Cooking the Cowboy Way: Recipes Inspired by Campfires, Chuck Wagons, and Ranch Kitchens Review

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(More customer reviews)If your looking for a cookbook, this is not the one. If your looking for entertaining reading and some nice pictures you will probably enjoy it. If your looking for some of Grady's tried and proven recipes, buy all of his other books. This one seems like an attempt to use his name to sell some books and stroke some of his friends back.

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Life in the saddle, on the trail, and in the outback has forged a style of living that cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears calls the Cowboy Way. It's a life where boots and hats are much more about function than fashion. It means that when you eat, drink, and breathe the tending of cattle, raising beef is not just some exercise where loss is charted on a spreadsheet. When your days are filled with the smells of fresh-cut hay and the creaking of worn leather, when you wake up with the sun and to the smell of coffee on the boil and biscuits from the chuck wagon, you are living the Cowboy Way.Because cowboys spend long days outdoors in every kind of weather, sometimes for weeks at a time, satiating a cowboy's hunger is a challenge for ranch cooks from Texas to Florida, north into Canada, and south of the border into Mexico. This collection of almost one hundred recipes is not only the result of Grady's journey across North America, but also the cowboy's journey through history.In Cooking the Cowboy Way, you'll have a ringside seat at the rodeo as Grady wrestles down new recipes from some incredible cowboy cooks and kitchen wranglers who know what hungry cow folks want to eat. And in the process, you'll be carried away by the magic of starry nights by the campfire and seduced by the heritage of the chuck wagon and ranch kitchens, where the menus are still stoked by the traditions of the Old West just as they have been for a century or more.

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Encarnación's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California, Selections from Encarnación Pinedo's El cocinero español (California Studies in Food and Culture) Review

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(More customer reviews)Until recent history, women rarely wrote their own stories for the history books, men did. This is especially true of the Hispanic women living in the lands after the Mexican war (1848). The Hispanics living in California and other territories that became the American Southwest were quickly defrauded of their land and civil rights. This cookbook begins with beautifully researched and sensitively written essays describing the social-political context within which Encarnacion penned her recipes. The recipes are as she wrote them in 1898. To cook them accurately presumes adequate knowledge of cooking. Cookbooks are more than a collection of recipes, they transmit culture. This book is necessary for any person deeply interested in the cultural context of California and Southwest cuisine. Before I read this book, I wondered how accurate or true to my experience it would be. My late grandmother, Catalina Maria Ortiz Acosta, was a woman from a prominent Hispanic family, and was born in Los Angeles in 1904. When I read this book I recognized the recipes from the meals and the style of food my grandmother had cooked. The history confirmed the stories she would tell me about the various political elite she knew. (Catalina Pico, the grand daughter of Pio Pico, the last Mexican Governor or Alta California was her godmother.) I highly recommend this book.

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The Southern Kitchen Garden: Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers Essential for the Southern Cook Review

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(More customer reviews)Anyone who is either new to food gardening in the South or has been unsuccessful in their previous attempts will appreciate this very useful new gardening book. Adams and LeRoy clearly explain the tricks to growing edibles from delicious veggies and fruits to fragrant herbs and flowers. Unlike many typical how-to books, this wisdom comes from the author's own hand-in-the-dirt experience, and it is beautifully illustrated with photographs sure to inspire the reader to create their own kitchen garden space. An excellant gift book that will be treasured for years.

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A kitchen garden, or potager, is a celebration of the seasons: brimming with vegetables, herbs, flowers, and even fruit trees, it's our link with nature and a source for fresh produce. The kitchen garden has always been an important part of life in the rural south, at times meaning the difference between being well-fed or going to bed hungry. In recent times, the kitchen garden has become fashionable, and now more and more homeowners (in cities, suburbs, as well as the country) are reaping the delicious rewards of growing their own food. A kitchen garden needs little more than a small raised bed, so an aspiring gardener with only a modest backyard will have plenty of room to get started. Have a sprawling yard and an appetitie for an agricultural adventure? The kitchen gardener can try his hand at some produce requiring a little more space: fruit trees, corn, or pumpkins. Starting with location and soil preparation (where most gardens thrive or fail), authors William D. Adams and Thomas R. LeRoy will take you ste-by-step into the world of the southern kitchen garden. Planting guides for each fruit and vegetable, useful information on propogation and pest-control, recipes scattered throughout, and Adams' own beautiful photography make The Southern Kitchen Garden truly essential reading for all gardeners ready to bring along their produce from seed to the supper table.

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Mexican Culinary Treasures: Recipes From Maria Elena's Kitchen (Hippocrene Cookbook Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)With so many Mexican cookbooks already on the market, how could yet another make its mark of distinction? Yet, Mexican Culinary Treasures: Recipes From Maria Elena's Kitchen does so with a flourish: Maria's extensive knowledge of her native country's foods lends to a survey of both traditional to newer, more cosmopolitan creations, form Mushroom Quesadillas to Stuffed Poblano Chiles in Walnut Sauce and Guajillo Chile Enchiladas. It's the cook seeking such a wide-ranging mix who will find Mexican Culinary Treasures especially inviting.


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In Mexican Culinary Treasures, Mexican native Maria Elena Cuervo-Lorens welcomes you into her kitchen. She takes you back to the Sundays of her childhood, spent around her grandmother's table; on a shopping expedition with her mother to Mercado La Merced; and for a merienda (snack) of café con leche and biscochos (sweet rolls) at a bakery in downtown Mexico City. Many of the recipes shared were handed down by her mother and grandmother; others were collected from favorite restaurants. The authentic recipes in Mexican Culinary Treasures include old favorites such as tacos, quesadillas, and enchiladas, as well as the nouvelle cuisine of cosmopolitan Mexico City: crepes filled with cuitlacoche, oysters with chipotle chile, and chicken in prune and red wine sauce. This beautifully written book brings Mexico's vivid, enticing flavors into your kitchen.

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A Cowboy in the Kitchen: Recipes from Reata and Texas West of the Pecos Review

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(More customer reviews)What a fantastic cookbook. I saw a copy at my parents' house, and I was charmed by the photos and design, so I hinted at a birthday gift selection. The parents obliged, and A COWBOY IN THE KITCHEN has become my favorite cookbook. I discovered that the terrific photos and graphics are only the tip of the iceberg -- the recipes are just fantastic. I have made probably 8 or 9 of them so far, and every one was a joy to make and even more of a joy to eat! In particular, the Spicy Tomato Soup with Sourdough Croutons has been a real hit with friends at dinner parties. The classic Chicken Fried Steak with Cream Gravy is simply divine. It's a great combination of old-timey, classic country comfort food and new-fangled, flavorsome delights. The classic Ranch Dressing and fancier Sherry Vinaigrette have become the standard salad dressings in my kitchen. I can't say enough good things about this book!

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Cookbook buyers and foodies the world over have come to count on Ten Speed to introduce exciting young chefs and up-and-coming cuisines. In the tradition of Mark Miller's COYOTE CAFE, ROY'S FEASTS FROM HAWAII, and CHARLIE TROTTER'S, we are proud to bring you a haute take on one of America's most traditional cuisines-that of the Texas ranch. But don't be thinking ribs, beans, and biscuits . . . . unless, of course, you're thinkin' South Texas Venison Ribs with Peanut Dipping Sauce, Black Bean Nachos with Chargrilled Chicken, and West Texas Biscuit Pudding with Southern Comfort en Glace. You see, at the Reata Restaurant in West Texas, hot new chef Grady Spears is cooking cowboy cuisine with an emphasis on the cuisine. Filled with fresh, strong flavors, fascinating ranch memorabilia (these Texans take their history seriously!), gorgeous full-color food photography, and truly marvelous, utterly real food, this is American cooking at its kick-off-your-boots-and-get-down-to-business greatest.

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The Texas Cowboy Kitchen Review

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(More customer reviews)I received this cookbook as a gift for this past Christmas, and have loved trying the different recipes. Most seem to have ingredients common to our home, and they aren't difficult if you can follow instructions. The stories are very interesting, and the photos make you want to cook the recipe that day. I hadn't heard of it prior to receiving it, and within 2 weeks have cooked 5 recipes, and planning on more. Main dishes, desserts, baked goods, all with a TexMex flare. My recommendation, is go ahead and buy it.

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Grady's probably the only guy I know who could dress up a Frito pie and make it look pretty, and the only cook who'd think of marinating skirt steak in Dr. Pepper. . . . [He is equally] at ease in a worn pair of leather chaps as he is wielding a saute pan." --Nolan Ryan, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher and lifelong cowboy* As at home on the coffee table as it is on the kitchen counter, this definitive cowboy cookbook features historical essays and photographs depicting life on the Chisholm Trail alongside recipes that reinvent cowboy cuisine.Cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears reinvents chuckwagon dishes from Barbecued Quail Tamales to Pork Tenderloin with Watermelon Salsa to Butterscotch Pie by elevating them to haute cowboy cuisine.* Equal parts cookbook, history lesson, and photographic essay, The Texas Cowboy Kitchen blends Spears's distinctive culinary recipes with June Naylor's narrative of life on the Chisholm Trail and Erwin E. Smith's award-winning black-and-white cowboy photography and four-color culinary shots.* Divided into 10 chapters ranging from "Campfire Cocktails" to "Things You Don't Rope" to "Chuckwagon Secrets," The Texas Cowboy Kitchen contains 100 original recipes perfected at Spears's renowned former restaurants, the Chisholm Club in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Nutt House Restaurant in Granbury, Texas-both of which satisfied wagonloads of hungry customers.

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The Summer Kitchen (Blue Sky Hill Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Once again, Lisa Wingate writes a beautiful story of everyday people, mixes in life lessons, wonderful quotes, and demonstrates that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
I often refer to her as the most inspirational writer of our time. I love how she always makes the reader think about others, and how the events happening in one's life will often change our outlook for the better.
This is a story about a successful Dr's wife that one day sees life through the eyes of seemingly forgotten children. With a loaf of bread, and some peanut butter and jelly, the people and the story are knit together beautifully. Excellent read.

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From the author of A Month of Summer, an inspiring new novel in the Blue Sky Hill series about one woman's effect on a struggling Dallas neighborhood. With her adopted son missing and the rest of her family increasingly estranged, Sandra Kaye Darden is drawn to the little pink house where her Uncle Poppy once provided security. What begins for Sandra as a simple painting project, meant to prepare the house for sale, becomes a secret venture that eventually changes everything. Cass Blue is having trouble keeping food on the table since she ditched foster care. When Sandra Kaye shows up with lunch one day, Cass has no way of knowing that the meeting will lead to the creation of a place of refuge that could reunite a divided community. In this moving story of second chances, two unlikely allies realize their ability to make a difference...and the power of what becomes known as the Summer Kitchen to nourish the soul.

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Notes from a Maine Kitchen: Seasonally Inspired Recipes Review

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(More customer reviews)"Notes From a Maine Kitchen: Seasonally Inspired Recipes" is both a seasonal sampler of fabulous Maine foods deliciously prepared and a series of thoughtful seasonal meditations from a creative food expert and a dedicated natural gourmet. Reflecting upon her choice to move to a remote farmhouse and live in Maine to experience "slow food" at one of its most celebrated sources, author Kathy Gunst helps readers remember some of the best good things about being alive, while ruefully acknowledging the occasional bumps and challenges along the way. Thus arises this seasonal sampler of Maine-inspired recipes. Month by month the tastes revolve, ever new, always tempting, always fresh. Here are recipes for Pan-Fried Cornmeal-Coated Maine Smelts in January, Triple Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Biscotti in February, Roasted Parsnips and Carrots with Maple Glaze in March, Linguine with Maine Clam Sauce, Ramps and Garlic in April, and of course, Best Blueberry Pie in July and Lobster Roll in August. The recipes are clearly written with ingredients listed first and standard measurements, with extra information and anecdotes about the food(s) in introductory notes and additional tips and trivia included in sidebars. At the end of the book are suggested menus, added resources, and a recipe index. "Notes From a Maine Kitchen" is a treat both to read and to sample the culinary delights of Maine.


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There's nothing better than settling into a nice, warm, home-cooked meal at the kitchen table. Kathy Gunst takes us into her own kitchen, introducing us to the flavors of fresh, seasonal Maine ingredients prepared in simple and inspiring ways. With essays conveying the mood of each month, Gunst gives readers a sense of Maine food and life. She follows each essay with a handful of recipes incorporating the seasonal ingredient or theme.

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