Top 5

Happy Sunday (day after World Nutella Day: http://www.nutelladay.com/)!

I've been mulling around ideas for recipes I wanted to make this weekend, but I have one major problem keeping me from doing any cooking at the moment: NO FRIDGE SPACE!!! 

Fridge space becomes an issue in an apartment with a smaller than normal sized refrigerator and two roommates who love to cook. So at this point I'm just trying to finish off what we've got. Of course, this "problem" is really something that I should be grateful for every day - that I have enough food, safe food, and food that I like. I've recently started practicing exercises in attention and mindfulness to the things in my life that are good. Having access to a full larder is definitely on my list.

Over the past week as I've been tweaking details of this new page, I started thinking about the blog's name: Caro's Cookbook. The name is quite appropriate. I have a cookbook fetish. I love them. I suppose there are worse things one could spend one's money on, right? So, I started thinking about all of the cookbooks that I own and decided that it would be entirely appropriate to create a post sharing my favorite cookbooks.  So, here they are (in no particular order - it would be too hard to choose an all time favorite):

1) America's Best-Loved Community Recipes, by Better Homes and Gardens

This was my very first cookbook, a Christmas gift from my cousins Cindy and Matt, in 1997 (give or take a few years). I remember my dad making a deal with me. He said he'd buy me any ingredients that I wanted, as long as I promised to actually cook them. I was so excited about cooking - and that was just the encouragement I needed. My favorite recipes from this book are:

Petit Pain Au Chocolat

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Fruit Pizza

Chocolate Chess Pie

Red Snapper with Orange Sauce

Baked Chicken with Cider and Apples

Chicken Piccata

Stuffed Chicken Breast with Cherry Sauce

Kale Soup

2) The New Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen

I discovered this cookbook in my Aunt Elaine's kitchen when I was in college. At the time, my anut and uncle lived in Naperville, IL, just a short (8 hour) drive from River Falls, were I went to school. It became a tradition that I travel down to Chicagoland either for Thanksgiving or New Years. These trips were always accompanied by the preparation of a delicious feast. Aunt Elaine had a well loved copy of the original Moosewood Cookbook. My favorite recipes from this book include:  

Basic Corn Bread

Gypsy Soup 

Felafel

Lentil-Walnut Burgers

Zuccanoes (Stuffed Zucchini) 

Marinated Sweet Potatoes and Broccoli

No-Fault Pumpkin Pie 

Mollie Katzen inspired me to delve into the world of vegetarian cooking with whole foods. She taught me how to soak and cook dry beans, how to make a homemade pumpkin pie (from real pumpkins), and how to use polenta as a base for just about any food.  

3) The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest, by Mollie Katzen

If you're wondering what an Enchanted Broccoli Forest is, take a look at the photo. Believe me, it's quite delicious. This is another gem by Mollie Katzen. I bought this book after a few years of cooking from the Mooswood Cookbook. It serves as a great compliment to Moosewood (i.e. it has an awesome recipe for pie crust to go with Moosewood's pumpkin pie recipe).

One of the things that I love about Mollie's cookbooks is that the print is all handwritten. There are also many hand drawn illustrations (and even some carefree doodles) accompanying the recipes.  Some of my favorite recipes include:

Potato-Leek Soup                      Fresh Corn Chowder

Pecan-Oat Muffins                     Corn and Molasses Muffins

Basic Pie Crust                          The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

Quiche

4) The Tassajara Bread Book, by Edward Espe Brown

I can't tell you how much I love this book! It taught me to be comfortable with baking - not to be intimidated by it. The philosophy of the Tassajara books is that a cookbook should provide a guideline, but that YOU decide how you want to cook. So, naturally, when I take liberties and experiment, some of my attempts are flops. But others turn out better than I could have planned. This book provides very helpful detailed instructions on how to bake bread - the basics. Once you learn the basics, you can start experimenting with different ingredients and methods.

I love this note at the beginning of the book:

"Bread makes itself, by your kindness, with your help, with imagination streaming through you, with dough under hand, you are breadmaking itself, which is why breadmaking is so fulfilling and rewarding. Recipes do not belong to anyone - given to me, I give them to you. Recipes are only a guide, a skeletal framework, to be fleshed out according to your nature and desire. Your life, your love, will bring these recipes into full creation. This cannot be taught. You already know. So plunge in: cook, love, feel, create. Actualize breadmaking itself."

Favorite recipes (guides) from this book include:

Tassajara Yeasted Bread

Sourdough Bread

Sourdough English Muffins

5) Simply in Season, by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert  (A World Community Cookbook, "Commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee to promote the understanding of how the food choices we make affect our lives and the lives of those who produce the food.")

Okay, you know how I said before that I couldn't pick an all time favorite, I was wrong. This cookbook is the best. I learned about this book when I was a St. Joseph Worker (http://stjosephworkers.org/). The recipes in this book follow seasonal availability. I don't know how they did it, but every single recipe that I've ever made from this book has been a hit. My favorite recipes include:

Maple Walnut Scones        Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread

Rhubarb Muffins                 Grilled Maple Barbecue Chicken

Spring Celebration Soup    Summer Garden Ratatouille     Rhubarb Almond Flake       Chicken and Chickpea Soup

Basic Tomato Sauce           Sweet Potato Crescent Rolls

Liberian Pumpkin                Company Muffins

Pear Custard Bars              Golden Carrot Bake

Apple Carrot Salad              Black Bean Sweet Potato Burritos 

Naan Bread                         Ethiopian Lentil Bowl

The book includes an index of fruits and vegetables at the beginning, with a description of the whole food, a guide for selection, instructions for storage and handling, ideas for basic preparation, serving suggestions, and nutrient information. Then the foods are broken down by season. Each season has recipes for breads and breakfast, soups, salads, sides, main dishes, desserts, extras, and menu ideas. All of the recipes were contributed by community members and many of the recipes are accompanied by insightful bits of wisdom and thought provoking quotes.

And there you have it, my Top 5. Many of the recipes that appear on this blog will likely come from these books. If you need ideas for a new cookbook for yourself or as a gift, I highly recommend any of these.

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Also, a bit of winter fun. The tree and fence outside my bedroom window serve as dining room for  lots of critters. I figure this is food blog worthy since these friends are getting their eat on!