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?

Beth at Beth Fish Reads hosts this fun cooking meme every weekend – a time to blog about anything vaguely foodie in nature.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but about two weeks before Thanksgiving I start craving stuffing, roasted poultry, squash, yams and pie. I think it is just  thinking of Thanksgiving that starts my mouth watering.

Yesterday I decided to kick off the Thanksgiving season with some pre-Thanksgiving fare. I stuffed a 5.5 pound chicken and roasted it; made a bit of acorn squash and gave the plate a bit of green with steamed broccoli.

My very first cookbook I ever owned was Betty Crocker’s Cookbook which my mother gave me. For many years this was my sole inspiration and reference to cooking…until I became more adventuresome. But I still use this cookbook – primarily for reference. And so when I roasted my chicken yesterday, I dragged my dog-eared, food splattered copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook off the shelf and looked up the time-frame for roasting a chicken. What I love is that any basic food information you could want can be found inside this simple cookbook (their pie crust recipe comes out perfectly). I looked up chicken, and referenced the roasting schedule (which is conveniently divided up into the SIZE poultry and whether it is stuffed or not). For my chicken, I planned on 2.5 hours of roasting time at 325 degrees.

I don’t reference a cookbook for making stuffing because I mostly improvise when it comes to that. Stuffing is one of my favorite foodie things to make at this time of year and yesterday I pretty much used what I had on hand to create it. Here it is just in case you want to give it a try (sorry about the lack of exact measurements for some ingredients…I tend to just add a little of this and a little of that as I go):

To stuff a 4-5 pound chicken…

• 4 cups of dried, cubed bread
• diced up celery (at least 1/2 cup)
• diced up sweet onion (at least 1/2 cup)
• diced up fresh mushrooms (I used about 5 large ones)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup to 1 cup of liquid (I use canned chicken broth…but you can use water or homemade chicken broth instead)
• pepper to taste
• currants or dried cranberries to taste
• pecans – crumbled into bite sized pieces to taste
• chopped up fresh parsley to taste

Melt the butter in a fry pan, add the vegetables and saute until the celery and onions are clear or just tender. Dump the butter and vegetables into a large bowl and add the bread cubes, currants (or dried cranberries), pecans, pepper, and parsley. Mix well. Add in the liquid a little at a time until you have the right level of moisture (this is completely up to you…some people like very moist stuffing, other people like their stuffing a bit drier). Taste and adjust seasonings or ingredients as needed. Then stuff that bird and pop it in the oven. The left over stuffing I add to a buttered casserole dish and bake it for about an hour at 350 degrees or until the top of the stuffing is brown and crunchy.

To make acorn squash:

Chop your squash into halves and scoop out the seeds. Place the squash upside down in a casserole dish and then add water until it comes about 1/2 way up the sides of the squash halves. Bake in a 400 degree oven until the squash are easily pierced with a fork (about 45 minutes depending on the size of your squash). Remove from the oven; drain the water and flip the squash right side up (be careful..they are very hot!). Add a dollop of butter and brown sugar into the squash halves and place under a broiler (set on high) until the sugar and butter are bubbling (they actually begin to caramelize a bit). Remove from the oven and cut into serving sized pieces. Serve hot. These also taste great leftover – just heat them up in the microwave.

Today Kip and I are enjoying leftovers. Yum!!!

What are you making this weekend? Are you already anticipating a Thanksgiving feast? Do you have a favorite cookbook for reference or basic recipes?

To read more Weekend Cooking posts, visit Beth’s blog today and check out Mr. Linky!

Have you seen this new weekly meme being hosted over at Beth Fish Reads?  Beth 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.

I always feel especially creative in the kitchen at this time of the year and I tried a new recipe last night I thought I would share with all of you. This came from one of my favorite cookbooks: The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook by Julie Rosso and Sheila Lukins (I also have the equally good New Basics Cookbook by the same two authors). Anyway, I had thawed out four boneless chicken breasts yesterday and wanted to do something more imaginative than throw them the grill. On page 278 of The Silver Palate Cookbook, I found a terrific seasonal recipe called Baked Chicken With Cider and Apples. And it was simple. Simply marinate the chicken breasts in some apple cider for an hour (I used Odwalla’s Cider with Caramel), then dredge the breasts in flour with some ground ginger, cinnamon, pepper and salt. Bake in a shallow dish for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from the oven and pour reserved cider and sliced apples over the top of the chicken; return to the oven for 25 minutes…and you’re done. The recipe also called for Applejack (which I had to look up because I’d never heard of it…apparently it is a liquor) which I did not have…I left it out and the meal came out great, so I guess it wasn’t needed. Besides this easy dish, I also used a left over baked yam to make sweet potato pancakes with roasted pecans. Yummy.

Do you have some favorite seasonal recipes for this time of the year? I also love to make soups and stews with a loaf of homemade bread. I better stop now, my stomach is growling!