Special Occasions Books - Page 4

In Season: Cooking with Vegetables and Fruits

Sarah Raven

Amazon Price: $26.40 List Price: $40.00 Not yet published By: Universe

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Cooking by Ingredient -> Fruits
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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Special Occasions -> Seasonal

Editorial Review:

Here Sarah Raven, a leading proponent of the local foods movement, shows how to make the most of fresh produce, whether from your own garden, your local farmers’ market or the grocery. Taking us through the year in six seasonal chunks of two months each, she highlights the best vegetables, fruits, and herbs from each period, throwing in tidbits she’s learned firsthand from her own garden. The more than 250 simple and delicious recipes borrow from different cuisines and include such inventive dishes as Cranberry Bean Hummus; Squid, Pea, and Chorizo Stew; Basil Custard; Zucchini Chutney; Saute of Peas and Lettuce; Penne with Preserved Lemon and Avocado; and Pears Poached in Saffron Syrup. While some recipes are ideal for vegetarians, there are many designed to bring out the best in meat, poultry, and seafood. In Season will inspire a new appreciation of fresh produce and will be an indispensable addition to every serious cook’s shelves.

The Cook's Illustrated Guide To Grilling And Barbecue: A Practical Guide for the Outdoor Cook

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: America's Test Kitchen Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $15.00

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Outdoor Cooking -> Barbecuing & Grilling
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Outdoor Cooking -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue is a comprehensive nuts and bolts volume that thoroughly examines outdoor cooking—starting with the basics. The 12-page introduction to grilling, "Outdoor Cooking 101," walks you step-by-step through the essentials of grilling, grill-roasting, and barbecuing using both charcoal and gas grills.

And since outdoor cooking requires just the right tools and equipment, the editors of Cook's Illustrated share the results of their product tests in an extensive buyers guide, "Equipment and Tools for Outdoor Cooking," where charcoal grills, gas grills, grill brushes, tongs, instant-read thermometers, and more are rated. At a glance, you will know which brands we recommend (and why) and which to avoid.

Armed with the right equipment and instructions, you'll be ready to tackle just about any recipe from a simple and perfectly cooked burger to succulent pulled pork and restaurant-perfect grilled tuna. You'll find more than 450 recipes for all your favorites—steak tips, ribs, and barbecued chicken as well as some that will expand your repertoire—from Thai-Grilled Chicken and Skirt Steak Tacos to Grilled Corn with Spicy Chili Butter and Bruschetta with Fresh Herbs.

The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue also contains more than 300 step-by-step illustrations that walk you through the basics of food preparation, such as how to cut beef for kebabs, trim beef tenderloin, and grill-roast a turkey.

Whether you're a novice outdoor cook or aspiring grillmaster, this encyclopedic examination of one of America's favorite pastimes will be your guide to foolproof grilling and barbecuing.

Lidia's Family Table: More Than 200 Fabulous Recipes to Enjoy Every Day-With Wonderful Ideas for Variations and Improvisations

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House - Model: 1400040353 Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $13.32

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Special Occasions -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

TV Show GREAT! Cookbook OK. 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book for a friend and he found some of the recipes require too much prep work. I think he made 3 things out of this book before putting it away. On the other hand, we love to watch her cooking shows and get ideas from them. Her TV shows are great. This book is so so.

Excellent cookbook! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you love to cook, you'll love this cookbook. The directions are a breeze to follow, with photographs of some of the techniques. The recipes are fab, and there is room to be creative. Being a fan of the PBS series, it's great to see a show, then be able to go to the book and re-create the recipe. Generally, after seeing a cooking show, making the shown meal isn't really in the cards. But, like Delia Smith's series and books, Lidia gives the same quality and access to her art. I highly recommend this book.

Editorial Review:

Lidia's Family Table by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich"The best-loved and most-admired of all AmericaÆs television cooks today, Lidia Bastianich, now gives us her most generous, instructive, and creative cookbook. The emphasis here is on cooking for the fami

Brown Bag Success: Making Healthy Lunches Your Kids Won't Trade

Sandra K. Nissenberg, Barbara N. Pearl

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $6.85

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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Science, Nature & How It Works -> Health -> Diet & Nutrition
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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

don't waste your money 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I hope to spare some other mothers who are looking for healthy lunchbox ideas from buying this book! The recipes are not what I would describe as nutritious ("Chilly Cherry Fruit Soup" uses a 16 oz. can of cherry pie filling as the base for the soup), nor are they original. Some of the tips include such big ideas as "pack the night before" and "use a frozen juice box as a freezer pack". One word for that...duh! This book actually recommends making snack chips out of pie crust and cinnamon sugar. If you want to turn your child into a diabetic, by all means buy this book. If not, buy any cookbook by Annabel Karmel, she's much healthier and more creative.

Covers it all! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a must-have book. It will provide you with everything you need: useful, simple recipes that kids will actually eat, simple nutritional information, organizational tips, and tips and tricks for making the meal fun and getting your kids to eat the food you'd like them to eat. Honestly, this book is so practical. It's been the most bang I've gotten for a buck in a long time!

Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen

Alton Brown

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Stewart, Tabori & Chang Amazon Marketplace: 24 new & used starting at $11.55

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Special Occasions -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"I think cooking is a lot of fun and I hate to see people not having fun doing it just because they don't have the right tools--which is not to say they need the prettiest, best, most expensive tools. They just need the tools that are right for them." Such is the organizing principle of Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen by the selfsame Alton Brown, star of Food Network's Good Eats as well as award-winning author of I'm Just Here for the Food. It's an interesting, effective principle. It comes from a guy who serves pie with a four-dollar mortar trowel he picked up at the hardware store.

Brown's opening challenge is a 60-day, four phase process of ridding your kitchen of all things unused and insignificant--easy on the surface, but tough in the doing. That leaves room for essential gear. And to help make those choices, Brown looks at pots and pans, sharp things (not just knives, but graters, mandolins, and cheese slicers, too), small things with plugs (as in small appliances--from food processors to coffee makers to deep fat fryers), kitchen tools unplugged (those items that fill drawers), storage and containment, and safety and sanitation.

If this were just an encyclopedia, what an unwholesome bore it would be. But Brown turns this relevant information into a romp. He's talking about the tools he uses, after all, and has no fear of naming likes and dislikes--based on his own experience. He also includes unending side chatter about cutting corners, saving money, and actually putting good tools to work. You'll find recipes throughout, and techniques, too. Like, how to bake a chicken in a flower pot. If you wonder why you would even want to attempt it in the first place, Brown clues you in. Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen is about as guilt free as pleasure will ever get. --Schuyler Ingle

Chez Panisse Vegetables

Alice L. Waters

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: William Morrow Cookbooks Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $19.90

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Regional & International -> U.S. Regional -> California

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

More for the market than the kitchen 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Alice Waters made her mark on the culinary world more for her pioneering efforts in sourcing and championing high quality local and organic ingredients than for her culinary skill and imagination, and that's reflected in this book. It's really helped me pick out the best vegetables at the local grocery store or farmers market, and has encouraged me to try new vegetable with sometimes delicious results. Thanks to her, I appreciate the wonders of braised chard or baby garlic soup, things I never expected to explore.

While this book has helped me find the right vegetables at the market, it's had less of a positive effect in the kitchen. The recipes are simple, largely French and Italian inspired, and to my palate, a little too restrained. I prefer a little more lively seasoning or creative flavor combinations in my food. Water's doesn't provide a lot insight on how to use vegetables in cooking, or provide any insights as to the best way to prepare them. That's what I was hoping for here, and often get in other cook books. There's a solid group of recipes here, but I never found any great recipes in those I tried. I rate cook books by how they improve my cooking and this book has encouraged me to experiment with new vegetables and be a better vegetable shopper. Once I got back to the kitchen, it wasn't as helpful.

Editorial Review:

By now just about everybody whose interest in eating runs deeper than fast food knows about Alice Waters. The creator of Chez Panisse, the legendary restaurant in Berkeley, California, that helped create a modern American cuisine based on fresh ingredients, she is also equally well-known as a teacher and cookbook author. Chez Panisse Vegetables is one of the best new cookbooks of the season; it's as useful for its information about vegetables and how to use and handle them as it is for its irresistible recipes, which lead to complex and interesting dishes built from simple ingredients and simple techniques.

Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run

Alton Brown

Amazon Price: $11.00 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Stewart, Tabori & Chang Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $6.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

He’s on the road again. This time, Alton Brown and his motorcycle-mounted crew are off on a thousand-mile, south-to-north journey that follows America’s first “superhighway”—the Mississippi. Starting at the great river’s delta on the Gulf of Mexico and ending up near its headwaters in Minnesota, Alton and buddies travel the heartland’s byways to scout out the very best of roadside food—and to get to know the people who spend their lives preparing and serving it.

A companion to the six-part Food Network series airing in fall 2007, Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run is a travel diary, photo journal, and, of course, cookbook. Alton’s itinerary includes big-city eateries and small-town chat ’n’ chews, as well as markets, inns, ice cream parlors, museums, barbecue joints—and even an alligator farm.

Louisiana-style Grilled Alligator Tail (served simply, with lemon and butter) is one of the book’s forty original road-food recipes. Others include Pecan-Coconut Pie from an Arkansan roadside restaurant; BBQ Pork Ribs in Mississippi that Brown eats over pancakes; Vegetable Borscht from St. Paul’s Russian Tea House; and Fried Catfish from a riverside burg in Illinois. When it comes to America’s foodways and folkways, there’s no better tour guide than Alton Brown.

Halloween: The Best of Martha Stewart Living

Martha Stewart Living Magazine

Amazon Price: $14.96 List Price: $22.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Clarkson Potter Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $13.09

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Too Crafty 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I was hoping for sophisticated and stylish ideas for a halloween party. This was more like construction paper grade school crafts. I was very disapointed.

Editorial Review:

Halloween books abound, but none is as elegantly spooky or as eerily opulent as this gorgeous guide from Martha Stewart Living. Set the scene for the ultimate Halloween party with a magical yard full of pumpkins glowing with vibrant geometrics and sparkling with Christmas lights. Welcome guests with shadow lanterns flickering with bats and haunted windows. Strew the house with chiffon ghosts and fill the air with haunting sounds. Then host a pumpkin-carving feast, a crafty party, or a ghoulish supper, and whip up eyeball highballs, croaked messieurs, and spider-web sundaes. And don't forget the creepy makeup: follow along as willing victims transform into a skeleton, mummy, and several other creatures (Martha herself becomes an astonishing black widow). Excellent directions, full recipes, beautiful photographs, and an extremely detailed source list should inspire anyone to celebrate All Hallows' Eve with style. --Amy Handy

Christmas with Paula Deen: Recipes and Stories from My Favorite Holiday

Paula Deen

Amazon Price: $15.64 List Price: $23.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 81 new & used starting at $3.06

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"I've gone through all my books and put together this collection of my most treasured recipes and memories for the holiday season to share with you...You'll find a few new dishes, a sprinkling of new holiday stories, and some family pictures you might not have seen before."

There's no holiday Paula Deen loves better than Christmas, when she opens her home to family and friends, and traditions old and new make the days merry and bright. Filled with Paula's trademark Southern charm and happy reminiscences of Yuletide seasons past, Christmas with Paula Deen is a collection of beloved holiday recipes and stories interspersed with cherished family photographs. Included are Paula's most requested homemade gifts of food; a collection of cookies sure to become your family's favorites; easy dishes for a Christmas breakfast or brunch that will let you enjoy the food and your guests; impressive fare for Christmas dinner and holiday entertaining and, of course, spectacular cakes, puddings, pies, and other sweet things.

"So Merry Christmas, y'all, and best dishes and best wishes from me and my family to yours."

Alive in 5: Raw Gourmet Meals in Five Minutes

Angela Elliott

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Book Publishing Company (TN) Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $8.79

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Simple and Raw 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This book is a great place to start for anyone making the transition to raw food. I recommend it to my neophyte raw food friends. It's not overwhelming and most recipes don't have long prep times.

Not always 5 minutes but always Tastey! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I recently purchased three raw cookbooks, this is the first I have tried.

I have tried all but two recipes of the first three days menu plan, plus two extras, sometimes they took a little longer than 5 minutes but I have enjoyed every recipes.

This is my fourth try going raw and I may make it this time because the foods in the book are readily available (except maybe one or two).

There is not a lot planning days ahead to soak, sprout, grind, dehydrate for three days so maybe it will be ready and hopefully you will still want it and remember what you were trying to make in the first place! With this book you see it, you check the frig and find the ingrediants, you make it, you love it!

Editorial Review:

Here is a great resource for anyone looking for easy alternatives to complex raw recipes that require lots of time and expensive equipment to prepare. Acclaimed raw chef Angela Elliott shows how to whip up mouth-watering lasagne, spaghetti marinara, stuffed mushrooms, broccoli in cheese sauce, apple pie, decadent whipped cream and strawberries, chocolate shake, and more--all in about five minutes, with easy-to-find ingredients and just a blender or food processor. She shares her personal wellness journey and her playful enthusiasm to make the book an enjoyable and inspiring guide to delicious living.