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Here are some good cookbooks to get you trying something different, improving your cooking skills, and getting you inspired to keep expanding your recipe portfolio in delicious ways.  Here are the cookbooks I’ve been enjoying lately:

These three books are new to me and very welcome:

Tahini Baby: This is the book that taught us how to make labneh. It is vegetarian, featuring Israeli food, written by an Californian. Because of this book, I’ve recently purchased for the first time Aleppo pepper and black lime.

What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: I follow Caro Chambers on Instagram, who is a mom to three little boys, with another on the way. I like her no nonsense approach to cooking. I’ll be giving our older daughter this cookbook for Christmas. It is organized by the amount of time you’ve got to spend making something, which I think is kind of brilliant. It’s focus is on efficient, flavorful meals, and has plenty for both the meat eater and the vegetarian. It would be a good beginner cookbook for people that want to learn to cook but are busy and don’t have much bandwidth left for it.

The Ranch at Live Oak Cookbook: I got this book secondhand and it is filled with healthy, vegetarian, and sugar-free Californian spa food. This book extends how we naturally eat over here in a beautiful way.

Here are some cookbooks of note I’ve requested from interlibrary loan:

Kismet: After loving Tahini Baby, this book extends that Californian flavor profile informed by the Mediterranean. I put enough tabs of things to try in this that after by three renewals of it, I will be buying it. Apparently there is a Kismet restaurant in LA, which features these vegetable forward dishes.

Let’s Make Dumplings: Is done in a wonderful pictorial comic book style which makes it an engaging read. I’m unlikely to make dumplings, since I need more kitchen gadgets than I want to invest in, but if dumplings are your thing, I think the illustrative way this book teaches you is ingenious, and should be more prevalent. I think this would be a good gift, maybe along with one of those steamer baskets.

Half Baked Harvest Quick and Cosy: This is the new comfort food cookbook from Tieghan Gerard (see her Instagram here with 5.5 million followers!), whose cookbooks I’ve enjoyed in the past. Sometimes her dishes are a bit over the top for us in terms of richness, and I don’t need bourbon added to stuff for example, but others of hers I’ve liked.

At Home in the Whole Foods Kitchen: This cookbook is a James Beard award winning vegetarian cookbook, that has a new anniversary edition published this year.  It is lovely, while a bit sophisticated, although healthy and yummy.

What cookbooks are you loving right now?

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