy it.  Otherwise, why let a snob tell you what you are and are not capable of?

At the Boston Globe, they tried making one of the most complicated dishes in the book - pate de canard en croute.  It's a duck stuffed with meat... stuff, and the whole thing gets baked in a pastry crust.  And it took them a lot longer than they expected, sure.  But it came out good, which is the point, right?  Even with the trouble the authors had, they agreed that the recipes are written so clearly that it's very difficult to have one turn out wrong if you even try to follow the instructions.

I'll have you know that Publisher's Weekly agrees with me, too - their article quotes Nora Ephron, director of Julie & Julia, on how instructive and fun the recipes are.

But don't just take my word for it - let me show you.  If you're on the Periodicals home page, click on the title of this blog post to see the second half, where I make the iconic boeuf bourguignon from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
    >> Read more

I love to eat, but I don't like to cook!  If you're like me, then you like to make cooking as simple but as tasty as possible.  I don't cook too much from scratch, but I try to be as creative as I can with the simple mixes that can be bought from the grocery store.  Most recently, I discovered that cinnamon is a great addition to pancake mix.  I've seen people sprinkle cinnamon on top of their pancakes and that made me curious to see how they'd taste with cinnamon in the mix.  It was yummy! 

Do you have a favorite sushi place in town?

How about your own kitchen?

My basil is looking beautiful these days, and I absolutely love to make homemade pesto. It takes no time with my handy food processor. I just boil up some angel hair and voila, lunch!

The heat of summer has arrived with a vengeance and probably won’t be leaving us until well into the fall. A stuffy, overheated kitchen is the last place most of us want to be at this time of     >> Read more

As if raising children wasn’t already vexing enough, parenting in the new millennium presents its unique concerns.

Can’t grow your own? Pick your own!        

Sporting his trademark bed head hair and a green hoodie, his blue eyes twinkle from the cover of this month’s Chatelaine. Since his first cooking show debut as “The Naked Chef” in 1999, Jamie Oliver has been emphasizing the simplicity of cooking and the importance of healthy eating to millions of television viewers. Born in Essex, England, Jamie was first discovered by the BBC while participating in a documentary film of the restaurant where he worked, The River Café. As the host of a dozen cooking series and author of nearly as many cookbooks, Jamie also takes the time to give back to his community; he has established a group of charity restaurants that help disadvantaged youth, as well as healthfully revolutionized school lunches in Britain. The magazine includes a feature article on the young chef, as well as three recipes from his new book, Jamie’s Food Revolution. 

Once you’ve read the basics of what this culinary artist is all about, you can move on to his new self-titled magazine, Jamie. This bi-monthly features tons of recipes (of course!), not to mention stories and articles covering various aspects of local and international cuisine and cooking. Beautiful pictures of artfully plated dishes fill the pages, but don’t be intimidated by their seeming complexity; this chef is a huge fan of simplicity, so most meals feature basic ingredients and easy instructions. Try a few of his flavorful recipes and your family and friends will be impressed with your newfound kitchen skills!

Come take a look at Chatelaine and Jamie in the Periodicals department!    >> Read more

I love herbs. I love using herbs in cooking and I love using herbs in my concoctions. That is what my husband calls them. I call them herbal remedies and some of them really do work.    >> Read more

Let’s face it, in these days of tight wallets and limited time, it is easy to get into a rut in the kitchen.    >> Read more

Cook salmon in the dishwasher! Make Mashed Potato Doughnuts! Whip up some Tarragon Eggs á la Jane Austen! Dinner doesn’t have to be dull; in fact, it can be very, very bizarre!

        

The perfect pie may start with a great crust. With several holidays approaching, I know it is time to pull out my pie plates and pastry blender so that I can get busy making my pies.    >> Read more

If you are worried about what little bites to serve at a party, the library can come to the rescue.     >> Read more

Who is Jack? He’s Mr. Jack-O-Lantern, that’s who. He arrives every year just before Halloween and hangs out on our front porch for a while enjoying the cooler weather and watching the neighborhood activity. He also brings snacks in the form of a pile of plump, nutty pumpkin seeds that can be cleaned and roasted for a perfect post pumpkin carving treat.   Before you get rid of your pumpkin seeds, and before you start planning your Thanksgiving pies, consider using those pumpkin seeds.  There are lots of helpful resources listed below.    >> Read more

The word picnic comes from two French words, piquer, "to pick," and nique, "a morsel." People have been enjoying picnics since the late seventeenth century, when the French word pique-nique first appeared. (Picnics: Easy Recipes for the Best Alfresco Foods. Vitetta-Miller, Robin. Clarkson Potter: New York. 2005)    >> Read more

Summer is here! Our thoughts naturally turn to vacations at the beach...or on the back patio.    >> Read more

Some of us worry about counting calories and pennies, and yet when it comes to weekday lunches, we tend to splurge in both areas.    >> Read more

Summer is here! For many people, at least, summer starts during Memorial Day weekend. Our thoughts naturally turn to vacations at the beach, or on the back patio!    >> Read more