Exile is threaded into your daily life long after you have become a citizen and pledged your allegiance and can make the best brownies in the neighborhood. I was compelled to make sense of my parents’ journey from Iran to America to understand the world they inhabited. Just five years shy of my mother’s age when she immigrated, I have to wonder if I possess a fraction of her will to start over at square one. Now that her tablecloth has been folded for the last time, the recipes are my only key to unlocking my parents’ experience as immigrants, looking back to see into their lives as I move forward into mine. It turns out, I don’t need to forget to move on. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 6 -

Donia Bijan’s book is part memoir and part cookbook, a heartfelt examination of how our mothers and the love they serve up with our favorite foods become the inspiration for our lives. Bijan’s family fled Iran during the Revolution of the 1970s when Bijan was a teenager. Forced to leave behind everything, they began a new life in the United States. Bijan’s father was a renowned doctor who had opened a hospital in the heart of Tehran, while her mother was a talented nurse who later became a voice for Iranian women as an activist for women’s rights. When the Shah was overthrown, Bijan’s mother became a target for the new Khomeini regime.

My mother took on any establishment that did not give women a voice, and that was essentially every institution. If her drive had not coincided with that of a monarch who wished to modernize Iran rapidly, she most certainly would have been chided and silenced. But instead, she found the support and the blessings of Queen Farah. My mother found that she had a knack for politics and diplomacy, and soon she was on the boards of various organizations, fighting for women’s rights, becoming the director of Tehran’s first nursing school. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 73 -

Maman’s Homesick Pie takes the reader from those earliest days of exile through the death of Bijan’s parents many years later, telling the story of Donia Bijan as she grew into a young woman enthralled with food and searching for her cultural identity. Bijan attended the Cordon Bleu in Paris despite her father’s disappointment that she would not pursue a career in medicine. Her mother’s support and the inner strength which she instilled in her daughter, were the motivation Bijan relied on to pursue her culinary dreams.

She believed a parent’s job was to provide love and security without staking any claims on a child’s future, that children owned their dreams, their mishaps, their triumphs, and their failures. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 98 -

Later, after internships in France and working in a number of renowned restaurants in San Francisco, Bijan achieved her life’s goal of opening a French-inspired restaurant, L’Amie Donia, in Palo Alto.

Interspersed through Bijan’s memoir are wonderful recipes, some belonging to her mother, others those which she adapted as her own. Some of these are ones I will most certainly try myself: Orange Cardamom Cookies, Braised Chicken with Persian Plums, Potato Waffles with Creme Fraiche, and My Mother’s Apple Pie.

The book is filled with exquisite details of France, and mouth-watering descriptions of food. Bijan writes beautifully, capturing the nuances of what it is like to grow up in a foreign country while struggling to define one’s cultural identity. Her memories of her parents are often bittersweet, and her longing to memorialize her mother is evident.

When feelings well up from the past, a longing for a voice, a place, I reach for the manila envelope that holds her recipes. If I knew how to sew, perhaps I’d look through her sewing basket for the measuring tape, the velvet pincushion I bought her in Chinatown one Christmas, the buttons in the cookie tin. But I’m a cook, so I look at her recipes. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 235 -

I enjoyed this earnest memoir with its peek inside a family who was forced to flee their homeland. Readers who enjoy the genre of memoir and who love food and cooking, will find much to appreciate in Bijan’s book.

Recommended.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher as part of BOOK CLUB and for review on my blog. Discussion of this book will take place on December 13, 2011 on Linus’s Blanket.

Readers wishing to purchase this book from an Indie Bookstore may click on the book link below to find Indie sellers. As an Indiebound Associate, I receive a small commission if readers purchase a book through this link on my blog.

Shop Indie Bookstores

*All photos in this post may be clicked on to enjoy a larger view

I love summer for the Farmer’s Markets. There is nothing quite like browsing the stalls of the local farmers and picking up the freshest produce. My tiny little mountain town has started having a market on Tuesday afternoons…and last week I managed to get over there. It is small, but the produce is wonderful. I found some amazing tomatoes, plump summer squash, beautiful zucchini, zesty lemons and sweet purple onions:

I had two luscious trout fillets which I decided to bake with a little olive oil, dill, salt and pepper (I use a 425 degree oven and bake them until they just flake apart).

I decided that the perfect accompaniment would be a hot veggie salsa of sorts. I hate using cookbooks as anything more than a guide, so I just started dicing things up and throwing them in the fry pan:

Here is the “recipe” I made up as I went along:

• Half a large summer squash, diced
• 1 small zucchini, diced
• Half a small purple onion, diced
• Half a large tomato, cut in medium pieces
• Half a lemon, squeezed
• 1-2 Tablespoons good olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick frying pan until hot, throw in the diced veggies (except for the tomato) and stir fry until just softened. Add the tomato and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the tomato begins to soften. Add the juice from a half of a lemon, continue stirring. Season with salt and pepper to taste. I think you could even add a little cilantro to this to give this some extra “bite.”

I dolloped the salsa next to the fish and chopped up some fresh parsley to scatter over the top:

The perfect summer meal and very simple to make!

Do you love to cook? Don’t miss other bloggers’ Weekend Cooking posts – head over to Beth Fish Reads to catch all the links for today!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking is hosted every week at Beth Fish Reads who writes:

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

With the cold weather, rainy (or snowy) days, and the light fading quickly on these winter afternoons…my slow cooker comes out of hiding and gets used frequently. I love this appliance for the way it helps meld flavors over the course of hours, the ease at which I can produce a dinner which looks like it took much more effort to make, and for the way the house fills with the smell of good food and greets me when I walk in after having worked a long day.

One of my absolute favorite slow cooking cookbooks is Beth Hensperger’s Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. Hensperger has a real gift at creating modern food which also feels old-fashioned. And there is nothing quite like slow cooking to bring out the comfort food cooker in all of us. This past week we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday and I decided to make a pot roast with all the fixings for her birthday dinner. Hensperger has several pot roast recipes in her lovely book, but the one which caught my attention was on page 315-16 and called: Our Best Pot Roast with Roots. Hensperger writes:

This simple, old-fashioned pot roast is sublimely delicious: meltingly tender meat, with a rich-tasting sauce. Take the time to dice the vegetables finely (1/4 to 1/2 inch on a side), brown the meat well, and bring the water to a full boil before adding it to the crockery insert. Each of these steps plays a part in the dish’s final goodness.

This awesome recipe uses turnips, carrots, onions, and celery along with red wine to create the gravy (the roast cooks for 8-9 hours on low along with all these ingredients). In the last hour of cooking, I popped some small red potatoes and diced carrots into the oven to roast; and just before serving, I seared some fresh green beans as side dishes. We had a crusty loaf of bread and a good bottle of red wine … and I couldn’t have been more pleased with how it all came out!

I wish I could tell you I spent the time to bake a cake from scratch – but, alas, I opted to buy a pre-baked cake from my local grocery store…and you know what, it was great!

It has been a while since I have participated in this weekly event sponsored by Beth Fish Reads.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.

I thought I’d share with you my take on pasta salad. I don’t follow a recipe for this – it is a meal that can be whipped up with pretty much what you have in your refrigerator as long as you have some boxed pasta and Italian dressing on hand.

Quick and Easy Pasta Salad

• 1 package of your favorite pasta – preferably something like shells or twists (I like to use Rainbow Rotini because it is really colorful)
• A variety of fresh vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, pea pods, and zucchini…your choice!
• Small cherry tomatoes
• 1-2 cups of shredded cheese (I like Monteray Jack, but cheddar or Mozzarella also is a good choice)
• Shredded cooked chicken (optional)
• Bernstein’s Italian Dressing (I like Bernsteins because it has a lot of flavor and spices in it)
• Grated or shredded Parmesan cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta to your preference according to the package instructions. When done, drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking and cool pasta.

Slice up the vegetables of your choice – I usually cut the veggies pretty small or make thin slices, but it is up to you how you like them. Pour a small amount (about a tablespoon) of olive oil into a skillet, and saute the veggies until they are crisp tender. At the end of sauteing, add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir together in a large bowl the cooked veggies, cooled pasta, 1-2 cups of shredded cheese, the shredded cooked chicken (you can leave this out if you want a meatless pasta), and the Italian dressing to taste (I use about 1/4 cup of dressing, but it really depends on your taste). When well mixed, stir in the cherry tomatoes (if they are large, I cut them in half first). Adjust the salt and pepper to your taste.

Serve with grated or shredded Parmesan Cheese on top and a slice of your favorite crusty bread.

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I love to make this pasta on hot days when I really don’t feel like cooking. The whole meal can be whipped up in about 15 minutes and it is a total dish which allows large servings for two people with plenty of left overs for the next day.

ENJOY!!!

Welcome to Weekend Cooking – a weekly meme sponsored at Beth Fish Reads which “is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.”

I want to talk about improvisational cooking – something that I just started doing in the last year. I love to cook in large part because of the creativeness of the craft. Following recipes “to the letter” is not fun for me. I like to experiment. I hate to measure things. Besides, often I find a recipe that looks great, but I’m lacking ingredients. Since I live more than 30 minutes from the nearest decent grocery story, I don’t always have the option of popping out and picking up missing ingredients.

Wednesday night I defrosted some chicken thighs, but had no idea what I wanted to do with them. Usually I just marinate them and throw them on the grill. Good, but a bit boring. So I pulled out one of my trustworthy cookbooks: The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. On page 415 I found a recipe called Roasted Chicken legs with Glazed Shallots. Besides the shallots and chicken legs, the recipe called for the following ingredients: olive oil, sugar, 1/2 chicken stock, 1/4 cup dry white wine, chopped fresh rosemary leaves, dried thyme, black pepper and fresh parsley.

I did not have chicken legs (but I had thighs); I did not have shallots (but I had onions); I did not have chicken stock (but I had bouillon); I had no fresh herbs; I had no dry white wine. But I wanted to make this recipe.

This is what I did…

I followed the instructions to heat the olive oil in a skillet, but instead of cooking shallots…I diced up some onions and carrots and cooked them instead. I followed the recipe to add a tablespoon of sugar to the skillet and continued cooking the vegetables until they had caramelized.

I added the caramelized vegetables to a roasting pan and put the chicken thighs on top of them (just like the recipe said to do). Then I decided I wanted to use up some fresh mushrooms I had…so I sliced them up and threw them on top of the chicken.

Next I made the sauce. Instead of chicken stock, I boiled some water and added the bouillon cubes…then I substituted a couple of splashes of balsamic vinegar for the dry white wine, eliminated the rosemary and parsley and instead just used thyme, salt and pepper to taste.

From here on out I followed the original recipe – pouring the sauce over the chicken and vegetables, roasting the combination in a 375 degree oven (covered) for 30 minutes (stirring once); removing the cover and roasting 25 more minutes, turning the chicken pieces twice more.

And you know what? It came out GREAT! The balsamic vinegar gave the sauce a more hearty flavor than just white wine would have…and I never missed the fresh herbs. Furthermore, the carrots and mushrooms added a little more flavor and complimented the dish.

Improvisation is so  much fun. If you are a little nervous about doing it yourself, I recommend two wonderful resources:

The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider

AND

The Flavor Bible, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg

Both of these books will help you deconstruct a recipe and create your own wonderful dish! Have fun!!

Share your Weekend Cooking post with other readers by visiting Beth Fish Reads TODAY!

The Mayo Clinic Diet isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Using clinically tested techniques, it puts you in charge of reshaping your lifestyle by adopting healthy new habits and breaking unhealthy old ones. – from The Mayo Clinic Diet, Introduction -

I don’t diet. Ever. I hate the idea of measuring out portions, following rigid guidelines, and being limited to a specific number of calories per day. I also know all the statistics that show that diets don’t work over the long haul.

So, I was very happy to see that The Mayo Clinic Diet is not like other diets out there. The weight experts at the Mayo Clinic have put together a book which is not only colorful and easy to read, but makes losing weight more about lifestyle changes than about hard and fast dieting.

The book is separated into three distinct parts.

The first section is a two-week “jump start” program that requires little preparation but claims to help you lose 6-10 pounds in two weeks. Essentially it sets you up to add five healthy habits (including things like eating breakfast every morning, adding whole grains to your diet and eating healthy fats), getting rid of five unhealthy habits (such as not watching television while you eat and not eating in restaurants), and adopting five bonus habits (things like writing down your goals and keeping an activity log).

The second section is a healthy lifestyle section which is focused on the long-term lifestyle changes which will help you maintain your weight (or continue to lose at a slower rate). Things I liked about this part of the book included visual representations of food servings (so you don’t need to measure out serving sizes), and a list of calorie burning activities to add to your life.

The final section of the book covers things like determining YOUR healthy weight, understanding nutrition and weight control, and barriers to weight loss (including motivational issues). There are some simple recipes and menus included in this last section as well, as well as a great section on adapting recipes for healthier eating.

All sections include colorful, simple diagrams or photos, and easy to understand language. The book has an accompanying journal to track your progress and activity.

Readers who have struggled with weight loss, or who don’t want just another fad diet, will most likely find information in The Mayo Clinic Diet which will appeal to them. Some may find it almost too simplistic, but I see that as more of a strength of the book than a weakness.

Below is a recipe which I have permission to reprint here on my blog:

Morning Glory Muffins
By the weight-loss experts at Mayo Clinic and Donald Hensrud, M.D., M.P.H.
Authors of The Mayo Clinic Diet: Eat well. Enjoy life. Lose weight.

15 MINUTES PREPARATION TIME + 35 MINUTES COOKING TIME + MAKES 18 SMALL MUFFINS

1 c. all-purpose (plain) flour
1 c. whole-wheat flour
¾ c. sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
¾ c. egg substitute
½ c. vegetable oil
½ c. unsweetened applesauce
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. chopped apples, unpeeled
½ c. raisins
¾ c. grated carrots
2 tbsp. chopped pecans

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. Line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners.

3. In a bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Whisk to blend evenly.

4. In a separate bowl, add egg substitute, oil, applesauce and vanilla. Stir in apples, raisins and carrots. Add to the flour mixture and blend just until moistened but still slightly lumpy.

5. Spoon the batter into muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Sprinkle with chopped pecans and bake until springy to the touch, about 35 minutes.

6. Let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer the muffins to a wire rack and let cool completely. Serve.

The above is an excerpt from the book The Mayo Clinic Diet: Eat well. Enjoy life. Lose weight., by the weight-loss experts at Mayo Clinic and Donald Hensrud, M.D., M.P.H. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Reprinted from The Mayo Clinic Diet, © 2010 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Published by Good Books (www.GoodBooks.com). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

About Donald Hensrud, M.D.

Donald Hensrud, M.D., M.P.H., is chair of the Division of Preventive, Occupational, and Aerospace Medicine and a consultant in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. He is also an associate professor of preventive medicine and nutrition at the College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic. A specialist in nutrition and weight management, Dr. Hensrud advises individuals on how to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. He conducts research in weight management, and he writes and lectures widely on nutrition-related topics. He helped publish two award-winning Mayo Clinic cookbooks.

About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy that the needs of the patient come first. Over 3,600 physicians and scientists and 50,000 allied staff work at Mayo, which has sites in Rochester, Minn.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz. Collectively, Mayo Clinic treats more than 500,000 patients a year.

For more than 100 years, millions of people from all walks of life have found answers at Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic works with many insurance companies, does not require a physician referral in most cases and is an in-network provider for millions of people.For more information, please visit www.goodbooks.com/mayoclinicdiet.

FTC Disclosure: This book was sent to me for review by the publisher.

Many thanks to TLC Book Tours for inviting me to tour Paula Butturini’s new memoir: Keeping the Feast (read my review). I love books that center around food in foreign countries, and Butturini’s story of illness and recovery in Italy reminds us how the ritual of food is a symbol of survival.

About Paula Butturini:

Paula Butturini has worked in overseas bureaus in London, Madrid, Rome, and Warsaw for United Press International and the Chicago Tribune. She is now a writer based in Paris. To learn more about Buttuirini and her work, visit the author’s website. Listen to the author’s podcasts here. Read Buttuini’s Keeping the Feast blog.

About Keeping The Feast:

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Publication Date: 2/18/2010
Pages: 272

A remarkable story, gorgeously told. We reflect, relish, grieve, and heal our way with Paula Butturini, who is wise about so many things – family and place; depression, religion, and love; the disastrous long-term fallout of a single bullet fired at a loved one; and the immediate restorative pleasures of an Italian meal. This book evokes life at its most serious and dire, and at its most mysterious and delectable. Read it, and be deepened and refreshed. – Krista Tippett, host of the public radio program Speaking of Faith -

I was really happy when Paula agreed to write a guest post for me. What follows is one of Paula’s childhood memories of her Hungarian neighbor and the amazing garden which produced the homegrown ingredients for stuffed peppers. Enjoy!

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Until I was nine, my family rented the sunny, ground-floor flat of a two-family house in a neighborhood of Fairfield, Connecticut, that had lots of Hungarian immigrants. Our Hungarian-born landlady, Grace Madaras, lived upstairs from us until she and her husband had a little house built next door at the front of their enormous vegetable garden.

I loved their garden in every season but winter, and when I was really young, I liked hiding among the plants where I wasn’t supposed to be playing in the first place. The garden produced all sorts of herbs and vegetables — like fresh, feathery dill and rows of red and white cranberry beans, whose foliage was big and lush enough to hide me if I crouched down low – that my own grandparents never grew in their Italian-style gardens. Every once in a while, greed would get the better of me and I would split open one of those enormous red and white cranberry pods while hiding among its leaves. I wasn’t interested in eating the beans; l just liked to look at them, in all their perfection, lined up cozily inside their pod. For some reason, they made me feel safe.

When our landlords moved next door into their new little house, it meant we no longer got to smell the wonderful aromas — so different from my mother’s Italian cooking — that would waft down the stairs when Grace was preparing the dishes her family used to cook back in Hungary. At some point though, Grace gave my mother her recipe for Hungarian stuffed peppers, sweet, green bell peppers from her garden that were filled with meat, rice, and onion, then simmered in a mild, glorious sauce made from tomato juice enriched with sour cream and fresh dill, straight from the garden.

To this day, I can still smell and taste this dish, and writing about it now, nearly fifty years later, makes my mouth start to water at the thought of it. I think the dill plant I have in a corner of my herb garden today stands there more in memory of Grace and my childhood than it does to flavor any of the dishes I use it for today. I wrote Grace’s recipe down on a file card when I set up my own household, and though I rarely make it, just seeing it in my recipe box makes me feel safe, like seeing those beans in their pod so long ago.

Grace Madaras’s Hungarian Stuffed Peppers

• 8-12 green bell peppers, depending on size
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1 cup uncooked rice, cooked as package directs
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced and sauteed until soft in 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 eggs
• Salt, pepper
• Tomato juice
• Fresh dill
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup sour cream

Wash peppers and place them standing up in a deep kettle. Pour enough boiling water into the kettle to thoroughly cover the peppers, then let stand, covered and off flame, for 40 minutes. Drain pot, then using a sharp knife, cut a circle out of the very top of the pepper to remove the stem and a circle of pepper flesh surrounding it. Scoop out seeds, and drain well.

In a large mixing bowl, combine beef, pork, cooked rice, sauteed onion, eggs, two teaspoons salt, and freshly ground pepper to taste. Mix well, then stuff drained peppers with meat mixture. Placed the stuffed peppers upright in a deep pot. Pour enough tomato juice into pot to come 3/4 of the way up the stuffed peppers. Add a handful of fresh dill. Bring to a simmer and cook, simmering, for one hour. Toward the end of the cooking remove 1/2 cup of tomato juice and let cool. Thicken this cooled tomato juice by whisking in the flour and sour cream. Pour this mixture back into pot and mix well. Heat through but do not let it boil.

We always ate this dish — real comfort food — with mashed potatoes; I don’t know how it was served in Grace’s kitchen.

Contributed by Paula Butturini, whose book Keeping the Feast will be published by Riverhead/Penguin on Feb. 18.

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To see all the blog tours of Butturini and her book, visit TLC Book Tours for links.

Welcome to Weekend Cooking – a weekly meme sponsored at Beth Fish Reads which “is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.”

I have been in New Hampshire since January 7th – spending time with family, especially my older sister who was recently diagnosed with colon cancer and had surgery right before Christmas (she is doing REALLY well and has an excellent prognosis for full recovery). I knew I wanted to make some good food for her and a recipe in the February edition of Every Day with Rachael Ray caught my eye.

What tastes better than homemade soup when you aren’t feeling 100%? And is there anything more yummy than than a combination of chicken, lots of vegetables and pasta? Rachael Ray’s Toasted Orzo Chicken Soup (page 89 in the February 2010 print edition) fit the bill. Although there is a bit of prep time involved, this was a quick and easy soup which uses toasted orzo, finely chopped zucchini, carrots, red bell pepper, onion and garlic, fresh lemon and parsley, and of course chicken to make a delicious, rich soup. We had ours with a loaf of garlic rosemary bread, and we also topped the hot soup with freshly shredded Parmesan cheese (an edition to the original recipe) that added some saltiness. I doubled the recipe so we had leftovers…which were actually more tasty than the first day.

I just started getting Rachael Ray’s magazine which my sister gave me as a gift – and I have to say, I’m impressed so far with the number of recipes I want to try. She also has a great website, and if you are interested in soups which warm body and soul…check out this page on the website that includes numerous 30 minute soup meals.

Do you like to make homemade soups at this time of year? What are some of your favorites? Do you subscribe to a cooking magazine that you absolutely love? Please share in the comments!

Kathy of Bermudaonion and Julie of Booking Mama have made us drool over the last few days by posting  their cookie recipes. Now it’s our turn! Participants have until December 4th to link up their recipes (traditional cookies at Kathy’s blog and chocolate cookie or Candy recipes at Julie’s blog) to be eligible for prizes.

A couple of years ago I posted my absolute FAVORITE Christmas cookie recipe here. But since most of you probably saw that one, I decided to choose something different this time.

Once again, I raided my Grandmother’s beautiful recipe cards to find two cookie recipes which I remember as a child.

TRADITIONAL:

Molasses Gingersnaps (makes 8 dozen)

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup shortnening
• 2 eggs beaten
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 3.5 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1.25 tsp cinnamon

In a large bowl cream together sugar and shortening (using an electric mixer) until light and fluffy. Add eggs and molasses and beat well. Stir together dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture a small amount at a time, beating well after each addition. Form 1″ balls, roll in sugar and place on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2″ apart. Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until browned on bottom.

CHOCOLATE COOKIES:

Chocolate Chip Meringues

• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup chocolate cips
• 1 cup chopped nuts
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• dash salt

Add vanilla and salt to egg whites. Beat until frothy. Gradually add sugar beating until stiff peaks are formed and sugar is dissolved. Carefully fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop by teaspoonful onto a well greased cookie sheet and place in preheated 350 degree oven. Close door and turn off the oven. Do not open for 4 or 5 hours. May be left in oven over night. Butterscotch chips can be used in place of chocolate chips if desired.

To see other recipes, check out Mr. Linky at Kathy’s blog for traditional cookies, and Mr. Linky at Julie’s blog for candy or chocolate cookies.

Welcome to another installation of Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

I am hopelessly addicted to collecting cookbooks and food related books…and then not reading them. I don’t know why they sit unread on my shelves, but they do. I do know why I buy them…I love food, I love thinking of food, I love cooking.

My cooking skills have evolved over the years and I am happy to say I no longer religiously follow recipes. I like to take a recipe and improvise it, substitute in (or out) ingredients, and make the dish my own (which is probably one reason I am also hopelessly addicted to watching Top Chef every week…I am simply amazed at what they create, especially during the Quick Fire challenges).

I digress…back to the subject at hand.

Really what I want to share with you today are some of the fantastic food related books I’ve bought in the last year or so…and which I am determined to read before the end of 2010.

Fiction/Novels:

• Bread Alone, by Judith Ryan Hendricks – Emotionally devastated thirty one year old Wynter Morrison heals from a failed marriage by baking bread.
• The Baker’s Apprentice, by Judith Ryan Hendricks – Wynter Morrison faces more challenges in Seattle.

Memoirs:

• I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, by Giulia Melucci – A woman looking everywhere for love, and finding it on the stove.
• Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell – 365 days of cooking with Julia Child
• Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl – The coming of age of a culinary sensation
• A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure, by Marlena De Blasi – An American chef and food writer takes the reader to Tuscany…and the world’s best food.

Non Fiction:

• American Artisanal: Finding the Country’s Best Real Food from Cheese to Chocolate, by Rebecca Gray – Discover how and where food is being made the right way.

Cookbooks:

• The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider – Declare your independence from recipes and a set list of ingredients
• The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters – Eat locally and sustainably, eat seasonally, cook simply…

Have any of you read these books? They look great, don’t they?