Mushroom Hunting Season

Don't be fooled, know your edible Mushrooms. The library has many excellent titles available for checkout (just don't leave the book behind on the forest floor!)

Click here for a listing of titles available in our catalog.

Holiday Reading

For our patrons who celebrate things other than Christmas this time of year, here are a few titles that might be of interest to you:

Eight Tales for Eight Nights: stories for Chanukah by Peninnah Schram offers eight traditional tales from around the world that introduce the customs and meanings of Chanukah.


Andrea Carneiro's Jewish Cooking Boot Camp: the modern girl's guide to cooking like a Jewish grandmother, includes over 50 easy-to-follow recipes for such classic dishes as Honey Cake, Rugelach, and Matzo Balls, background on Jewish holidays putting food and tradition into context, interviews with rabbis about creating modern traditions, and tips from Jewish bartenders and party planners.


Inviting God: celebrating the soul meaning of the Jewish holidays, by David Aaron, provides insight into the reasons why we celebrate.

Kwanzaa from holiday to everyday: a complete guide for making Kwanzaa a part of your life, by Maitefa Angaza is a guide to how Kwanzaa, a winter celebration of family, friends, and the African American community, can be part of life all year round. It provides information on the seven principles and offers ideas for planning Kwanzaa gatherings.

Eric Copage's, Kwanzaa: An African-American Celebration of Culture and Cooking, is a complete guide to the history and foods of Kwanzaa. In addition to 125 recipes, it also includes folktales that illustrate each of the seven principles of the celebration.

Happy holidays, and happy reading!

Fellow Food Geeks, Rejoice

Alton Brown, food network star and author, has left the building... well, network but not before writing the final installation in his Good Eats series. Entitled, Good Eats 3: The Later Years, Mr. Brown again offers his recipes in a format that is part graphic novel, part encyclopedia, feeding both body and mind.

Chanterelle Foraging Season

The fall rains have begun and that means chanterelle foraging!

To help get you started check out these books:

Mushrooms, wild and edible : a seasonal guide to the most easily recognized mushrooms by Vincent J. Marteka

All that the rain promises and more : a hip pocket guide to western mushrooms by David Arora

The complete book of mushrooms by Augusto Rinaldi

Edible wild mushrooms of North America : a field-to-kitchen guide by David W. Fischer

Mushrooms of Northwest North America by Helen M.E. Schalkwyk

I scream, you scream, we all scream...

Today is National Ice Cream Day and, if you are like me, a little mid-summer inclement weather is not going to deter you from enjoying this frozen delight. If you are are inclined to make your own, here are a couple of titles to help you get started:



Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream written by Jeni Britton Bauer is a collection of over 100 recipes including Salty Caramel, Lavender, and Queen City Cayenne.




And who can forget our old friends Ben and Jerry who serve up the recipes for their classics like Cherry Garcia as well as a simple but delicious French Vanilla in their book Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Book by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

Farmers' Markets

If you're interested in farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area (or any place in the United States) this is the website to check out. Listing resources as to where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats and many other items, this site also includes an online store where you can purchase a myriad of products including chocolate and desserts, farm crafts, flowers, herbs, pet needs, gifts and much more. An events calender lists festivals, tours, workshops, field days, courses and many other kinds of food and farming related events throughout the United States. Going on a road trip this summer? Why not plan your trip with a visit to a farm or farmers' market on your way!

Foodies and Reading

Memiors and biographies of chefs and cooking are so popular these days!  Blood, Bones and Butter; the inadvertent education of a relucantant chef  by Gabrielle Hamilton and Life, on the Line: a chef's story of chasing greatness, facing death, and redefining the way we eat by Grant Achatz are two recent and popular titles.  Here are a couple of older titles that may also be of interest.

Never Eat Your Heart Out by Judith Moore

Nobody Know the Truffles I've Seen by George Lang

Stand Facing the Stove: the story of the women who gave America the Joy of Cooking by Anne Mendelson

New Federal Dietary Guidelines Released

You may have heard that the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services jointly released the new 2010 dietary guidelines last week. If you would like to take a look at the full text of the 2010 guidelines, click the link below:

http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines

Happy healthy eating!

while visions of sugar plums dance in your heads...

Just in time for the holidays, Chuck Williams, founder of Williams-Sonoma, and former Bon Appetit food editor, Kristin Kidd have released Williams-Sonoma Cooking at Home. This wonderful, encyclopedic cookbook features over 1000 timeless recipes with simple, straight-forward techniques for the home cook.


Also new this season, Amanda Hesser's The Essential New York Times Cook Book offers a compilation of recipes published by the paper since it started covering food in the 1850s. The book is a stellar collection more than 1400 recipes.

Season's Greetings and happy eating!

Visual feast

During this season of holiday feasting, here is one meal that doesn't pack any calories. Author, photographer, and multimedia artist Douglas Gayeton presents a visual journey through Tuscany highlighting it's people and their food traditions in his book, Slow: Life in a Tuscan town. Beautiful, sepia-toned photography coupled with a handwritten narrative of the journey are indeed a feast for the eyes.

Comfort Cooking

This is the time of year when I love to pull out my recipe books and find that perfect dish for a cold fall meal. As the buyer of all the cookbooks for the Beaverton City Library, I have the fun job of selecting titles that I think will be popular with our customers. One of my favorites this year is Perfect One-Dish Dinners: All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers by Pam Anderson. The recipes are not intimating and she covers a variety of dishes including stews, casseroles, roasting-pan dinners, summer salads and grilled platters. Last night I made the Salsa Verde Chicken with Herbed Cornmeal Dumplings. It was definitely a keeper!!

Pass the salt, please

Much more than just a table seasoning, salt has a rich and fascinating history. Author Mark Kurlanskey unfolds the history of this important mineral that has provoked wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions in his book Salt: A World History.

Continue your education on this vital nutrient with the help of author and local selmelier, Mark Bitterman. In Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes, Bitterman profiles 80 varieties of artisinal salt in addition to providing reference information on 150 salts. The book also includes a chapter on cooking with salt.

Seasonal Cookbooks

Winter can sometime seem like the most challenging time to cook healthy and interesting meals. Farmer's markets close for the season and there are less choices of local fruits and vegetables in the grocery stores. Here are two cookbooks that offer winter recipes that are healthy and simple. Each one is divided into sections for each season for easy reference.

Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express-404 Inspired Seasonal Dishes You Can Make In 20 Minutes or Less has simple recipes with few ingredients but plenty of flavor. The author writes a food column for the New York Times.

Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source by Terry Walters is a great resource for easy, delicious seasonal eating.

Mushroom Season

Don't be fooled, know your edible Mushrooms. The library has many excellent titles available for checkout (just don't leave the book behind on the forest floor!)

Click here for a listing of titles available in our catalog.

So Many Green Tomatoes...

If you grow tomatoes, your garden is probably full of green tomatoes right now. What to do with all that unripened bounty and for that matter, the ripened bounty, too? One answer is preserving. It may sound intimidating but it is worth conquering your fears to eat yummy, local foods throughout the winter. Here are a couple of books to help you get started.







Canning and Preserving for Dummies is a quick and simple guide to the basics of canning and preserving. It uses clear language to explain these easy processes which will preserve this year's harvest. It also includes numerous recipes for jams, jellies, pickles, etc. A great beginner's guide!












Once you've gotten the hang of preserving, check out The Art of Preserving: Sweet and Savory Recipes To Enjoy Seasonal Produce Year Round. This is a mouth watering collection of preserving recipes from Williams Sonoma. It includes a delicious recipe for pickled green tomatoes. Happy preserving!

How to get your kids to eat healthy!

With the statistics for childhood obesity indicating that the percentage of overweight children in the United States is growing at an alarming rate, any help that parents can get in setting up healthy eating habits for their children could not come too soon.




According to a report released in 2009 that was based on 2007 data from the National Survey of Children's Health, from the Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1 out of very 3 children in the United States is either obese or overweight, and that figure increases for African-American and Hispanic children.




Many kids are spending less time exercising and more time in front of the TV, computer, or video-game console. And today's busy families have fewer free moments to prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals. From fast food to electronics, quick and easy is the reality for many people in the new millennium.




Preventing kids from becoming overweight means adapting the way your family eats and exercises, and how you spend time together. Helping kids lead healthy lifestyles begins with parents who lead by example.




Hopefully the books listed below will offer some suggestions to those who may be having trouble getting your kids to eat healthy.







Food fights: winning the nutritional challenges of parenthood armed with insight, humor, and a bottle of ketchup.





By Jana, Laura A. (Washington, D.C.: American Academy of Pediatrics, 2007.) 649.3 Jan



To find this book, just click here.






Just two more bites! : helping picky eaters say "yes" to food.



By Piette, Linda D. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006.) 649.3 Pie







To find this book, just click here







What should I feed my kids? : how to keep your children healthy by teaching them to eat right.



By Julien, Ronnie Litz. (New Jersey: New Page Books, 2006.) 613.2083 Jul




To find this book, just click here.













Winning the food fight : how to introduce variety into your child's diet.


By Rigal, Natalie. (Rochester, VT.": Healing Arts Press, 2006.) 649.3 Rig


To find this book, click here.

Get Cooking with Your Library Card!

Check out the database of the month!

Indulge yourself and your loved ones with new recipes from some of the country's best food industry and nutrition magazines including Bon Appetit, Real Simple, Sunset, Redbook, Essence, Good Housekeeping, and Vegetarian Times. The Culinary Arts Collection presents general interest magazines, academic and trade journals, books, and news about food, entertaining, and wine.
A search on Thanksgiving recipes brings up lots of recipes and ideas for holiday celebrations.

Check out the Culinary Arts Collection with your WCCLS library card handy.

This is just one of many databases available to you with your library card.

Let's Get Healthy

2009 is here and so is the chance for all of us to get healthy. It doesn't matter what we attempted to do last year and didn't accomplish. Remember the famous words of the character Scarlett O'Hara from the book Gone With the Wind: "Tomorrow is another day." Well that day is here and it is ours.

The following books will assist us in getting the information we need to select the right foods and recipes to help us get healthy.

The Beauty Diet: looking great has never been so delicious! by Lisa Drayer.

McGraw-Hill, 2009.

According to nationallyknown nutritionist Lisa Drayer, it's not what you put on your body, but what you put in your body that makes you beautiful. Her book reveals her top 10 beauty foods. Her easy-to-follow program offers a four-week meal plan with more than 100 recipes.

Check our catalog for this title.

ChefMD's big book of culinary medicine: a food lover's road map to losing weight, preventing disease, and getting really healthy. by John La Puma and Rebecca Powell Marx. Crown Publishers, 2008.

Dr. La Puma, renowned physician and professionally trained chef, offers a step-by-step eight week plan to motivate you and help you change your life by teaching you how to eat the right food so your "inner doctor" can do its work.

Check our catalog for this title.

Techniques of healthy cooking. by The Culinary Institute of America.

John Wiley, 2008.

Created by the experts at The Culinary Institute of America, this title is an indispensable companion in today’s health-conscious world. Drawing on the latest dietary guidelines, it provides detailed information for cooks eager to introduce more flavorful, healthier choices to their menus. Nearly 150 vibrant, all-new color photographs showcase finished dishes and illustrate the techniques, ingredients, and equipment of healthy cooking.

Check our catalog for this title.