Cookbooks and Pi Day

I've been dipping my toes in a few cookbooks recently, new and old, and wanted to informally review them. Of course there are thousands of published cookbooks out there and hundreds more from everyone's local Relief Societies, but it seems like in the hit-or-miss game I tend to miss. Lately, though, I've had some luck and wanted to share what I found. They're mostly listed in the left sidebar, just FYI.

The first one was Healthy Slow Cooker. I don't go in for a lot of the crock pot cookbooks I find, because the recipes are truthfully just as time-consuming and dish-dirtying as regular recipes. I use my crock pot for beans, soups, and baked potatoes and other things that I tend to burn if I'm not watching, but not for the fancy casseroles. I never remember to get everything in there on time if it's not something simple. With that caveat, though, this was a great cookbook. It had incredible pictures and a really extensive variety of vegetables, spices, and grains that it used in the assorted recipes. We tried some unique and very successful curries, though it called for whole spices (i.e., cumin seeds instead of ground, cinnamon sticks instead of ground) and I found that my ground spices just didn't hold up to the long cooking and everything ended up bland even though it had smelled mouthwatering at first. But it was a cookbook that made me want to try everything there, and I plan on adapting some of its recipes for stovetop. It also had a good balance of meat in the meals, as well as plenty of meatless recipes that were out of the ordinary, which was nice for a crock pot book. Overall, I highly recommend it.

The next book was Nourishing Traditions, which is...well...the most unusual cookbook I think I've ever seen. I haven't tried very many of the recipes, but I've read the entire nutritional primer it begins with and all the sidebar quotes that are in the cookbook portion. Between that and the book Real Food that I read lately, I've had a lot of questions answered and new ones raised, but it's been very interesting. So though I'm not cooking directly from the book (who wants brains omelettes? that was my favorite gross one) I have changed some more of my food habits. Some of you may remember that after reading Real Food I ditched skim milk, margarine and shortening in favor of 2%, butter and lard; after reading this cookbook, I've drastically increased my use of whole wheat and am soaking a majority of my grains. I don't know for sure if I can keep up the soaking, it takes a lot of forethought, but we seem to have -ahem- tons less gas since we've started soaking. We used to do about 1/3 to 1/2 whole wheat, now I'm doing 2/3 to 3/4 whole grains and we're not finding it bad at all.

The last book we haven't actually used yet, but we're all looking forward to it. I'm pretty picky about the cookbooks I see directed at kids -- a lot of them are too heavy on refined flour and sugar, on gimmicky names for normal foods, and on cute ways to "hide" the veggies. I don't believe in that...but this is a children's cookbook that has both me AND my kids excited, so I thought I'd mention it. It's called Batter Up Kids: Sensational Snacks, and the names are a bit gimmicky, but I'm all over the recipes. The cut-out cookies use oat flour (oats in your blender), buttermilk, and honey, and call for you to decorate the tops not with frosting but with coconut, chopped dried fruit, and things like that. They're really cute. There's also a fresh salsa recipe which is just what my daughter has been begging for, without jalapenos but still flavorful and colorful. And then there's homemade pickles, awesome! They're not actually canned, they're just the right level for kids. My kids love pickles, and this will be even better for them than the more heavily processed kind, and fun too. (As a matter of fact, the recipe is right in line with most of the home "lacto-fermented" wacky stuff Nourishing Traditions was all about, but much more accessible and appealing.) So. We'll start on what we can this winter, and then when our garden gets going this summer we'll do more.

Just as an aside, another kids' cookbook that was right up our alley last year was The Redwall Cookbook. My son has been a huge Redwall fan, and this book has some original new material from the Redwall author as well as authentic recipes that might have been served in the chronicles themselves. (And since all the Redwall characters are animals, it's pretty much vegetarian -- my kids tried leeks and turnips and stuff that they never would have tried without the context of their favorite books.) If you have a Redwall-obsessed child, definitely check this one out. My kids have been pestering me for months now about when our next "Redwall Feast" will be.

I haven't planned this week's food yet, but last week we ate:

Bits of lamb in a bean soup, rice, beets, and trifle for dessert.

Carrot soup, whole wheat walnut sourdough baguettes.

Pasta salad.

Fried tilapia, collard greens, corn, leftover bread.

Spaghetti, some kind of vegetable which I've now forgotten. (We were supposed to have salad but my lettuce was rotten.)

Baked potatoes with broccoli, cheese, and chili beans on top.

And, last of all today, the usual pancakes/waffles/bacon/applesauce, PLUS pie because it's Pi Day, 3-14. We had apple, pumpkin, and a strawberry-rhubarb tart. Very yum.

P.S., our favorites of the week (besides the desserts, of course) were the fish and the bean/lamb stew. We couldn't get enough of those.