July 2021 Cookbook Reviews

 

Seven Seasons on Stowel Lake Farm by Jennifer Lloyd, Elizabeth Young, Lisa Lloyd, and Haidee Hart

Stowel Lake Farm is an organic farm and retreat center located on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. The farm originally started as a family farm with Lisa Lloyd, her husband, and their three children. After the couple split up Lisa kept the farm and raised her children there. Because it was too much for one person to run, Lisa eventually opened up the farm to other families interested in learning to farm and it became more of a communal farm/home for several families. The book covers seven seasons on the farm - early spring, late spring, high summer, late summer, autumn, December, and deep winter. Each section has a few stories about that time of year or highlighting the role of one of the people currently living and working on the farm. Then there are several recipes for each season. I found lots of recipes I'd like to try. Plus, there is beautiful photography of the farm throughout the book. It's really a beautiful book that tells the story of this unique farm and the people and food it's producing.

Boards, Platters, Plates by Maria Zizka 

Snack boards are a big trend in food right now, but it's hard to really have enough recipes related to them to create a cookbook. This one gives the basics for creating a board in the Introduction, then also gives tips on creating cheese and charcuterie boards. Then the rest of the book is recipes/boards. Each board has a recipe or two for one of the components or a sauce for the board. I did like that each recipe includes a section for "store-bought components" that make creating the board a little easier. Overall, it's a pretty cookbook to look at for ideas for a snack board, but I didn't find a ton of recipes or boards I wanted to personally try or make.

Vegetable Simple by Eric Ripert

I love vegetables, so I was excited to check out this cookbook. But, there wasn't a lot of recipes I wanted to try. I also found it odd that a book about vegetables had the very first recipe using microwave popcorn. It's REALLY easy to make popcorn on the stovetop and it doesn't have all the chemicals, etc that microwave popcorn does. Overall, it was just OK. I think there are better vegetable-focused cookbooks out there.