The Decade's Healthiest and Unhealthiest Cookbooks
The Washington, DC, non-profit health organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine released a report on the healthiest and unhealthiest cookbooks of the decade last week. The five “best” books: The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone (Rodale), Skinny Bitch in the Kitch: Kick-Ass Recipes for Hungry Girls Who Want to Stop Cooking Crap (and Start Looking Hot!) by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin (Running Press), The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen (Morrow), The Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn (Wellness Central), and Cooking the Whole Foods Way by Christina Pirello (HP Trade). Of course, it’s the “worst” cookbooks that seem to have gotten more people talking: Paula Deen’s Kitchen Classics by Paula Deen (Random), Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 13th edition by Julia Child (Knopf), Grilling for Life by Bobby Flay (Scribner), Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook: Celebrating the Promise (Wiley) and Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore by Jennifer McLagan (Morrow).
Nine Cookbooks in Saveur Readers’ Top 100
The January/February issue of Saveur lists 100 foods, drinks, people, places, and things readers love. And nine cookbooks made it onto the list. Listed among Trader Joe’s lime and chili cashews, malbec wines, and wild chanterelles are: Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz (Penguin, 1985), The Olive and the Caper by Susanna Hoffman (Workman, 2004), Mrs. Wilkes’ Boardinghouse Cookbook (Ten Speed, 2001), A Platter of Figs by David Tanis (Workman, 2008), The New York Times International Cookbook by Craig Claiborne (Harper & Row, 1971), Everyday Harumi by Harumi Kurihara (Conran Octopus, 2009), The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pépin (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), Joy of Cooking (specifically pages 1072 and 1073, where the seventh edition features the Tables of Equivalents and Conversions), and Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon (NewTrends, 2001).
Woman’s Day and Vook Launch ‘Woman’s Day Cookvook: Healthy Food for Everyday Living’
Hachette has launched a "cookvook” under the Woman’s Day brand in partnership with Vook, maker of hybrid text-video books. Woman’s Day Cookvook: Healthy Food for Everyday Living includes recipes from the Woman’s Day test kitchen and 45 videos, and is priced at $9.99. The cookvook can be purchased for use online or downloaded from the iTunes App store. Recipes come from the hardcover Woman’s Day Cookbook for Healthy Living (Filipacchi Publishing).
Lebovitz on E-Cookbooks
Earlier this month, pastry chef and cookbook author David Lebovitz posted a piece on his blog about e-cookbooks, with a rundown of various e-readers, iPhone apps, and other ways of accessing cookbook content digitally that are already on the market or coming out in the near future. Most interesting are the 100-plus comments the piece generated, ranging from praises of the Kindle to “my high tech method of taping a printed copy of a recipe at eye level on a cabinet door has always worked best for me.”
This story originally appeared in Cooking the Books, PW's e-newsletter for cookbooks.
