Knack Quick and Easy Cooking

Even if time is limited and experience lacking, it is still possible to prepare healthy family meals.

Combining photographs and succinct descriptions, this book outlines the process of putting meals together, quickly and easily, without sacrificing flavor.

Includes tips on organizing a kitchen and smart shopping.

Knack Quick and Easy Cooking

A Step-by-Step Guide to Meals in Minutes

by Linda Johnson Larsen

Knack, 2009

Cover Art: Knack Quick and Easy Cooking
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Review: Making Peg Dolls

"When we watch children immersed in imaginative play, and one child presents us with a bit of wood saying, 'This is my baby,' these imaginings of children at play cross the expanses of history and culture to connect us in a universal way," writes author Margaret Bloom in her introduction to this book of peg doll inspirations.

Originally created from wooden laundry pegs, the dolls in this book are designed in the Waldorf education tradition that encourages imaginative play and emotional development through neutral faces and minimal features.

The 60 designs and patterns for peg dolls included in this book are arranged by season, Spring through Winter, with three fairy tale sets in the back of the book for making dolls for The Three Bears, Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel. Introductory chapters review materials and techniques and offer a glossary of stitches.

Making Peg Dolls

by Margaret Bloom

Hawthorn Press, 2013

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Review: Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares

This engaging text introduces readers to both the heroes and the villains of the Fungi  kingdom, from the seductively flavorful chanterelle to the poisonous Death Cap, highlighting their culinary attributes, undesirable characteristics, and complex cultural histories.

Author Greg Marley is a well-known New England mycophile who frequently lectures on wild mushrooms and medicinal plants, leads mushroom expeditions, and writes books on these subjects.

Mushrooms for Health: Medical Secrets of Northeastern Fungi, published in 2009, covered medicinal mushrooms; this one explores the gustatory traits of the fungi and the lore behind them.

Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares

The Love, Lore, and Mystique of Mushrooms

by Greg A. Marley

Chelsea Green, 2010

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Now Exploring Bark River

The Bark River valley in southeastern Wisconsin is a microcosm of the state's - indeed, of the Great Lakes region's - natural and human history.

The Bark River Chronicles records one couple's journey by canoe from the river's headwaters to its confluence with the Rock River and several miles farther downstream to Lake Koshkonong.

The Bark River Chronicles

Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed

by Milton J. Bates

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012

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Review: Let the Meatballs Rest

This is a collection of 100 brief essays discussing specific foodstuffs, their histories and how they have helped shape the human societies that include them in their diets.

Potatoes, for instance, were introduced to Europe in the 16th century but their bland flavor and "subterranean nature" made them unappealing. Only when other crops had failed and starvation loomed did farmers turn to widescale production of the easy-to-grow spuds.

Garlic, likewise, was once considered fit only for peasants. Eating such strong and foul-smelling food was a damning mark of poverty in the 10th century.

And eggplant, first brought to Europe by Arabs, was long associated with "the lower class and Jews." Yet the peasant cuisine that emerged from their use would later be co-opted by the upper classes.

Let the Meatballs Rest

And Other Stories About Food and Culture

by Massimo Montanari

Columbia University Press, 2012

Cover Art: Let the Meatballs Rest
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Eating Out with Let the Meatballs Rest

In his chapter, "The Beautiful and the Good," Montanari argues that beauty and beautiful food shouldn't be the privilege of the few.

"It is a primary need of the individual and of society. Beauty is natural, but it has to be cultivated and is therefore also culture. Beauty makes things more acceptable, more pleasing, more desirable. 

"The ancient Greeks thought that the body and the spirit were fundamentally the same and that a truly beautiful man could not be other that truly good... And so it is for food. To be be really good it has to be really beautiful. Not only the nch food of grand occasions, but even humble, ordinary, daily food. Beauty is needed every day."

~ Massimo Montanapi from "Let The Meatballs Rest"

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Review: Fish Grilled and Smoked

"I have discovered what I believe to be an exciting new fuel for smoking fish, a fuel easily found in any farm supply store, hardware store, and even supermarket," writes outdoorsman and author John Manikowski. "It's inexpensive too. Corn. Dried whole corn kernels."

In the pages of this how-to guide and recipe book, Manikowski reveals the secret of his “soft smoke” method using dried corn that can make a fish smoker out of almost any grill.

Manikowski includes step-by-step illustrated directions for building three separate smokers: a streamside smoker, a home smoker, and a large backyard smokehouse.

He discusses the best species of fish to smoke—bluefish, yellowtail, whitefish, herring, and lake trout -- and provides recipes for curing solutions and special rubs.

There's more ways to cook a fish than smoking it, of course, and Manikowski covers most of the basics, from directions on cleaning fish, techniques for boning and scaling, and advice on wine pairings.

The 150 recipes in the book include main dish meals like Striped Bass with Cattail Shoots and Morels, Grilled Butterflied Trout, and Grilled Small-mouth Bass Wrapped in Corn Husks.There are also recipes for side dishes using wild mushrooms, grilled eggplants and tomatoes, as well as an assortment of condiments, sauces, and desserts.

Fish Grilled and Smoked

150 Recipes for Cooking Rich, Flavorful Fish on the Backyard Grill, Streamside, or in a Home Smoker

by John Manikowski

Recipe Excerpt: Salmon and Corn Chowder
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