Almost from Scratch - 600 Recipes for the New Convenience Cuisine

Within a single week in 2009, food journalist Robin Mather found herself on the threshold of a divorce and laid off from her job at the Chicago Tribune. Forced into a radical life change, she returned to her native rural Michigan.
 
There she learned to live on a limited budget while remaining true to her culinary principles of eating well and as locally as possible. In The Feast Nearby, Mather chronicles her year-long project: preparing and consuming three home-cooked, totally seasonal, and local meals a day--all on forty dollars a week.
 
With insight and humor, Mather explores the confusion and needful compromises in eating locally. She examines why local often trumps organic, and wonders why the USDA recommends white bread, powdered milk, and instant orange drinks as part of its “low-cost” food budget program.
 
Through local eating, Mather forges connections with the farmers, vendors, and growers who provide her with sustenance. She becomes more closely attuned to the nuances of each season, inhabiting her little corner of the world more fully, and building a life richer than she imagined it could be.
 
The Feast Nearby celebrates small pleasures: home-roasted coffee, a pantry stocked with home-canned green beans and homemade preserves, and the contented clucking of laying hens in the backyard. Mather also draws on her rich culinary knowledge to present nearly one hundred seasonal recipes that are inspiring, enticing, and economical--cooking goals that don’t always overlap--such as Pickled Asparagus with Lemon, Tarragon, and Garlic; Cider-Braised Pork Loin with Apples and Onions; and Cardamom-Coffee Toffee Bars.
 
Mather’s poignant, reflective narrative shares encouraging advice for aspiring locavores everywhere, and combines the virtues of kitchen thrift with the pleasures of cooking--and eating--well.

Here's the ultimate of ultimates: nine hundred new recipes from Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, the authors of the Ultimate cookbook series. With a quarter million books already in print, their series has followed a simple recipe to success: Give cooks hundreds of solid, basic recipes with thousands of ways to vary them, shake them up, and personalize them so that everyone can be an ultimate cook!

With The Ultimate Cook Book, Weinstein and Scarbrough tackle everything from breakfast to barbecue, stir-fries to steaks, chilis to curries, and paellas to puddings. Pick your favorite, cook it as a solid basic, or vary it in hundreds of ways to make the dish your own. You've got years' worth of dishes and a world of cooking experiences ahead of you. What could be more fun?

Take chicken, that ubiquitous blank canvas. Roast a whole bird to perfection. Bake it under a salt crust for a dramatic presentation. Roast chicken halves atop winter squash. Prepare a Greek-style casserole with leeks, pine nuts, and raisins. Stuff chicken breasts with a Moroccan-inspired mixture of couscous and spices. There are more than thirty ideas for preparing boneless, skinless chicken breasts. And ten things to do with a leftover roast chicken or that rotisserie bird purchased on the way home. Get the idea?

This comprehensive, easy-to-use compendium is the ultimate in inspiration, the ultimate in possibilities. Start your Ultimate cookbook collection today-or round it out with The Ultimate Cook Book.

The Sony Alpha NEX-7: The Unofficial Quintessential Guide provides a wealth of experience-based information and insights for owners of this exciting new camera. Authors Carol F. Roullard and Brian Matsumoto team up to help the new user navigate past the confusion factor that often comes with complex and powerful camera equipment.

This book explores the features and capabilities of the camera in a way that far surpasses the user's manual. It guides you through the camera features with step-by-step setting adjustments and detailed how, when, and why explanations for each option. Every button, dial, switch, and menu configuration setting is explored in a friendly manner, with suggestions and tips for setup according to various shooting styles. The informative text is illustrated with screenshots and example images throughout, making it easy to follow along.

The authors cover everything from the basic features of the camera to numerous advanced photographic applications. The first section of the book teaches the new user to start taking pictures immediately by using the camera's Intelligent Automatic mode. The second section covers how to begin taking more control by switching to the semi-automatic modes. Finally, you'll learn to take full manual control of the camera, allowing you to break some "rules" and capture images that are a unique reflection of your creative personality.

Carol and Brian go beyond just the camera itself and share how third-party software and optional accessories can improve on the camera's standard commands. You'll even learn how the electronic viewfinder, the fixed mirror, and Sony's novel shutter design improve the camera's utility for critical scientific photography (i.e., photomicrography and photography through the telescope).

The Sony Alpha NEX-7: The Unofficial Quintessential Guide will allow you to really take control of your camera, to push the envelope, and to have fun.