Holiday Books and NieNieDialogues.blogspot.com

It is such a fun season to purchase new books because there are so many out there now on crafts, decorating, entertaining, and cooking for the holidays. Who has time to do all those things? It is great to look through all the ideas and think you might accomplish it; I am sure some people do (but not me).
Today I put a book into the collection "Holiday" written with Matthew Mead and one of the chapters includes crafts and recipes from Stephanie Nielson of Utah. Some of you might know her from her blog http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/   Stephanie and her husband were involved in a near-fatal airplane crash in 2008 which burned 80% of her body. Her blog enabled her friends and family to follow her long journey back to recovery. Her scars may never heal, but Stephanie says it gets a little easier every day. Despite constant physical pain, she still manages to make lunches, bathe her children and celebrate life and love (and work as contributing lifestyle editor for "Holiday"). Take a look at a few of the wonderful craft ideas and recipes she shares in this book.

You might also want to check out Matthew Mead's website for patterns suggested in this book http://www.holidaywithmatthewmead.com/

Susan

Cookery at the Library

Hard to imagine, at hot as it is, that July is a pretty busy month for food. It is National ice cream, baked bean and hot dog month. Today is Fried Chicken day, tomorrow is Chocolate and Strawberry Sundae Day, Saturday is Sugar Cookie Day - July 12th brings Pecan Pie Day, the 15th is Tapioca Pudding Day, the 17th is Ice Cream Day, the 19th is Raspberry Cake Day, the 21st is Junk food day, the 23rd is Hot Dog and Vanilla Ice Cream Day, July 28th is Milk Chocolate Day, July 29th is Lasagna Day, and July 30th is Cheesecake day.

These hot summer days are a good time to barbecue and make salads you can throw together without cooking. Thinking of food made me wonder a bit about our cookbooks - do people use cookbooks like they used to? Is it easier to use the Internet for recipes than a cookbook? Many patrons once came in to ask for help finding a recipe in a cookbook. Now they type it into the computer and come up with hundreds of recipes right at their fingertips. When do you use a cookbook and when do you use the Internet to find a recipe?

Cooking is a very popular subject right now - tons of cooking shows, food magazines, and always new cookbooks. Do you like browsing through a cookbook? Will they always be a popular item at the library or would you rather read them on your Nook or Kindle? It seems hundreds of cookbooks are published each year and it always hard to pick which ones to buy on a limited budget. What type of cookbooks do you like the library to buy? Gourmet? Quick and Easy? Healthy? Ethnic? Preserving? Baking? I'd be interested to know.

Susan

Cooking Online

Wow, I haven't posted since the 4th of November - and that wasn't much of a post. Thankfully Susan has been keeping us afloat -and yes, she is the only one. No one else has posted, except Susan, since November 4th. Thanks Susan - and no, you are not hogging the blog. You're just more on top of it than the rest of us.

Susan and I were talking about recipes this morning. I've been doing a lot of crockpot cooking lately and I shared this one with Susan. It's Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff. It was so tasty and easy to make too. It calls for 8 oz. of cream cheese, but I substuited a cup of plain yogurt instead. I've always been a fan of looking for recipes online, but this month I've done it a lot more and it's been fun. Here's a few sites I really like:

Food Network (I especially love the Alton Brown recipes, try his cheese souffle)
All Recipes (Try the blue ribbon overnight rolls or the strawberry spinach salad)
Family Crock Pot Recipes (I just discoved this site and tried a really great pork and sauerkraut recipe - I'll be trying a lot more from this site.)

My sister likes Cooks.com and I did get a really nice fruit pizza recipe there once. And I've gotten some really good ones from Kraft.com too - like this lemon cake.

There's loads of wonderful cooking websites out there, so let others know about them. Post a comment to let people know what your favorite cooking website is or post a link directly to a recipe.

It's just in time for the holidays. So maybe we'll even get some good holiday recipes to share. I'm looking forward to some food. I hope this helps spread around some great recipes we can all use all year long. Happy eating!

Elizabeth

When is a book more than a good read?

If you're looking for a book that's more than a good read, try a Joanne Fluke mystery and try the recipes she includes in each chapter. Today, Becky brought in cookies that were to-die-for called Hannah's Bananas cookies and they came from a JoAnne Fluke mystery "Fudge Cupcake Murder". I tried a cookie recipe, several months ago, from the "Lemon Meringue Murder"(I can't remember the name of of the cookie), but it turned out to be a recipe I liked and am keeping. So, not only do the recipes sound delicious as you are reading one of these mysteries, they actually taste delicious when you bake them. The newest book we have by Joanne is "The candy cane murder". Bake up a batch of cookies and enjoy the book.

Susan