Monday, August 23, 2010

Eating Well in Season: The Farmer's Market Cookbook by Jessie Price

With the farmer's market so close by the library, I checked this book out (Eating Well in Season: The Farmer's Market Cookbook by Jessie Price) to see what recipes might look tasty. There were a lot of excellent recipes that seemed easy to prepare. If you want new ideas for healthy meals or want to work on a more balanced diet, this book will give you some interesting options.

Kathi

Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Great Potato Cookbook by Reader's Digest

The Great Potato Cookbook put out by Reader's Digest has over 250 recipes for cooking soups, salads, main dishes, vegetarian dishes, and even desserts with potatoes and sweet potatoes. It describes the difference between floury (high starch) potatoes and waxy (low starch) potatoes and how to best use each.

My main complaint with many cookbooks is that the recipes ask for ingredients and spices that I don't generally have on hand. This cookbook is mostly plain cooking but with combinations that will make you think, "That's worth trying." There are recipes representing various ethnic tastes, yet nothing so exotic that you can't find the main spices or ingredients. ("Hey, hon, would you please pick up some blowfish for supper tonight?")

Kathi

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus is based on an actual request by Sweet Medicine Man Lone Wolf to President Ulysses S. Grant that one thousand white women be given to the Cherokee nation as brides so that their children could walk in both worlds. Although the request was never fulfilled, Jim Fergus has made an intriguing story about the first - and only - forty women who went to be Cherokee brides. May Dodd emerges as a lynch pin in this little group. She keeps several journals during her year in the West describing the journey from Chicago and the reason she signed up, their stay at the last fort before meeting the Cherokees, their month of acclimation before the group wedding ceremony, and the events that followed right up until the Black Hills became interesting to gold-seekers, and the Indian nations took their stand to remain free people.

It was interesting to see the events leading up to the Battle of the Little Big Horn through white eyes living with the Cherokee. Had May kept writing, she might have found that she didn't fit well in either world anymore.

Kathi