Welcome back! It’s Season Three of our podcast book group: Reading with Libraries! We hope you have enjoyed all of our short Book Bites, and now we are looking forward to settling in to read more books with you! This week we are discussing cooking and food books.
In our book group we have fun talking about books, and provide useful information for library people doing Reader’s Advisory work. There are so many books out there that it’s tough to be an expert on all of them. So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre!
Our book group is very inclusive; there are no “right” or “wrong” books here! We just like to read and chat about books, and want you to share what you are reading too! All of us will take away at least a title or two that we want to read at the end of our time together.
Who is joining us this week? We are pleased to welcome Guest Host Connie Laing, from the Great River Library System.
Beverages:
Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have a beverage go ahead and get one now. Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself!
This week’s beverages all contain some food in addition to the assorted tasty beverages.
At Koy is Boston, the El Pazzo (“ crazy” in Italian) cranks up the heat with Thai chili pepper-infused tequila, then cools it down with passionfruit and lime.
The Pisco Sour is a traditional drink of Peru made of pisco, fresh lime juice, simple syrup and egg whites. Mochica in SF mixes things up with several variations including the passion fruit-flavored Maracuya Sour and the Chicha Sour made with Chicha Morada reduction (made from purple corn).
Mojito: Place ice in beverage shaker then add in the rum, 8 broken up mint sprigs, lime juice and sugar. Shake well and serve over ice in a high ball glass. Top off each glass with a splash of club soda. Garnish each with a slice of lime and a sprig of mint.
From our Wisconsin neighbors – the Bloody Mary has taken a dramatic turn. “Every Bloody Mary comes with at least a cheese wedge, a pickled Polish sausage, a pickled mushroom, a pickled Brussels sprout, an asparagus, a celery stalk, a green onion or scallion, and on another toothpick a shrimp, a lemon wedge, and a grape tomato. We put a little wooden spoon in there so you can stir it, and a beer chaser, because we’re from Wisconsin and it’s just unheard of to get a Bloody Mary that doesn’t come with a beer chaser.”
Genre Discussion:
There are so many great cookbooks out there! This is a great time to be interested in food, and in food-related books. Of course, every celebrity has a cookbook – and some of them are even good! And there are lots of cookbooks by people who have really studied their food area, and spent a lot of time working to bring up books that not only give good information about the food you can prepare, but also look good. And there are also all kinds of other food books that are about food, preparing food, cooking food, and improving the way food gets from its starting point to our tables.
So this week we are going to talk about a variety of books you may want to check out that will help you hone your cooking skills, help you to feel more confident in the kitchen, or just make you happy as you eat store-bought snacks while reading. No shame at all! Enjoying food is our goal, and as always want you to enjoy the books you are reading too.
Suggested Reading Resources:
- Recommended Cookbooks – America’s Test Kitchen Shop
- All the Cookbooks and Regular Books We Adored in 2018 | Healthyish
- The Cookbook Gift Guide That Covers EVERYONE You Know
- How Suffragists Used Cookbooks As A Recipe For Subversion
- The Best Food Books That Aren’t Cookbooks | SAVEUR
- The Food Lab’s 20 Most Influential Food Books | Serious Eats
- 14 Books Every Food Lover Should Read – BuzzFeed
- The 20 best food books from 2001-2017 | Food | The Guardian
- The Ten Best Books About Food of 2018 | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian
Our Book Discussion
Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!
The links and images below are from Amazon.com. If you click through them, and buy these lovely books – or anything else – we will get a small percentage of Amazon’s profits on the sale. Thanks in advance for your help in supporting CMLE – it makes a big difference for us!
“Our fourth cookbook in the Edible series travels to the Twin Cities, where eating local is a way of life and the people live “clean and green.” There, a special bond connects the rural growers of Minnesota and nearby Western Wisconsin with the urban farmers’ markets and co-ops, resulting in one of the largest sustainable food communities in the county. Meet the area’s foodies-the chefs, growers, shop owners–who uphold organic ideals, and savor more than 100 recipes featuring local fare, like Butternut Squash Pancakes, crispy Scandinavian Flatbread, Layered Vegetable Torte, Salsa Verde Beef Stew, and more!”
” This is the book home cooks have come to trust; the 12th edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, with updated recipes, new photography, plus expanded and new chapters to meet the needs of today’s home cooks. With 1,500 recipes and variations, and more than 1,000 photos, this colorful new edition packs a punch. How-to step-by-step photos show rather than simply tell how to get great results. The new Technique features explain fully the concepts behind techniques such as braising, deglazing, and hot water–bath canning. A Make-Ahead feature shows how to make a batch of one item and use it various ways. And a Global Flavors ingredient ID introduces new ingredients by region. Now available in a convenient comb-bound edition, this classic is destined to be the most-used book in the kitchen.”
“For families juggling school, work, and a host of other time-consuming daily obligations, the idea of making dinner from scratch can be daunting. Ree Drummond makes it easy for families to make simple, scrumptious, homemade meals with minimum fuss and maximum enjoyment. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime includes delicious, easy-to-make recipes for comfort classics, 16-minute meals, freezer-friendly food, as well as soups, main dish salads, and a favorite of her own family: breakfast for dinner.
You’ll find more than 125 fast-and-delicious recipes that combine pantry staples with fresh ingredients, including Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Taco Salad, Pasta Puttanesca, Ready-to-go freezer Meatballs (and many dinners you can make with them!), Oven Barbecue Chicken, Mexican Tortilla Casserole, Veggie Chili, Beef with Snow Peas, and many, many more. Included is a section of mouthwatering quick desserts—literally the icing on the cake. Filled with Ree’s signature step-by-step photos, relatable humor, and irresistible, folksy charm, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime is the go-to cookbook every home cook can rely on for any—and every—night of the week.”
“Amy Thielen grew up in rural northern Minnesota, waiting in lines for potluck buffets amid loops of smoked sausages from her uncle’s meat market and in the company of women who could put up jelly without a recipe. She spent years cooking in some of New York City’s best restaurants, but it took moving home in 2008 for her to rediscover the wealth and diversity of the Midwestern table, and to witness its reinvention.
The New Midwestern Table reveals all that she’s come to love—and learn—about the foods of her native Midwest, through updated classic recipes and numerous encounters with spirited home cooks and some of the region’s most passionate food producers. With 150 color photographs capturing these fresh-from-the-land dishes and the striking beauty of the terrain, this cookbook will cause any home cook to fall in love with the captivating flavors of the American heartland.”
“Bake Like You Mean it! Williams-Sonoma and American Girl have partnered to bring you American Girl Baking – the perfect book for the girl in your family. It’s packed with 40+ delicious, easy-to-follow recipes fit for any occasion, or just because you wanted to bake something!
It’s easy to understand why baking is so much fun. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as measuring and mixing ingredients, putting dough or batter into a hot oven, watching – and smelling!- the transformation during baking, and finally removing delicious sweets from the oven. But the best part is sharing the treats you made with love with your friends and family. American Girl Baking provides delicious, easy to follow recipes that everyone will love.”
“The 30th anniversary edition of this classic cookbook for parents of tots and toddlers contains some of the most popular recipes for baby food, finger food, snacks and desserts ever published. Fully updated, this new edition includes information on the newest Food Pyramid Guide, sample servings for young children, organic baby food options, when to introduce new solids and which to try first, vegetarian baby food options, handling and storing baby food, safe uses of microwaves, the latest equipment for making baby food at home, foods likely to cause allergies and how long to delay introduction of these foods.
More than just a cookbook, Feed Me I’m Yours provides time-saving, trouble-saving, and money-saving tips. It also contains entertaining “edible craft” activities for celebrating birthdays, the seasons and major holidays.”
“Why stop with making basic brownies? Why not put them on a stick and decorate them? Why not take boring broccoli and turn it into a yummy cheese muffin instead? Sarah Michelle Gellar learned quickly that to get her kids to be adventurous with food, she had to involve them in preparing it. She wanted that process to be fun and help them develop self-confidence, creative thinking, and even math skills! So Sarah and co-author Gia Russo came up with more than 100 fun food-crafting ideas that take basic food preparation to a surprising new level.
“With Well Fed Weeknights, author and mouthy paleo cook Melissa Joulwan brings her love for food and spirit of adventure to a knockout collection of weeknight recipes inspired by takeout classics, food trucks, and cuisines from around the world—all totally free of grains, dairy, legumes, and soy.
Every meal is thoroughly tested and easy to make, with affordable ingredients you’ll find at your regular grocery store. (No extra trips to specialty food stores required!) ”
“Everything can be made keto! That’s the message that food bloggers Matt Gaedke and Megha Barot want to deliver with their new book, Keto Made Easy. No more missing out on classics or favorite dishes, no more added costs with exotic new ingredients—in Keto Made Easy, Matt and Megha show you how to re-create non-keto recipes in easy, cost-effective, and delicious ways.”
Conclusion:
Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion with our book group! A special thank you to our Guest Host Connie.
Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries – which is always interesting! – subscribe to our podcast Linking Our Libraries.
Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!