[82] Fresh Applesauce

Cover of The Healthy Kitchen, by Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley

This is the only recipe from this cookbook I’d ever made before this challenge. I liked it.

I should say, for the record, that I like the photos in this book. There aren’t a lot of them, certainly most recipes do not have a photo associated, but the photos of Weil & Daley cooking and eating, or of random food are just great. There’s a lovely photo of kale in there; I think it’s growing in Weil’s backyard.

I’m saying all of this because, so far, we have disliked or been indifferent to more recipes in this book than we have liked. I occasionally think it’s time to eject the book from the challenge. I don’t think we’re going to yet, but it comes up often.… Continue reading →

Parragon Publishing’s “Vegetables” Cookbook

Cover of Parragon Publishing's Vegetables Cookbook

By now, if you read this blog but don’t know me personally, you’ve probably figured out a few things about me:

# I’m not the biggest fan of vegetables.
# I’m learning a lot.

# I have, possibly, never been the biggest fan of vegetables.

# I really like meat.

# I’ve struggled with learning to eat more vegetables for awhile.

If you know me personally, you probably knew all of this long before Bill and I started a blog together.

Number 5 is particularly true. I’ve not been a fan of vegetables for most of my life, and since I’ve been “a grown-up”, I’ve realized how important it is to eat them. However, I struggle with it, and always have.

I’m not, and may never be, one of those for whom “meat is a condiment”.… Continue reading →

[81] Vegetable Stock

the cover of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

Okay, this is very easy and quick to write up. It’s so quick that I’m putting it all right here.

Also, I should tell you this: I didn’t follow this recipe on purpose. It’s just what I do to make stocks of all kinds, in general. However, when I went to got make turkey stock this year, I found I’d saved so many veggie bits in the freezer that I didn’t have room for the turkey carcass. So I made veggie stock and had another recipe. WOO!

h2. Ingredients

The cleaned skins and peels from veggies such as onions, carrots and potatoes. The tops and bottoms of these veggies too. Other veggies that are limp, but otherwise alright can go in there as well. Avoid strongly flavored stuff; cauliflower, broccoli, etc.… Continue reading →

Healthy Cooking for Two (or Just You) by Frances Price

Cover of Healthy Cooking for Two (or Just You) by Frances Price, RD

I have purchased this cookbook three times, and I have never lost it once. I have given it away twice; once to my good friend Tom and once to my cousin and his new wife as part of their wedding gift. I would have given it to Jen & Dave for their wedding gift, but there was some history behind giving them (her in particular) the older How to Cook Everything. That’s how much I like this cookbook.

I don’t recall where I bought it for the first time, but it was my introduction to smaller-scale cooking. An introduction I badly needed, because part of what made cooking so daunting was the copious amount of food most recipes make. While I don’t think everyone gets tired of leftovers at some point, I know most folks do.… Continue reading →

Pie Town Cookbook from Pie Town, New Mexico

Yep, today’s about the Pie Town Cookbook. I got this the one and only time I went to Pie Town, to experience the Pie Festival1.

See, Bill and I attended undergrad in a town in New Mexico that’s about an hour and a half from Pie Town. Bill, being the younger man that he is, was in school a couple of years later than I was. Then he decided to go for his M.Sc. at the same school. Eventually, he realized how much better “the real world” pays than grad school pays, but in the time between my graduating and his leaving graduate school, he heard about the Pie Town Pie Festival and went with his friends once or twice.

I was visiting one year after he’d left graduate school, and ended up going with a group of folks, including him, to the festival.… Continue reading →