Great Food Reads for the New Year!

-->                                                   Great  Food Reads

For all of you out there who love food, get ready for possibly the best tip you will receive in 2013 (since 2013 is just beginning, this is pretty big news). You can take cookbooks out of the library. Really good cookbooks. Do you know how expensive cookbooks are? Those babies can cost upwards of $34.99 a book! The cost of one cookbook alone could buy you a super great necklace or a cute tee at Out of the Blue (and yes, I always translate savings into what I could put that money towards at Out of the Blue. It has been a problem since I was 16). You can take a cookbook out of the library for free (or the cost of a library card), read it at home, and write down recipes you’d like to make sometime (you wouldn’t photocopy the pages because you are a law abiding person who totally respects copyright and therefore also only watches cable you’ve paid for and listens to music you have bought).

The bottom line is that reading about cooking is fun, and can be done for free or pretty low cost. That said, there are definitely food reads worth paying money for and some of these are pointed out below.

With all this in mind, behold the Great Food Reads List! 

Great Food Blog-  Smitten Kitchen

Deb Perelman had to quit her day job to work on her Smitten Kitchen blog, that’s how popular it is. Smitten Kitchen is not just popular, it is really, really good. Think inspiring food photography and delicious recipes. Plus, Deb loves to minimize your amount of dirty dishes and her recipes are always really easy to follow. Some of my favourites include the Spring Panzanella (I took an adapted version to a Competitive Potluck and tied for first place!) and the Mushroom Bourguignon.  

Great Cookbooks

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Deb also has a cookbook! The book is as awesome as the blog. It is also available at the Winnipeg Public Library. Go put a request on it right now.

The Canadian Living Vegetarian Collection

For the sake of variety, I’ve included a non-Smitten Kitchen option. This Canadian Living collection is one of my most used cookbooks. I have almost cooked my way through the whole book. There is a great and diverse selection of vegetarian recipes, most with easy to find ingredients. I’m pretty crazy about the Black Bean Quesadillas and the Smoked Gouda Risotto.

Great Food Magazine

Bon Appetit

Under Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport’s hip guidance, Bon Appetit has become a super cool food magazine with truly readable content. The recipes are still classy enough to serve at a chic dinner party, but are easy to follow and feature easy to find seasonal ingredients.  Bonus – you can find issues of Bon Appetit at the library and bonappetit.com has a huge recipe archive. Try the secretly healthy Horseradish-Cottage Cheese dip for something different but delicious.

Great Food Website

Food52

This one comes highly recommended from one of the best former Out of the Blue girls, Ms. Erika French Onion herself (and she is very stylish and has very good taste, so you should follow her advice). Food52 is crowd-sourced food website with community sourced recipes and tricks. If you ever want to spend hours lost in a website’s archives, this is the site for you.

Great Food Book

Heat

Bill Buford tracks his journey from writer to culinary apprentice (in Mario Batali’s kitchen no less). This is a truly entertaining read that offers an enlightening look at what happens behind-the-scenes in the world of Michelin star dining.