Cookbooks!

I am addicted to cookbooks.  I have many.  I refuse to count them because I don't want to know what the exact number is.  I did hear Nigella Lawson quote the number of cookbooks she has the other day and, while I don't remember the exact number, know it is more than me so feel better that there are levels of obsession greater than mine.  The fact that she is in the business might giver her a more valid excuse but I'm not going to think about it that way.

The few in the picture are ones I've been using lately or are ones I want to pull some recipes out of soon.

The top one, "Bite me", is a fun cookbook with funny little recipe intros, goofy pictures and tasty recipes.  My favourite so far is the rack of lamb.  On my "how much does it make me want to lick the plate scale" - 5 out of 5

"In the Sweet Kitchen" has the best chocolate chip cookies going.  Since I'm a wee bit of a cookie snob, I feel like I have some credibility as a chocolate chip cookie judge.  I should explain that I like soft chocolate chip cookies so am judging them with that frame of reference.  They are loaded with chips and are enormously addictive.  And the double chocolate chip cookies are probably my favourite cookies ever.  I like having a cookie (or two) with my lunch and prefer to make them myself.  The only problem, I can't stop eating these.  I've tried freezing them and discovered they taste good frozen too.  Actually, I have always known that frozen cookies were good, I just counted on myself to be too lazy to trip downstairs to get them out of the freezer after dinner.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  As a result, I don't make them as often as I would like to and, when I want a cookie at lunch, go buy a substandard one for more than it is worth and start thinking about baking them again, eating too many, stop baking them and then go through the whole circle again.

On a healthier front, "Fast, Fresh and Green" is a new discovery for me and is providing me with some new ideas to make veggies more exciting.  I made roasted broccoli on Friday (the secret seems to be a very hot oven) with a yummy garlic butter.  The only thing about making fancier veggies - the things that make them taste better aren't as good for you as plain steamed veggies but they sure make things more interesting.

My newest book is "Quinoa 365".  I've eaten Quinoa off and on for a while now but became much more enamoured with it when we went to Peru.  So far I've only tried one recipe from the book, a pilaf-style which was very good.  I'm looking forward to more.  I bought a huge container of Quinoa at the Organic Garage and need to work my way through it.

Bonnie Stern is one of my favourite cookbook authors.  This one, "Friday Night Dinners", needs deeper exploration beyond the few recipes that I've tried.  The best so far are the fabulous Chicken Tagine and the Humous (the best I've ever tried).  The book is set up in menus which I always find fun.  This might be why I haven't dug into it because I keep wanting to try a whole menu.  This obviously needs a decent chunk of time and I always feel like I should be inviting people over which we've been hopeless at lately.  There is absolutely no reason why I need to make a whole menu but it makes me think in that direction when I dive into it.

"All About Braising" was a book I heard about on the podcast "Spilled Milk" about 2 days after I bought a new braising pot.  I felt the cooking gods must be telling me something so I ordered from Indigo and have been loving it from the first cook.

Finally, "Baking from my Home to Yours" has about 10 brownie recipes and the ones I've tried to far have been great.  I've also made some excellent chocolate and hazelnut cookies two Christmases in a row now and I think they will be on my Christmas "must haves" going forward.

So I have just finished proof reading this post and I think I'm going to have to go make some of those double chocolate cookies!