The Eat Clean Cookbook by Tosca Reno is full of healthful, delicious recipes.  I enjoyed making many recipes in this cookbook, but there is one I return to again and again: Corn Muffins.  (Often I make it as cornbread in a loaf pan.)  Maybe it’s because I’m married to a southerner, but in our house, you can never have too much cornbread around.

Super Simple Corn Muffins by Tosca Reno

Dry Ingredients:
1 and 1/3 cups / 320 ml whole-wheat flour
1 1/3 cups / 320 ml cornmeal
1/3 cup / 80 ml skim milk powder
2 Tbsp / 30 ml Sucanat or rapadura sugar
2 tsp / 10 ml baking powder
2 tsp / 10 ml baking soda
1 tsp / 5 ml finely ground sea salt

Wet Ingredients:
½ cup / 120 ml unsweetened applesauce
2 cups / 480 ml skim milk, soured with 2 Tbsp / 30 ml lemon juice
2 Tbsp / 30 ml coconut oil, canola oil or melted butter
4 egg whites, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 425°F / 220°C. Line a muffin tin with unbleached paper liners.
2. Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.
3. Place wet ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and mix together well.
4. Add wet to dry ingredients and mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Do not over mix.
5. Fill each muffin cup 2/3 full. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until just golden on top.

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A cool thing about this cookbook is that Tosca Reno has some signature ingredient blends that she incorporates into several recipes.  Power Flour, for example, is a combination of various flours that can be used in place of regular or whole-wheat flours.  She also has a recipe for Eat Clean Cooking Spray to use in place of PAM or the like.

Thanks to Rechelle for sending me a review copy of this cookbook.  I’ll be using it for years to come.

Organic, Shaken and Stirred: Hip Highballs, Modern Martinis and Other Totally Green Cocktails is an awesome new collection of recipes by Paul Abercrombie, published by Harvard Common Press.

I had the pleasure of being asked to look at a copy of the book and give my take here on Smorgasbite- thanks Paul!

I enjoyed sampling several of the cocktail recipes -delicious- and I enjoyed drooling over the rest.  The photography is exquisite and the ingredients- muddled blackberries, fresh mint, crystalized ginger- are, shall we say, top shelf.  That said, not too many of the recipes can be made with ingredients just lying around the house (save you tropical island dwellers, perhaps) so it pays to plan and shop accordingly.  Meanwhile, while the book calls for organic spirits (rum, tequila, etc) – regular will do.

I’m happy to be able to share with you a recipe.

Coming in Hot!

In a cocktail shaker, muddle the strawberries, 3 of the jalapeno slivers, and the lemon juice until well mashed.  Add the tequila and agave nectar, and fill the shaker with ice cubes.  Shake vigorously, then strain the mixture into a chilled martini glass.  Garnish with the remaining jalapeno sliver.

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Lastly, Paul writes a great blog about all things cocktail at, you guessed it, organicshakenandstirred.com

We’ve all (likely) heard of The Moosewood Cookbook from the people at The Moosewood Restaurant, but how about The Moosewood Recipe Deck?

Moosewood Restaurant Farm Fresh Meals Deck: 5- Delicious Recipes for Every Season is a collection of 50 recipe cards that fit into the box.  They are divided by season, so each season’s recipes use produce and other ingredients appropriate to that time of year.  There is a mixture of main courses (pastas, casseroles, sandwiches), sides (soups, salads, vegetables) and desserts (cookies, pies, and puddings) for each season so that you can plan an entire menu very easily.

Another benefit to the cards is that you can throw one or three into your bag before heading to the store without being weighed down by a whole book.

I have tried several of the recipes from this deck and found them all to really highlight seasonal flavors and not use too many ingredients (a big plus in my book deck).

Thanks to Jessica for sending me a copy to review.

I had a small gathering of friends over on Friday night to watch some livestream of TED 2010 in Long Beach.

We decided on a potluck approach to the evening so, among other things, I whipped up a batch of some Honey-Oat Granola Bars from the Taste of Home Cookbook, Cooks Who Care edition (by the people who publish Taste of Home cooking magazine- free issue offer on the website).

This is a pretty new cookbook, and it’s enormous with over 1300 recipes in every category imaginable.  A person’s name and hometown is associated with each recipe, which gives me that all-fuzzy-inside feeling.  You know, if Marlys in Cincinnati loves this recipe, it must be good    I’ve noticed the ingredients tend to be budget-friendly and many of the recipes could likely be made with staples you already have in the pantry.

The Taste of Home Cookbook also features 21 heart-warming stories of people helping others through food-related efforts. The Cooks Who Care cookbook ed. celebrates the recipes and charitable acts performed by Cooks Who Care. The hope is that these stories and recipes will hopefully inspire others to make a difference in their communities.

I added a meyer lemon glaze to the top of mine to add a bit of festivity.

Honey-Oat Granola Bars with Meyer Lemon Glaze

Bars

1. In a large bowl, combine the oats, brown sugar, peanuts, chocolate chips and sunflower kernels. Stir in the butter, honey and vanilla until combined (mixture will be crumbly). Press into a greased parchment paper-lined 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan.

2. Bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes or until browned and bubbly. Cool for 15 minutes on a wire rack; cut into squares. Cool completely before removing from pan. Yield: 3 dozen.

Glaze

1. Place powdered sugar in a small bowl.  Squeeze lemon over bowl so juice pours into bowl, being careful to catch any seeds.  Whisk until combined and smooth.

2. Pour over honey-oat granola bars.

Thanks to Anjali for sending me this cookbook!

I was thrilled to be contacted by Julie offering a review copy of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

I’ll take a nutrition book over a spy or romance novel any day, and this one had me flipping the pages late into the night.

Dr. Colbin has sound science and nutrition to back her claim that our cultural fear of osteoporosis outweighs its prevalence and true threats, and that misinformation is commonplace when it comes to our bones.  That said, there is a lot we can be doing to protect our bones into old age, and it’s not just calcium (or even just calcium plus vitamin D plus magnesium plus dairy products plus dark leafy greens).  In fact, too much of these and other good things can backfire if they upset balances within our cells and bodies.

This book outlines what the correct balances are to strive for, and includes over 80 pages of recipes to provide us with the right blend of nutrients.  I’m retaining my belief in supplements, but I agree that whole foods are the most important component of dietary health.  I would highly recommend this book for anyone who worries when she sees the list of “warning signs of osteoporosis” (caucasian, check.  thin, check.  family history, check…).  Or anyone who worries she may be seeing a future version of herself in that commercial with Sally Field.  (Not that looking like Sally Field does at her age would be a bad thing, but I digress.)

Besides the theme of wafting bacon, these are the best food related passages I could come up with. For the record, In N Out is very nutritious. Have you ever eaten there?

1. After one particularly draining fourteen-mile death march, I lounged on my aunt’s deck, my body feeling heavy in the wooden chair as the high noon sun roasted me. My digestive system was in tatters, the result of efforts to replenish my nearly 2,000 burned calories by eating a breakfast fit for three, and continuously shoving fried eggs and toast, cereal and spoonfuls of peanut butter into my mouth.

2. That night, along with my parents and my younger siblings, I celebrated at The Cheesecake Factory with a decadent slice of sinfully-rich peanut butter swirl cheesecake. Thanks to my high mileage and fast metabolism, the calories would burn off in my sleep.

3. To cap off the night, my dad had driven me along with a carload of my teammates, to an In-N-Out Burger. At midnight, scores of paper-thin distance runners packed the famous burger joint, gorging on well-deserved “double-doubles”, the grease running down our chins.

4. Freshly showered, I pulled up to the Fight Club’s granite kitchen counter, unfolded the sports section, and sat down to my favorite breakfast: crunchy homemade peanut butter granola doused with fresh cream.

Doesn’t that make you hungry?  Doesn’t that make you want to not run ten miles?  Doesn’t that make you want to buy this fantastic book and/or meet Matt on his extensive book tour?

Kudos, Matt.

Well, haven’t I been a busy little reader lately? Or should I say busy little bee?

Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy describes the steps we need to take to restore backyard biodiversity and to keep plant and animal species from extinction.  There are colorful photographs on every page, many of bugs and plants.  Cute bugs and exotic plants!

There is a website that goes along with the book: www.PlantANative.com

This is helpful for those who don’t like books like to review online what they learned in the book.  There’s even an electronic map that makes suggestions on what to plant based on your geographic aone.  What’s more, the website has answers to tough questions.  (You know you want to check those out.)

Clean Body: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleaning Yourself by Michael Dejong is the perfect book for both the product-averse and the product-obsessed-whose-bathroom-cabinet-can-hold-no-more.

According to the book, 5 kitchen staples–in various combinations–can cleanse, moisturize, exfoliate all parts of our bodies:

1. Salt

2. White Vinegar

3. Lemon

4. Baking Soda

5. Olive Oil

I’m interested in trying some of his “recipes” for body scrubs and face masks.  I think I’ll stick with my usual shampoos, though!

I appreciate how Dejong keeps the book light and humorous– far from a militant, anti-consumerist rant, it makes me more willing to give his suggestions a whirl.

My long absence from Smorgasbite has been sad, but three happy things came in its place:

1. I got married.

2. I went on a lovely honeymoon to the Mayan Riviera.

3. I started and finished a book for the first time in a very, very [embarrassingly] long time.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Natural Home Remedies (Penguin) had been on my list for a while, and I brought it along to Mexico over others on the list (War and Peace, The End of Poverty) for its ease of reading on the beach with margarita in hand.  (Sadly, I couldn’t double fist since I had to hold the book.)

It turned out that this book was great honeymoon reading material for another reason, too.  Because we were looking forward to how our lives would be different as a married couple, and because he ended up reading this book too (Germs, Guns and Steel isn’t the most fun honeymoon read, it turns out), we decided on a few things based on what we read.

1. Make a ritual of drinking tea.

2. Don’t be afraid of taking herbs!

3. Get out of the rut of eating the same 5 vegetables.

What wild and crazy newlyweds we are.  Watch out New York!

Holidays inevitably involve a lot of talk about food, and much of it is guilt-ridden. “This is so bad for me,” “I really shouldn’t be eating this,” and on and on.

At these times I am reminded of what a different perspective I have than most people when it comes to what’s “good” and “bad” for us to eat.

Real Food by Nina Planck will likely convince you, as it did me, that bacon, butter, cream, beef, lard, and other animal fats can in fact be good for us…

…if they are organically/sustainably/humanely/locally raised and produced.

Indulgence by way of responsible consumerism. Works for me. (Yum, butter.)

Books (and book clubs) are great and all, but sometimes–during a busy subway commute or late at night– reading a full page of text (and then turning the page and doing it all over again) aggravates A.D.D. or exhaustion.

At these times, captions and blurbs of text are more manageable. Especially if they’re interspersed with pictures.

My first nomination for Book Club Lite: Gourmet Magazine. Fancy ingredients and innovative techniques, but straightforward recipes. And for people who’ve always preferred pictures to words: the photographs are BIG.

I’ve decided to make several of this month’s holiday recipes in advance, to give you a heads up in case you might want to use some of Gourmet’s recipes at your Thanksgiving table.

The Reach of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman follows The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef, neither of which I have read.  Thankfully, they were not prerequisites for understanding or enjoying The Reach of a Chef.

Thinking about food, cooking and restaurants through the eyes and minds of chefs was interesting and almost made me want to be a chef myself.  Even more, it made me want to eat at the restaurants at the best and most innovative chefs in the world.  Specifically, I am determined to make it to Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago.

So determined that I wrote a [fictional] poem for a contest on Eater to win tickets to an book/tasting event hosted by Achatz in New York on November 6.  I don’t know yet if I won.  And as far as I can tell, Eater is taking its (his? her?) sweet time in choosing a winner, and even in determining a deadline by which to choose a winner.

But I do have it written on my calendar.  I do, after all, enjoy contests.

There are two types of people: those who read books about food and those who don’t.

In my experience, nobody has anything against reading books about food, and the people who haven’t simply haven’t gotten around to it. And once you do read a book about food, you’re likely to read more. There’s something addictive to reading about recipes, where food comes from, and various food cultures.

I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, an autobiographical collection of stories and articles by Barbara Kingsolver, her husband, Steven L. Hopp, and her elder daughter, Camille Kingsolver.

It’s a wonderful starting point for the food-book-novice because it’s easy to relate to and entertaining. It provides condensed summaries of agricultural and dietary issues and gives practical tips for how we can all begin to eat a bit more ecologically and nutritiously. A corresponding website provides additional information and recipes.

My favorite character is the younger daughter, Lily, whose burgeoning chicken business reminded me (to an alarming degree) of my 9-year-old friendship-bracelet enterprise. And babysitting business. And school fundraiser coupon book sales.