Booklist: Top Picks and Recommendations

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Dear Reader,

If you are hunting for a last-second Christmas gift, or just in the mood to find some new literature for your shelves, here are my top cookery-book recommendations!  While I love all the books in my collection and many not listed here get used very frequently, these are the books I go to the most.  I keep these ones close to the kitchen, and their pages are oily, splattered, scribbled on and well-loved!

Click here to see a complete booklist of the cookery guides in my kitchen.  

Click here to read reviews I wrote for books we gave away in the past here on the blog, and for the San Francisco/Sacramento Book Review.  

Home Preserving, Canning, and DIY

Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving  A must-have guide for any homemaker.  Not only covering the rudiments of canning - explaining in detail and with illustrations how to both pressure can, and water-bath can - this book also address freezing and dehydrating, the other two most popular forms of food storage.  With recipes that have become our family favorites, and simple, straightforward instructions on everything from jerky to chutney to pickles to flash-frozen kale, this book is a staple for the kitchen shelf!  See the pickles we made here.

Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It: And Other Cooking Projects  A favorite of mine, it has my most-well-loved recipe for lemon curd, an egg pasta I can hardly live without, and a collection of popsicle recipes that saw me through the hottest, sweatiest days of a post-partum summer!  I absolutely love this book, and every recipe I have tried from it has been an A+ winner.  And the sequel, which I don't yet own, is doubtless just as wonderful and beautiful: Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It: And Other Kitchen Projects

The America's Test Kitchen DIY Cookbook  An outstanding book that every DIYer, urban homesteader, home cook and processed-free-fan should absolutely own.  Read my full review here.  If you take anything home today, let it be this book.

Baking and Bread-Making

Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day  If you are one of those cooks like me who wasted untold bags of flour and yeast on bread that came out thick, heavy, ugly, and lumpy ... Welcome this book with open arms.  Regardless of your skill level, Reinhart will perfect and upgrade your bread, bun, pizza-dough, cinnamon-roll, biscuit, baguette and boule skills to the level of artisan.  I always wanted to eliminate store-bought bread items from our kitchen, but my bread wasn't nearly satisfactory and it always seemed so complicated a chore.  After this book came to our home (recommended by Miz Carmen), we stopped buying bread.  See a sample recipe here.  

King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains (King Arthur Flour Cookbooks)  Another recommendation from the Miz, this book is a winner.  It is my particular delight to choose a new item every few days to accompany our dinner, and this book wormed it's way right into the center of my heart.  I love it.  I love it.  Recipes for cookies, bread, cake, biscuits, all the usual plus more - and all using whole grains, delicious, wonderful, comforting, beautifully laid out and with two sections of photos.  See a sample recipe here, and here.  

Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie  My mom got me this book for Christmas and I almost cried the first time I made the crust and it turned out so exquisitely!  A beautiful, thorough compendium on PIE, this book is not only beautiful, but useful.  

The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook: All the joy and variety of baking-the experience and tradition of America's most historic flour company (King Arthur Flour Cookbooks)  My second cookbook ever (the first was this, a book which I still own and LOVE the recipes from), this book has all the important recipes, variations, lessons, tips, tricks and even historical anecdotes for anything Flour that comes out of the kitchen, from doughnuts to butter cake to sourdough starter to waffles! This book is possibly (being one of the oldest in my collection and well-loved) one of the very messiest I own!

General Cooking Guides: All-Purpose In the Kitchen

The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition  Outstanding book covering all the basics of the kitchen: every cook should own this book.  Every recipe is a go-to, trustworthy and successful dish.  I have never had a flop from this book!  See a sample recipe here, sourced from a book that is a shorter selection of recipes from this one.  

Nourishing Traditions:  The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats  An excellent book for everybody learning to make their own yogurt, soak their own grains and brew their own medicine.  Read my full review here.  

The America's Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook: A Faster, Smarter Way to Cook Everything from America's Most Trusted Test Kitchen  This book is so much fun!  I love how the recipes in it can be whipped out in short order (but big flavor!), and it has been my saving grace more than a few times.  Read my full review here.

Soups, Stews, and Big Pots

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups  I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.  My older sister owned it growing up, and when I married Mr H I instantly went and bought this book (actually, I bought it just before we got married, so I wouldn't have to live a day without it).  Whenever I have a quick dinner I need, a long dinner I can start early, or a vegetable I am at a loss for, I flip through this very simple, spare book.  Lots of recipe, very little extra foofoo, it gets straight to the point.  All the soups have been winners, from Avocado Veloute to my age-old classic well-loved dearly-adored Caldo Verde!  See a sample recipe here.  

Recipes from the Root Cellar: 270 Fresh Ways to Enjoy Winter Vegetables  I accidentally left this book at my friends' house and she texted me how she was secretly glad I did!  When I came a few days later to pick it up, she said she was hastily trying to finish reading the entire thing!  Not only have I been stunned and boggled by the quality of the dishes in Chesman's repertoire, but I love her seasonal take on produce, especially useful to me since I prefer to cook with local and in-season foods.  Tackle turnips, love leeks, and krunch kale with all her fantastic recipes! 

Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever with More Than 400 Easy-to-Make Recipes  As you well know, this book has melted into my kitchen with such love that I can't even get it off my kitchen counter.  This is the best slow cooker book available! Read my full review here.  

Cooking Under Cover: One Pot Wonders -- A Treasury of Soups, Stews, Braises, and Casseroles  I "borrowed" this book from my mom three years ago.  Still "borrowing" it.  Can't let her "have" it back .. Ever!  I love how the recipes in this book all go into one pot, and come out like gourmet, way-too-much-work-went-into-this dazzlers.  Whenever I use a recipe from this book, I feel like a fancy chef (the book includes wine pairings, in case you are a fancy chef!) and I've never had anybody turn down a meal from this book, ever! 

Specialty Cooking: Sweets, Drinks, Entertaining

The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments  Don't let yourself head into another summer season without this ice-cream guide to see you through!  No longer can I eat store-bought ice cream (Dreyers?  Please ... spare me the sixty ingredients!), not after enjoying real ice cream.  The chocolate ice cream in this book?  So wicked, you can only eat a tiny bowl.  The cream cheese?  Ginger?  Lemon?  Tin Roof Sundae?  Stop me, please!  I love this book.  See a sample recipe here.  

Homemade Soda: 200 Recipes for Making & Using Fruit Sodas and Fizzy Juices, Sparkling Waters, Root Beers and Cola Brews, Herbal and Healing Waters, ... and Floats, and Other Carbonated Concoctions  Goodbye canned soda.  Hello home-carbonated drinks!  The title just about sums it all up, and you can read my full review here!  

Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust  This book is one of the newest in my collection, so I actually can't say it is splattered yet.  But I wanted to include it here because I truly enjoy all of Ina Garten's cooking so much.  I was introduced to her friendly cooking show when I was working as a hospice volunteer, and one of the patients I sat with wanted to watch her show many times.  I realized how easy her cooking was, how simple, straightforward, and fresh.  Using just a few quality ingredients, she was setting a table that looked out of this world!  Read my full review here. 

The Versatile Vita-Mix  You know why I wanted this book so badly (read why here!), and now that I have it I am loving every minute of it!   From smoothies to johnnycake, this book has been a family standby since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and I am more than proud to have it join my collection now!

Homeopathy, Gardening, and Lifestyle

Prescription for Nutritional Healing, Fifth Edition: A Practical A-to-Z Reference to Drug-Free Remedies Using Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs and Food Supplements  This book isn't a doctor, but it can help pinpoint the causes of various malaises and offers solutions from the comfort of your home.  

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!  An excellent guide for homesteaders today, this book will get you started on hog-raising and gardening!  Read my full review here.  

Vertical Vegetables and Fruit: Creative Gardening Techniques for Growing Up in Small Spaces  Read my full review here.

Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking  An informative guide that will leave you better equipped for improvising, creating and experimenting with fewer flops in the kitchen!  Read my full review here.

World Cuisine

Giada's Kitchen: New Italian Favorites  Great, simple recipes - all of them delicious; lots of color photographs! 

Where Flavor Was Born: Recipes and Culinary Travels Along the Indian Ocean Spice Route  This is a big fat book with lots of revolutionary (to the Westerners) and flavorful ways to use spices.  I enjoy international cooking for the simple reason that, while not only bringing new flavors and textures to my plate, it also expands my view of certain foods and helps shift paradigms in thinking about say, cinnamon or star anise.  

Ray's Boathouse: Seafood Secrets of the Pacific Northwest  A book from my native Washington state, this beautifully appointed book is a sophisticated treatise on preparing fresh salmon, crab, lobster and more.  

Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets  What a gem this book is in my collection!  It has saved me more than once with an overful refrigerator of produce, while on the hunt for a new way to use some bountiful vegetable.  (Eggplant jam?  Summer squash pasta?) 

Italianissimo: Over 600 Great Recipes From Every Region of Italy  Actual italian recipes (think: not Olive Garden) with lots of pictures, although the pictures are not really my favorite part.  The best, fastest and easiest pizza crust I've seen yet is in this book; pizza bianca and acutal italian pizzas (no cheese!) will please everybody!

Gluten-Free, Vegan and Vegetarian Cooking

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule  Looking to do some vegan baking?  This miniature book has way too many recipes for its size!  Read my full review here.  

Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow  Almond milk, smoothies, cashew cheese and other excellent ways to prepare raw and vegan food: use as a supplement to your already-nutritious diet, to learn some new ways to prepare vegetables and nuts, or if you are a raw foodie it will be an excellent all-purpose "cook" book! 

Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals that are Ready when You are  I love this book - and recommend it to anybody starting a vegetarian diet (or vegan, as any recipes not vegan have alternate ingredient options).  It was a chance find in a bookstore and I am glad I stumbled across it; soups, lasagne, even dessert and appetizers are included - and all of them with ordinary ingredients you can find in the grocery store.  

Gluten-Free Vegan Comfort Food: 125 Simple and Satisfying Recipes, from "Mac and Cheese" to Chocolate Cupcakes  Unglutenites rejoice - lots of recipe titles you will recognize but in exciting - gluten-free - new ways!   Read my full review here.


Mrs H

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Scroll through the books here! 

Less Sugar, No Sugar: Nursing Your Sweet Tooth

Dear sweeties,

When my sister Mel and I were little, we used to make feeble attempts at keeping the kitchen clean while cooking and say to each other, "Less mess, no mess!"

Over the last few months, Mr H and I have been easing refined sugars out the door.  It just seems like they are pretty useless to the diet and do more damage than good, so we are replacing them with alternatives, like not having as much sweetness in our diet, honey or maple syrup in recipes, a little stevia.  There are lots of ways, but that's not my point here; I wanted to share this staggering infographic on sugar with you.  It knocked me off my feet and I thought it was impossible; but People assure me it is possible!  Like with my naive experience with store-bought applesauce, I am learning that pretty much anything that comes in a package from the store has sugar or corn syrup in it - hence another great reason to avoid packaged foods and go homemade with everything you can!  (That's what happens when you live in the sheltered world of making everything from scratch!)

Perhaps this is especially pertinent during the holiday season!  Start counting the items you come across in your day that have sugar in them ... be aware!


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Mrs H

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Fair Careers: Why I Work Full Time

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

Some months ago, I was speaking on the phone with a family member who lived far away and I hadn't spoken with for a long time.  As we were catching up, he asked if I had a job.  Thinking he must have forgotten, I laughed and said, "No, I'm pregnant!"  He scoffed and said, "Don't give me that!  Don't be one of those pregnant people that uses it as an excuse!"

I realized he had missed my point.  I didn't mean I was pregnant, and thus physically incapable of working.  What I meant was, I was pregnant with a child. A child that I was going to raise.  In person.  With my own two hands!

My husband and I have a covenant agreement between us.  Commonly, it is called a marriage.  A marriage is intended to be an image of the redemptive work of Christ and the Church - Christ loving the Church, the Church loving Christ in return and both operating in their separate, dynamic roles to bring forth fruit.

Children.

As a part of our covenant, my husband and I have mutually agreed to carry out separate and distinct roles in the marriage.  We each do what we're best at.  Since we don't have farmland to sustain us, he works for somebody who will in exchange give him money to buy what we would in another day raise on our own.  He is skillful in his work, and his achievements and hard labor bring him more profit for his time spent, and more satisfaction.  He brings into our home sustenance from the outside, and weaves a web of spiritual and physical protection around me and our child and our home.

My role is not the same as his.  I don't work for another man outside the home, bringing in sustenance from outside; I work from within the home.  I take my job at home seriously, and dedicate myself to it in the same way that some women can dedicate themselves to their job outside the home.  I spend my hours working to improve and protect our home from the inside out.  My role as a spiritual nurturer expands as children join us; I will tutor and train them in skills that will make them producing, pleasant members of society.  And I pour my hours into maximizing and stretching the dollars that my husband brings home.  I hunt for deals, I preserve good food when it is in season and well-priced, I plan balanced meals and I clean, wash, sew, and nourish us daily from within the home.

I don't consider my role inferior to my husbands' role.  I find my role complex, challenging, and in fact incredibly ill-suited for him.  I could never take on his job - physically, it would be too demanding, mentally, it would exhaust and drain me.  And he could never take on my job!  I enjoy canning, washing laundry, scrubbing counters and dishes and making laundry soap.  Those aren't things he necessarily enjoys - for him, it would be a drain, a bore, as mentally exhausting to him as his job would be to me.

I challenge any feminist who thinks a keeper at home has an inferior role to try to achieve the efficiency and production that I can in one day!  That same woman might be begging for a soft office chair and a little collateral carpal tunnel syndrome just so she can relax.

The fact that we carry these different roles are what makes our marriage so inviting for the fruit of children.  I am home, prepared to provide, to teach them the skills they will need.  My husband is protecting and providing, the dollar amount hardly mattering because with my full-time job assignment being to figure out how to creatively stretch and spend that dollar, we have no need of want.

My emotions and energies are not expended outside the home, and so full capacity is available to pour into my children and husband.  I have not already exhausted my resources and social drive working for somebody else.  Our home is safe, spiritually covered, we know what comes in and out of it and we have control of what enters both our home, and our children's minds and bodies - from media to high fructose corn syrup.

My husband trusts me with his paycheck, and I trust him with the task of finding, acquiring, and keeping jobs outside the home.  I trust him to manage his own time, his resources, and I don't need to manage him.

We are equal, separate, and both vitally necessary to the longevity of our family in our respective roles.  How could life be more perfect than this?

Mrs H

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As seen on Encourage One Another, Marriage Monday

Day of Silence

Dear readers,

I know I am not the only one grieving for the families who lost precious children and family in the Connecticut shooting.

Yesterday, I left the computer closed and participated in a day of silence out of respect for the families (I didn't share the graphic on my wall but many bloggers participated in honor of the grieving).

Thanks for understanding.

Mrs H

How to Add Powdered Green-Food Supplement to Your Smoothie (and not gag!)

Thanks for reading this post, I'm so excited to visit with you!  

After you've gleaned all the good information you need, visit our new blog platform at www.farmandhearth.com to read even more fascinating tidbits from the kitchen and the fields. 

Dear blends,

I love smoothies, as you probably well know.  Click here for a fun tutorial on smoothie-making by SuperSkinnyMe, and read their 18 [Smoothie] Recipes to Make You More Awesome.  

Now that I have the Vitamix, I don't make smoothies using my immersion blender any more because the Vitamix is just faster, stronger, and easier for me to clean and operate with one hand (a.k.a. while I hold young mister).  

I love using raw milk, fruit I picked and froze in season, different flavors of Spiru-tein, and adding Organic Maca Powder, Bee Pollen, liquid Coconut Oil, and Organic Hemp Protein to my smoothies.

To include phytonutrients, superfoods, and probiotics in my smoothie, I add a few teaspoons of Garden of Life Perfect Food Super Green Formula.  You can find these in local health food markets, supplement stores, or probably in Whole Foods (although I choose to support the small business, first, when given a choice!).

I recommend this supplement to everybody, but especially if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, very athletic or active, on a diet, or studying in college and need to keep your brain functioning well!

Since the Perfect Food (or any green food powdered supplement) doesn't particularly taste "good" - it tastes like grass or hay to me, not foul, but not appealing - I don't mix it throughout my entire smoothie.  Instead, I make my smoothie, pour almost all of it into my glass, but leave about a half-cup in the blender.  I add the Perfect Food to the blender and turn it back on for a few seconds.

I drink the small amount of grassy green drink first, then enjoy the rest of my delicious smoothie slowly!

Resting after a job well done,

Mrs H

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