Cookbooks for Summer Eats
Summer means lots of different things to lots of different people, but me, well, I spend summer how I spend all other seasons: thinkin’ lots about what I’m going to cook and eat. Here are some tried-and-true cookbooks you can check out for some A+ summertime recipes.
Spine to Spoon: Over Easy by Joy Wilson
As someone who inevitably fills every hour of the day with some kind of odd gig or pet project, I often find it hard to leave an entire chunk of time totally free and set aside some time to savor summer while it’s here. But exploring a new cookbook is a great excuse to take a break in the kitchen, and you can always justify taking a break to cook (everybody’s got to eat sometime, after all). Recently, I was lucky enough to be able to spend an entire morning with Joy Wilson’s Over Easy: Sweet & Savory Recipes for Leisurely Days. Based on title alone, it sounded like the perfect companion for a belated break from a busy week.
Spine to Spoon: The Aleppo Cookbook by Marlene Matar
Marlene Matar’s The Aleppo Cookbook: Celebrating the Legendary Cuisine of Syria, is a delicious dedication to a city and its food. If I could, I would eat only olives, beans and bread for the rest of my life, and I just might be able to with this book in hand. Matar presents us with a plethora of dishes, from a simple lentil stew to more complex creations like stuffed lamb dumplings. Still, each recipe is easy to follow and most include adaptations for the more adventurous cook.
Making Informed Food Decisions
Fall, in particular, always gets me thinking about food: where it comes from, how it gets to me, what’s been done to it, whether or not it’s “good” for me. The food we eat today is very different from the food we ate even 100 years ago. It’s grown differently, processed differently and available year-round thanks to global shipping.
Greek Food Festival Season
I love spring and summer, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happens to be the time of year when my favorite events start popping up: Greek Food Festivals. I think we should just call this time of year Greek Food Festival season.