March 2018 Cookbooks

Healthyish by Lindsay Hunt

Lindsay Maitland Hunt's premise for this cookbook is to make it easier to make healthyish meals at home - whether you're new to cooking or just looking for some quick recipes to make when you get home from work at the end of the day. In her introduction she talks about getting home cooks to test her recipes to make sure they are clear and easy enough for ANYONE to make. The recipes are organized like many cookbooks by meal/type - breakfast, snacks, lunch, soup, vegetarian, etc. But I really liked that at the end she has a chapter called "go to components" which is everything from pickles and compound butters to stocks and sauces. Overall, a great cookbook if you're looking to lighten up your meals, but not compromise on flavor or variety. Definitely quite a few recipes I'd like to try!

A Baker's Year: twelve months of baking and living the simple life at Smoke Signals Bakery by Tara Jensen

This is a beautiful cookbook with lots of photographs and drawings, but it didn't seem to be geared toward the beginner baker. As another Goodreads reviewer said it seemed to be more geared toward a "granola homesteading type of family," and I agree. Tara Jensen is single and has simplified her life to be able to live by her baking and teaching alone - she isn't working another job and doesn't have responsibilities for any other humans. I'm not knocking her or what she's doing, but that's not everyone's lifestyle. I did like that each chapter focuses on what's going on with her bakery month by month. I liked her journal entry-type writings at the beginning of each chapter, but it did kind of leave you hanging at the end (even though that's not the focus of this book, I did want more of her story). Maybe later she'll write a memoir or something too. I would LOVE to bake my own bread, but right now I just don't have the time to devote to really learning or doing it every day/week/whatever. But, if you just want to dream of a life spent baking bread outside Asheville, this cookbook is beautiful.