March 2022 Great Big Cookbook Club Summary

As our members know, each month we offer several cooking options in our Eat Your Books Cookbook Club. There are other fun cookbook clubs around the interwebs and we’d like to highlight those for those members who might want to cook or bake something other than our choices.  We want to get this information out to you so you can prepare… read more

Food news antipasto

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. If you are not the type to plan ahead, don't worry, we have your back. Good Food (Aus) has 22 last-minute Valentine's recipes that are simple yet impressive. Likewise, The Guardian features a bevy of recipes that are sure to impress. One of my favorite food shows of the late 90s/early 00s was Two Fat Ladies.… read more

André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards 2021 Shortlist

And just like that, it's cookbook award season, with the announcement of the shortlist of the André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards 2021. Simon was the charismatic leader of the English wine trade for almost all of the first half of the 20th century, and the grand old man of literate connoisseurship for a further 20 years. In 66 years… read more

This week: Club Masala and Diaspora Co. discount code, EYB features, cookbook previews and more

A member recently asked if there was a way to determine the percentage of recipes she had cooked from a book. While the member will have to do the actual math, there is a way to tabulate this information: utilizing your Bookmark functions, "I've cooked this" and a few easy steps. (Darcie briefly covered this feature and others in this… read more

On saving a restaurant

Over the past two years we have written many stories that involved the pandemic: the Dalgona coffee craze, the spike in sourdough baking, the effects of lockdown cooking fatigue, and more. We also covered the struggles facing restaurants around the world. Most of those articles involved grim statistics and were written from a detached, industry-wide viewpoint. When reading abstract numbers… read more

Save-It-Forward Suppers -Cookbook Giveaway

Enter our US giveaway to win one of three copies of Save-It-Forward Suppers: A Simple Strategy to Save Time, Money, and Sanity by Cyndi Kane. Fans of The Pioneer Woman know Cyndi Kane as Hyacinth, Ree's best friend. Ree gave her that nickname twenty years ago. Cyndi has now written a time, money and sanity saving cookbook design to get supper on… read more

Celebrate National Pizza Day

This one almost slipped by me, but once I saw that it was National Pizza Day I could not let it go unmentioned. Pizza, after all, was what got me through my college years - literally, because I worked my way through school at two different pizza joints. In my heyday, I could toss pizza dough with flair, although enough… read more

Weekend by Matt Tebbutt Cookbook Giveaway

Enter our US/UK/AU/NZ giveaway to win one of three copies of Weekend: Eating at Home: From Long Lazy Lunches to Fast Family Fixes by Matt Tebbutt. Matt Tebbutt is used to spending his Saturdays cooking - as the host of BBC TV's Saturday Kitchen, he's never short of a fast meal idea or a meal for guests that will impress.… read more

How much do you know about flour?

Even if you are not an avid baker, you probably have a bag of flour in your cupboard. Until the pandemic turned us all into sourdough fanatics and supermarket shelves were swept bare, few people gave a second thought to this ubiquitous pantry staple. While we understand that flour is the product of milling wheat, how much do we really… read more

Food news antipasto

The next time you sit down to drink a refreshing Pimm's Cup or cool and soothing martini, you should take a moment to thank the people who invented cocktails. The history of this craft is murky, but David Wondrich (author of the amazing Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails) dives deep into lore and vintage newspaper clippings alike to unearth… read more

Get ready for SuperBowl Sunday

In just over a week, the larges sporting event in the United States will take place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, as the Cincinnati Bengals face off against the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI. Not only is Super Bowl Sunday an important day for sports fans, it’s also the second biggest food event in the nation behind Thanksgiving. Watching… read more

The last two weeks: Lunar New Year recipes; Spring cookbook preview; and more

Last month, Darcie shared Get ready to celebrate the year of the tiger with a link to 35 Lunar New Year foods at Epicurious (see our article about the paywall). I was still able to access 3 recipes on their site before the paywall information came up. (People are able to access 3 recipes a month for free).  Lucky 8… read more

Save on an e-book bundle and support a charity

I just discovered a great deal on a bundle of amazing e-books that has the bonus of raising money for two deserving charities. The Humble Book Bundle features 30 great books from Chronicle, including Season by Nik Sharma, American Sfoglino by Evan Funke (winner of a James Beard Award for photography), Flour by Joanne Chang, Ruhlman's Twenty by Michael Ruhlman,… read more

Spring 2022 Cookbook Preview

It's time for a Spring preview post which will cover all titles from February to May. Please note EYB's Spring preview is much larger than most as we feature books from around the world. While preparing this preview a few of the Spring titles were moved so if you are looking for a book, check the 2022 preview post for updates. Speaking… read more

Epicurious installs a paywall

We have just learned that the Epicurious website (a Condé Nast venture), which hosts recipe archives from the late Gourmet Magazine as well as Bon Appétit Magazine, has put up a paywall for all of the site's recipes. Epicurious is offering access to recipes for an introductory rate of $30 USD per year, with the rate going to $40/year thereafter. It… read more

One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones – Cookbook Giveaway

Enter our US/Worldwide giveaway below to win one of three copies of One: Pot, Pan, Planet: A Greener Way to Cook for You, Your Family and the Planet by Anna Jones. Award-winning cook Anna Jones blazes the trail again for how we all want to cook now: quick, sustainably and stylishly. The title is filled with information about how to… read more

Which food phrases or words would you like to see gone?

The New York Times Kim Severson recently tweeted a provocative question: asking which food writing words and phrases people would like to ban. She started with calling a restaurant an eatery (I'm guilty of that one) and calling vegetables 'veggies' (which I avoid doing). Several other food writers chimed in with words they would like to see disappear. David Wondrich… read more

Food news antipasto

Last week Jenny compiled yet another amazing gift guide, this time for Valentine's Day. In the spirit of fairness, I am going to post a gift guide from another source, Epicurious. They gathered a list of 27 "actually good" gifts for cooks instead of the same old, same old things like flowers or lingerie. Jenny's guide is arguably better not… read more

Building a barbecue trail

The Southern Foodways Alliance has long been an important resource for chronicling the diverse food cultures of the American South. It has assembled oral histories on different topics that function as a culinary map for food lovers. Two of these projects, which can be accessed through the Alliance's free app, SFA Stories, are the tamale trail in the Mississippi Delta and… read more

Top fifty 2021 books added to EYB Members Bookshelves

A member posted an interesting question after reading Jane's top selling books of 2021: She wanted to know which books from 2021 were added to the most members' bookshelves. (This was a great question and we'll add this report to our yearly summaries in the future.) I took an hour and went through the listing of 2021 books in our… read more

Buried treasure: cookbooks lost at sea

Things have not been easy with cookbook production since COVID hit and the hits keep coming. As I have stated many times, delays in shipping and shortages of all types have wreaked havoc with cookbook releases. Last year, a publicist told me that an entire shipment of their books had caught fire at sea and now we learn of another… read more

The best selling books of 2021

Last month our friends at cookbook stores around the world gave us their picks for their favorite books of 2021 which we then included in our Best of the Best of 2021. Now we asked them for their top sellers of 2021. It would be interesting to compare these charts to non-specialist store/online retailer book sales but it is very hard to get… read more

What’s your cooking phobia?

Even the most intrepid cooks have a dish or two that strikes fear in their hearts. For some it's pie crust, for others it's certain cuts of meat, or it could be a kitchen tool that terrifies them. Whether it's due to past failures, injuries, or just a deep-seated fear of disappointing dinner guests, most cooks have a dish that… read more

Valentine’s Gift Guide for the Cookbook Lover & Giveaway

Today, I've put together a gift guide to offer some inspiration for Valentine's Day. Along with the gift guide, I am including a worldwide giveaway prize package of a BonJour Voyager Glass Teapot, a set of BonJour Cappuccino Cups Set, and a BonJour Pro Torch along with three cookbooks Cake: Layered, Frosted, Sliced & Shared by Brooke Bell; In Love… read more

January 2022 New Cookbook Review

I was hoping that once 2022 arrived we wouldn't be having the same issues as we experienced in 2020 and 2021. But, alas, publication dates are moving about and a dozen of this month's titles were pushed forward. The 2022 preview post is being updated weekly - new additions and revised release dates are added at the top of each… read more
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