The Sunday Salon and Snowbound "Reading"... In a Different Way

 

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's the one day of the week we make sure we catch up with each other about all the bookish things we've been doing! In South Carolina the weather is COLD! We've gone from 60's to the 20's in a day and from Sunny to Stormy to Windy in another day. But in my hometown in Connecticut, there's that old familiar winter weather I loved and hated... SNOW! We do get snow every once in a while here in the Upstate of South Carolina, but it is a treat and it disappears pretty fast. In Connecticut it usually is the start of 3 or 4 months of shoveling, trudging and bundling up. All this weather reminiscing reminds me of what I usually do on days we are trapped inside... make things... or eat! So why don't we explore books that help us enjoy the indoors...

The Complete Crochet Course by Shannon & Jason Mullet-Bowlsby...
Filled with step-by-step photography throughout for an easy-to-follow and fully visual experience, this unparalleled guide teaches you how to crochet from the very first stitch—and will keep you crocheting as you gain experience! The Complete Crochet Course explains all the tools, materials, and techniques you need, from choosing a hook and yarn to seaming, working in the round, handling specialty stitches, and adding details. Ten patterns are perfectly designed for novices eager to complete their first projects, while intermediates can enjoy mastering even more advanced skills.

Some of you may not know, but I am a crocheter among other fiber arts. I have a home business called Shawl Y'all and take yarn and create beautiful things to wear! My Mother taught me how to crochet a half century ago and I've enjoyed making things for myself and others ever since. Crocheting is a great hobby to immerse yourself with and perfect for cold winter days where you are stuck inside. It's also a great hobby while riding in a car or waiting in a dr's office. I almost completed a whole punch while waiting for my husband at the Eye Dr's. This is a great book to get you started and keep you going. I bought this as a reference, but it would be a great book to learn your basics with. 

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Fun With Origami by Harry C. Helfman and published by Dover Origami Papercraft... For centuries, the ancient Japanese folk art of paperfolding — origami — has helped teach patience, accuracy and concentration. It remains a rewarding and fascinating hobby for young and old alike. This easy-to-follow introduction offers origami enthusiasts 17 different projects — all pre-tested and graded according to difficulty.

Simple instructions, over 100 clearly drawn diagrams, and a supply of authentic origami paper (24 sheets, each 7" x 7", in 12 different colors) help beginners master such simple shapes as a sail boat, jet plane, and paper cup. Intermediate-level paperfolders may find the bird, whale, fish, and penguin more appropriate for their skills, while veteran origamists can enjoy the challenge of creating a seal, butterfly, flapping hand, and other figures.

Ideal as party favors, holiday decorations, or intriguing conversation pieces, these colorful three-dimensional objects can be created at home and in classrooms, or used as an activity in camping programs and other social and recreational settings. All projects are carefully explained, with every fold neatly diagrammed in a clearly written instruction booklet by origami expert Harry C. Helfman.

I love Orgami. I must have a zillion books showing all sorts of things to make. This was the first book I ever had. There are fancier ones, but this shows you a few basic designs that you can have fun with and try out. The Crane of course is the highlight of your basic designs, and can be made in many beautiful papers, but it you have some sort of paper at home, you can do origami. A great indoor afternoon activity, for kids and adults alike.

Modern Comfort Food by Ina Garten...
In Modern Comfort Food, Ina Garten shares 85 new recipes that will feed your deepest cravings. Many of these dishes are inspired by childhood favorites—but with the volume turned way up, such as Cheddar and Chutney Grilled Cheese sandwiches (the perfect match for Ina’s Creamy Tomato Bisque), Smashed Hamburgers with Caramelized Onions, and the crispiest hash browns that are actually made in a waffle iron!

There are few things more comforting than gathering for a meal with the ones you love, especially when dishes like Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas are at the center of the table. Old-fashioned crowd pleasers like Roasted Sausages, Peppers, and Onions are even more delicious and streamlined for quick cleanup. For dessert? You'll find the best Boston Cream Pie, Banana Rum Trifle, and Black and White Cookies you’ll ever make. Home cooks can always count on Ina’s dependable, easy-to-follow instructions, with lots of side notes for cooking and entertaining—it’s like having Ina right there beside you, helping you all the way.

I did mention eat when talking about things I like to do when trapped inside on a wintery day, right? Well, IMHO, you can never go wrong with an Ina Garten recipe or book and this is one of her more recent cookbooks that sits on my shelf... along with quite a few others of hers. Her recipes are so well written and down to earth I just love cooking with them. And what could be more perfect on a cold day then some comfort food...

What do you like to do inside on a blustery cold winter day?

If you are spending the day inside, even if it isn't blustery cold, I hope these books have given you a few ideas to spend some time! These are a couple of the crafts I like to do, what crafts do you do? Until next time...

Happy Reading.... Suzanne

What's Cooking on Your Reading List?

Cookbooks and Reading...

There are certain times of the year when I have an overwhelming urge to try new recipes, read cookbooks and try new foods. In the winter that translates to comfort food, but in the summer it's all different types of food. Cookbooks are a guide to trying new foods and recipes. But are cookbooks your typical reading? Yes and no. I think sometimes we just forget that cookbooks are books. We blindly open the pages and leaf through the recipes we find, glance at the stories that make up the other pages of the book and get to business. But what fun it is to actually READ it! How many cookbooks have you actually read?! I was able to sample some great cookbooks with some eGalleys thanks to a some generous publishers over the past few months.  Here's some great "cooking book" finds...

Mastering Pasta b Marc Vetri…  Award-winning chef Marc Vetri wanted to write his first book about pasta. Instead, he wrote two other acclaimed cookbooks and continued researching pasta for ten more years. Now, the respected master of Italian cuisine finally shares his vast knowledge of pasta, gnocchi, and risotto in this inspiring, informative primer featuring expert tips and techniques, and more than 100 recipes.

Vetri's personal stories of travel and culinary discovery in Italy appear alongside his easy-to-follow, detailed explanations of how to make and enjoy fresh handmade pasta. Whether you're a home cook or a professional, you'll learn how to make more than thirty different types of pasta dough, from versatile egg yolk dough, to extruded semolina dough, to a variety of flavored pastas—and form them into shapes both familiar and unique. In dishes ranging from classic to innovative, Vetri shares his coveted recipes for stuffed pastas, baked pastas, and pasta sauces. He also shows you how to make light-as-air gnocchi and the perfect dish of risotto. 

Loaded with useful information, including the best way to cook and sauce pasta, suggestions for substituting pasta shapes, and advance preparation and storage notes, Mastering Pasta offers you all of the wisdom of a pro. For cooks who want to take their knowledge to the next level, Vetri delves deep into the science of various types of flour to explain pasta's uniquely satisfying texture and how to craft the very best pasta by hand or with a machine. Mastering Pasta is the definitive work on the subject and the only book you will ever need to serve outstanding pasta dishes in your own kitchen. 

What did I think? Fresh pasta, even the thought of it makes my mouth water. Have you ever had fresh pasta? There's a certain kind of lightness, texture and taste. There is no mistaking fresh pasta and here, in Mastering Pasta, author Marc Vetri not only shares with us the how to make this wonderful staple, with chapters on hand forming certain pastas, or making sheet pasta, and stuffed pasta, along with amazing sauces, but the history and make-up of what goes into pasta. This is definitely one to have on the shelf! Mouth watering and thought provoking! Easy access to everything is by way of Table of Contents and a great Index. 5 bowls of pasta for this one!
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The James Beard Cookbook… Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the best basic cookbooks in America,” The James Beard Cookbook remains as indispensable to home cooks today as it was when it was first published over fifty years ago. James Beard transformed the way we cook and eat, teaching us how to do everything from bread baking to making the perfect Parisian omelet.


Beard was the master of cooking techniques and preparation. In this comprehensive collection of simple, practical-yet-creative recipes, he shows us how to bring out the best in fresh vegetables, cook meat and chicken to perfection, and even properly boil water or an egg. From pasta to poultry, fish to fruit, and salads to sauces, this award-winning cookbook is a must-have for beginning cooks and expert chefs alike. Whether it is deviled pork chops or old-fashioned barbecue, there is not a meal in the American pantheon that Beard cannot teach us to master. 

Do you really read a cookbook?! Why of course you can! And this classic tome has a wealth of cooking knowledge in-between the recipes! Did you know if you put an egg in bowl of cold water and it sinks, that means it's fresh? Or, did you know white veggies will stay whiter if you cover the pan? And adding a dash of lemon juice can help too.This is only the third revision of this classic cookbook, with a few recipes tweaked for modern times and the addition of a couple dozen new recipes. This is one of those cookbooks everyone should have on their shelf! It's a place for a beginner cook to start learning the basics and a place for the more advanced cook to come to to discover what are some of the things they could do to make their cooking advance to the next level. Great information and easy to follow recipes. Cooking terms, techniques, tools, recipes to build on. Love this cookbook! Loads of useful info and wonderful recipes. I may even have to get it in hardcover!
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Whether a five-star chef or beginning home cook, any gourmand knows that recipes are far more than a set of instructions on how to make a dish. They are culture-keepers as well as culture-makers, both recording memories and fostering new ones.

Organized like a cookbook, Books that Cook is a collection of American literature written on the theme of food: from an invocation to a final toast, from starters to desserts. All food literatures are indebted to the form and purpose of cookbooks, and each section begins with an excerpt from an influential American cookbook, progressing chronologically from the late 1700s through the present day, including such favorites as American Cookery, the Joy of Cooking, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The literary works within each section are an extension of these cookbooks, while the cookbook excerpts in turn become pieces of literature—forms of storytelling and memory-making all their own.


Each section offers a delectable assortment of poetry, prose, and essays, and the selections all include at least one tempting recipe to entice readers to cook this book. Including writing from such notables as Maya Angelou, James Beard, Alice B. Toklas, Sherman Alexie, Nora Ephron, M.F.K. Fisher, and Alice Waters, among many others, Books that Cook reveals the range of ways authors incorporate recipes—whether the recipe flavors the story or the story serves to add spice to the recipe. Books that Cook is a collection to serve students and teachers of food studies as well as any epicure who enjoys a good meal alongside a good book.

Thoughts on this one… This was a hard book to digest at the beginning. I was expecting to read about cooking and food from a "literary" stand point, but having it all arranged like a cookbook became a bit tedious at times. I found myself flipping to different sections because I needed to enjoy reading it as apposed to "studying" it, which I almost felt like when I tried to read it in order. The bits of writing were wonderful, but approach this as a book of short stories instead of a literary cookbook and you'll enjoy it more. I think that I would have been able to enjoy doing that more if it were a physical book, so that I could turn the pages and browse better.

So, do you read cooking books? Read about food? Enjoy food writing? Share your Yummy reads so we all can savor them!

Remembering Marcella Hazan and her Italian cooking...

Marcella Hazan died Sunday at her home in Longboat Key, Fl. She was 89. I never knew her, I didn't know about her cooking, but today there was such an outpouring for her passing that I had to learn more about her...

A biology teacher by trade, Marcella came to New York in 1955, a newlywed native to Italy with no grasp of English, and not familiar with the so called cooking in America. She was rather put off by what the American's called Italian cooking and slowly went about educating those around her about how to cook Italian authentically. Word spread fast and soon she was writing a cooking book, and teaching the best. Here's a wonderful article online from The New York Times about Marcella Hazan.

I love to cook. I have a zillion cookbooks with many dog-eared and splattered pages, and yet, there is not one cookbook from Marcella Hazan on those shelves. But there will be! There are some classic Marcella Hazan recipes I found today that just say, "Cook Me!", and so, since I love reviewing cookbooks, look out for a review of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan, which is to Italian cooking as Mastering the Art of French Cooking is to French cuisine. Want a sample of one of her recipes? Here's her infamous simple 3 ingredient Tomato Sauce...


Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter Recipe
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking
(Take a peek at SmittenKitchen.com  for beautiful full color photos to go with this recipe!)

One 28-ounce can whole plum tomatoes (San Marzano, if you can find), tomatoes roughly chopped with their juices
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Heat a heavy, medium saucepan over medium heat. Add all of the ingredients and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat to low to keep a steady simmer. Cook for 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally. Discard the onion. Serve over cooked pasta.

There are quite a few cookbooks written by Marcella Hazan, including Marcella's Italian Kitchen and More Classic Italian Cooking, but Marcella also wrote her memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers, which "tells how a young girl raised in Emilia-Romagna became America's godmother of Italian cooking.", which is a perfect addition to Memoir Mondays.

Have a favorite recipe from Marcella Hazan? Favorite cookbook? Share it!



Happy Cooking.... Suzanne

The Sunday Salon... "Feeding your Soul" with a Great Cookbook!

Happy Father's Day! To all you men out there today, I hope your day is relaxing and the food is good! Grab a cup of joe and relax a bit with me, as we sit around and gab a bit about books!

It's been a while since we've chatted about FOOD, and I just love tooling around in the kitchen & I LOVE cooking, so I thought this week's Sunday Salon would be about feeding our souls with a good cookbook!

I've spotted some great cookbooks this week at my local bookstore, and I even received a cookbook in the mail to review this week, so here are a few books to "feed" the soul...

The Frankies Spuntino: Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo and Peter Meehan... What I first noticed when I saw this book was a bright green wrap around what appeared to be a leather bound book with a distinctive message- "100 Recipes", and "Grandma never broke a sweat. Neither should you." It didn't look like a cookbook, and it wasn't in with the cookbooks. I just had to pick it up though and open it up. What I discovered was that "The Frankies" are friends and cooks, owning two restaurants (Frankies in Brooklyn & Manhattan) and that this cookbook is the "manual" for the food served in their very popular, authentic Italian eateries. This book is beautifully illustrated, is really informative ( from equipment,what to have on hand in your pantry to how to's), and the recipes are simple, easy to understand and they look delish! The Frankies share recipes such as Roasted Eggplant to Pork Braciola Marinara. There's a recipe for Sunday sauce, meatballs and even desserts. I've got this sitting on the counter waiting for me decide what to make first. I'll have a full review for this cookbook that doesn't look like a cookbook soon!

Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook (Revised & Updated) by Phyllis Pellman Good... I love my Slow Cooker! I go through these phases of using it like a demon to not using it for a while. But it's a cookbook like the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook that reminds me what a great cooking tool my slow cooker (crock pot) is! This cookbook has 700 (yes I typed 7-0-0) Slow Cooker recipes! Recipes range from Dips, Chilli and Salsa to Barbecued Chicken wings and Casseroles! No need to heat up the whole house for a great meal! And Slow Cooker recipes are usually very easy to throw together without a fuss. I'll be cooking up something from this cookbook this week and have a full review of the cookbook too! Thanks to the publisher for sending this one along!

Recipes from an Italian Summer a collection put together by the Editors of Phaidon Press... A Beautiful FAT cookbook with warm weather recipes. The emphasis here is fresh, wonderful ingredients that are abundant in the summer. Fresh produce, fruits and berries, and herbs. 380 recipes for lighter, easy-to-follow summer dishes with big beautiful photographs. The cover caught my eye, and I love big cookbooks that almost seem like a meal in themselves, so this is one my wish list! *Update! Thanks to the publisher, we'll be cooking from this cookbook this next weekend!

What are YOU cooking up this sunday?! What are your favorite cookbooks?! Share them here, I'd love to hear about them! If you missed it, I have a review of Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's cookbook Lydia Cooks From The Heart of Italy, AND with permission of the publisher I have included her recipe for Baked Penne & Mushrooms, which my family devoured and yours should too! Plus here's the Review of I Know How to Cook by Ginette Mathiot and her recipe for Navarrais Chicken, which is an easy chicken recipe in a tomato sauce. Stop by tomorrow for Memoir Monday, because I have a review of a memoir filled with great recipes!

The week in review...

Review of Knight of Passion by Margaret Mallory, a great historical romance I just loved. If you haven't all ready, enter the GIVEAWAY for 1 of 5 copies! Giveaway ends June 28th.

Review of the Kid-friendly, Adult enjoyable Alison Dare graphic novels by J. Torres & J. Bone, as part of the Alison Dare Blog Tour hosted by Tundra Books. You can enter to win an Alison Dare prize package by taking Alison on her own adventure! Get all the details on my post, plus take a peek at what adventure I found Alison Dare climbing to!

The Kobo eReader has landed in homes around the US this week! One landed in mine too! This week I'll let you know what I think of this new eReader- the good, the bad & the ugly! So far, I'm liking it! I don't think it's going to "kill the Kindle", (why are industry people always looking for that eReader that will "kill the Kindle"?) But it's seems to be a great "bare bones" eReader at a great price. More on that this week...

And I know it's Father's Day, but don't forget the women today... there's still time to enter the GIVEAWAY for the unabridged audiobook of Put Your Crown On by Queen Latifah. That giveaway ends June 26th.

Hope you've found something to whet your appetite this week! In the meantime... Happy reading!