Time for a snack and a book

December 20, 2010 by
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The holiday season this year has been a compressed blur, with Thanksgiving segueing instantly into Hanukkah into Christmas. I bet you haven't had a chance to do much more than crack your cookbooks to the right page as you dash from one festive culinary ordeal to the next. Forget about browsing through new books in an armchair! But in the… read more

J M Hirsch

December 19, 2010 by
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J M Hirsch on Cookbooks as Inspiration. My job makes it hard not to be a little jaded about cookbooks. As food editor for The Associated Press, I get sent virtually every cookbook published, sometimes several times (when the PR people aren't all that on the ball). The result is a tidal wave of recipes clamoring to be consumed. Some are obvious… read more

New registration and payment system

December 8, 2010 by
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Today is a significant day for Eat Your Books - the beta sign has finally come off.  It's taken longer than we thought - but that's the nature of software development.  At the beginning of the year, we didn't realise we were going to do a complete rewrite of the site, but we did, and it's now the website that… read more

What makes a cookbook terrific or terrible?

December 6, 2010 by
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Susie has written a great article today in Publishers Weekly, titled "10 Things Every Cookbook Publisher Should Know".  Susie receives stacks of new cookbooks every week and she road-tests and reviews many of them.  So she really knows what works and what doesn't. read more

Susie’s picks for best cookbooks of 2010

November 21, 2010 by
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Our own Susie Chang was on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday this morning with some of her picks of the best cookbooks this year.  The full list is on the NPR website and it's also worth listening to the on-air story. We will again this year be compiling a best of the best list of 2010 list, for which we will be tracking down… read more

How many cookbooks do we need?

October 21, 2010 by
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Josh Ozersky writes in the current issue of Time magazine that no-one needs more than about four cookbooks.  What nonsense!  Nancy Baggett, author of numerous wonderful cookbooks, has responded on her blog and asked for comments. read more

Keep up to date with EYB

October 21, 2010 by
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We are now posting details of newly indexed books on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, so if you would like to know immediately what new books have been indexed, subscribe by clicking the links on the Community page.  We will also be posting the links to Buzz features - news from the world of cookbooks. read more

Armchair Adventures

October 17, 2010 by
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Lushly photographed on coated stock, ruinously priced, and as heavy as a KitchenAid mixer--you know what I'm talking about: coffee-table cookbooks.  You tell yourself this will be the last one, truly, and yet there you are again, plunking down $50 and change for a cookbook that will never see the inside of your kitchen. Why is that?  It's because they're… read more

Molly Stevens

October 15, 2010 by
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Molly Stevens Why Recipes Don't Work... We caught up with the one and only Molly Stevens--author, co-author, or editor of many cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winning All about Braising.  She's also a contributing editor at Fine Cooking and teaches cooking classes throughout the country.  She provided us with a rare insight--from a cooking teacher's perspective--on why cookbooks can only… read more

Crust craze: Dinner’s in the oven!

September 17, 2010 by
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If there's one thing I love about the end of the summer, it's turning the oven back on again.  And if there's one thing I like about an oven, it's getting to make dinner under, inside, or on top of a crust. My son's favorite dinner is chard tart (sautéed greens in a Gruyère custard in a crust, basically).  That's followed… read more

Some features you may be missing

September 1, 2010 by
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In developing the new website, there were some features that we didn't have time to incorporate.  They are however on our to-do list so you should see them improved and back on EYB soon. Friends - we are developing a much-improved social networking feature for EYB and Friends will be part of that.  We have retained your Friends data so when we… read more

New version of EYB is here at last

August 30, 2010 by
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It's taken us longer than we would like but we are really happy with the end result - we hope you are too!  We have a great team of developers who have incorporated your feedback since we launched.  There are a lot more improvements we want to make over the next few months but the basic structure we have now… read more

Monica Bhide

August 29, 2010 by
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Monica Bhide looks at how family recipes change over time... This morning I was making a lentil soup for my family, almost exactly the way my grandmother, in India,  taught me decades ago. Or so I first thought. Her recipe used six tablespoons of butter,  onions, garlic, red lentils, about eight different spices, loads of cilantro and a touch of… read more

Matt and Ted Lee

August 29, 2010 by
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Matt Lee and Ted Lee talk about their beloved grandmother... Elizabeth Maxwell, our late grandmother, had a profound influence on our cooking, though you'll have to banish any images of an aproned Southern Grandmother laboring all day at the stove, stirring her collards and hushing her puppies. Gran, as we called her, was a thoroughly modern Yankee, wearer of short… read more

The Observer’s Top 10 Cookbooks of All Time

August 14, 2010 by
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The list is now up at sister paper The Guardian's website. And the top 10 are: 1. The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney2. French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David3. The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden4. The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater5. Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson & Lindsey Bareham6. English Food by Jane Grigson7. Thai Food by David Thompson8. The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan9. Sichuan Cookery by Fuchsia Dunlop10. Great Dishes of… read more

Best 50 cookbooks of all time?

August 13, 2010 by
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The Guardian has today listed the first installment of the best 50 cookbooks of all time, as chosen by The Observer's Food Monthly. The top 10 will be published in this Sunday's Observer. See how many you have, and how many you disagree with. Inevitably the skew is British though there are nine Americans in the list and one Australian. Rather… read more

Never mind what I eat…what do you eat???

August 6, 2010 by
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Although new food books arrive at my house every day, very rarely does one stop me in my tracks.  But that's what happened when I opened the familiar cardboard envelope and found What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.  One moment I was sorting through the mail; the next I was transported on a whirlwind, National Geographic-style tour… read more

Essential maintenance

August 5, 2010 by
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We will have to take the site down this morning, hopefully for not longer than 3 hours, for some essential upkeep of the site.  It should be back up by 3pm EST. Once the new version of the site goes live in the next couple of weeks, such downtime will not be necessary.  Apologies if you needed to use EYB during this… read more

Hostess with the mostest (…or not!)

July 25, 2010 by
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Entertaining-focused cookbooks come out twice a year--before summer and for the holidays (even if their party suggestions are not season-sensitive).  I always leaf through the summer ones with the slightly dislocated sense one has when observing a foreign culture.  Twice each summer is my limit, basically, when it comes to entertaining.  The first time is my daughter's birthday (cookies &… read more

13 ways of looking at a cherry tomato…

July 25, 2010 by
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...well, maybe not quite that many (with apologies to Wallace Stevens).  It takes forever, it seems, for the Sungold cherry tomatoes to ripen.  We started them in March, shuttled them in and out of the house during the frosty nights of April, gently forked them into the ground in May and watched for 8 weeks! as those tiny green marbles… read more

100,000 cookbooks on EYB members’ Bookshelves

July 23, 2010 by
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There are now more than 100,000 cookbooks on our members' Bookshelves.  The number of members owning each book varies from 550 for Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One down to lots of books just owned by one member.  You can check out who else owns your cookbooks by clicking Other Bookshelves under book details.  Then you can look at all the… read more

We Scream for Ice Cream

July 5, 2010 by
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97 degrees - that's the high today, and that's here in New England.  Even the most dedicated home cook has mixed feelings about cooking in weather like this.  All I want to do is sit in a hammock with a book while someone brings me a cool drink once in a while.  Or, better yet, a dish of ice cream.… read more

Congratulations to Susie!

June 23, 2010 by
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Our own Susie Chang has just been awarded 3rd place in the biennial MFK Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing (administered by Les Dames d'Escoffier International).  The story so honored was last year's Gather Ye Squash Blossoms While Ye May on NPR.  Congratulations Susie - a great honor! read more

EYB Library now 79,000 books

June 7, 2010 by
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The import of books data from around the world is now complete, a total of nearly 79,000 cookbooks and books on food from the USA & Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.  So you should now be able to add most of your books to your Bookshelf.  Any you find that we don't have, import the ISBNs using… read more

New community page features

May 13, 2010 by
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We have added some fun new features to Community - let us know what you think.  We would love contributions from EYB members for some of them - Hot Find, Puzzler and Buzz from the Web are all places where your input would be helpful.  So if you see something that you think would fit in one of those categories, please email us… read more
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