“Versatility is the taco’s biggest asset,” writes Kaloper (Pizza Night) in this playful compendium of classic and unexpected taco options. It opens with recipes for homemade corn and flour tortillas—neither of which, notably, require a tortilla press—and “classic taco accoutrements,” starting with basic preparation styles for beans and rice followed by various salsas. The rest of the book offers streamlined but appealing taco ideas presented without any introductions but accompanied by appetizing photos and serving suggestions. The lobster tail tacos with lime chilli butter, for example, are recommended with mango salsa, habanero hot sauce, and cilantro. Each section—from vegetarian to beef and lamb options—contains both traditional fare, including Mexican street corn tacos, chicken tinga, carnitas, and carne asada, alongside inventive fusion pairings, such as haloumi with pomegranate salsa, chilli dukkah, and tahini yogurt sauce, and spicy Italian salsa with burrata and salsa verde. Breakfast offerings include a chorizo, potato, and fried egg taco while other recipes riff on casual American fare (bacon-wrapped hot dogs served in tortillas with chipotle mayo; a taco take on chipotle double cheese smash burgers). Purists may balk, but those willing to have some fun and expand their taco horizons will find plenty to enjoy. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Enston’s colorful and heartfelt debut celebrates and illuminates Caribbean cuisine by focusing on 11 “key ingredients” central to the region: beans, calabaza, cassava, chayote, coconut, cornmeal, okra, plantains, rice, salted cod, and Scotch bonnet peppers. Recipes span countries, especially pulling from Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic, with amiable introductions reflecting Enston’s Trinidadian roots and personal connections to the dishes. Noting that the Caribbean is a “delightful, complicated, layered place where pain and joy live side by side,” Enston offers thoughtful historic tidbits throughout: salted cod came to the region as a source of protein on slave ships, while split pea fritters were brought to Trinidad and Tobago by indentured servants from India. Calabaza is used to make Soup Joumou, or Freedom Soup, to commemorate Haiti’s Independence Day, and cassava is featured in a flatbread that “has been around since about 2000 BCE” and is made across the Caribbean. Trinidadian fried okra is sure to convert “slime haters to the okra cause,” while scotch bonnets spice up mango salad, jerk chicken, and shrimp. Handy tips on buying, cooking, and storing ingredients include instructions for making coconut milk to use in coconut pudding. Home cooks are sure to be inspired. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this wistful coffee-table book, photographer Abbott (Family Field Trip) profiles individuals who left the city for the country. Exploring how newcomers can contribute to their adopted hometown while preserving its character, Abbott describes how a mother of three relocated from Asheville, N.C., to Spring Green, Wisc., and opened a restaurant with an eye toward boosting the local economy (all the eatery’s banking, insurance, and food vendor contracts are with local businesses), and how an artist couple moved from Dallas to Marfa, Tex., and converted an old church into an art gallery. The profiles play up the charms of small-town life (“I’ve talked to more of our neighbors... than I have in all of my years in San Francisco,” a graphic designer remarks on moving to Athens, N.Y.), even as Abbott remains clear-eyed about the drawbacks, noting, for example, that schools and other public services are often chronically underfunded. Prescriptive sidebars on how to be a good neighbor place a welcome emphasis on community, suggesting newcomers might volunteer at a food pantry or fundraise for local schools by organizing a bingo night. Extensive photos of rustic storefronts, local art, and serene natural vistas will appeal to city dwellers who dream of the pastoral life but aren’t quite ready to take the plunge. It’s an idyllic celebration of the rural life. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

“A little planning goes a long way toward a satisfying weekly meal plan,” promises Jaggers in this helpful workbook, the fourth in the Ultimate for One series (after The Ultimate Mediterranean Diet Cooking for One Cookbook). In an informative introduction, Jaggers encourages readers to think through their meals for the week in advance to save both money and time and reduce food waste, and offers eight sample weekly meal plans, complete with shopping lists. Recipes yield either one or two servings, with some suggested meal plans including scheduled leftovers for later in the week. Dishes are sorted into breakfast fare (including loaded avocado toast with smoked salmon); snacks (almond and date energy bites); salads, soups, and sides (a single-serving take on a seven layer salad); vegetarian mains (couscous stuffed zucchini); seafood (lobster thermidor for one); meat dishes (beef chili, the leftovers of which can be stored in the freezer for a month); and desserts (single-serving berry crumble). Jaggers notes when recipes call for overlapping ingredients to help home cooks plan ahead (both cranberry brie mini tarts and cranberry turkey meatballs call for cranberry sauce, for example) and provides both nutritional information and helpful sidebars on storing, freezing, and reheating items. This is sure to come in handy. (July)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

This standout debut primer from textile artist Lee shows how to hand sew bojagi, or traditional Korean cloths “used to wrap, cover, carry, or store objects.” She explains that some of the earliest bojagi were created by the Buddhist monk Iryeon (1206–1289) to record legends and fairy tales, and that the textiles were “one of the few creative outlets” permitted women under the “rigid and strict Confucian society of the Joseon Dynasty.” Surveying different types of bojagi, she notes that nubibo is a quilted variant often used for keeping food warm, and yemulbo serves as gift wrap for wedding presents. An overview of sewing basics shows how to make running, back, and whip stitches, as well as flat-felled, open, and triple stitch seams. Bojagi was traditionally made with recycled fabric scraps, a history that comes through in the patchwork style of the projects, which include a place mat, a tote bag, a pincushion resembling a plum blossom, window coverings featuring interlocking rectangles of various sizes, and a yeouijumun (or jewel-shaped patterned) brooch. While a few projects, such as the flower-shaped pouch, are relatively easy, most will be a bit complex for beginners. Nevertheless, experienced stitchers will have no problem following Lee’s straightforward instructions, and the unusually rich historical background will deepen readers’ appreciation of the craft. The result is a first-rate sewing manual. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this compassionate manual, therapist Harwood (Securely Attached) explains how parents can use attachment theory to bond with their children. How someone is raised determines which of four relationship styles one forms in adulthood, Harwood explains, noting that secure attachment is the ideal and that it follows from a caregiver’s ability to connect with and help regulate the emotions of their child. Expounding on how to form secure bonds, Harwood warns against issuing dictates and instead urges parents to work with children to understand why they might be resisting a request and come up with a mutually satisfying solution. To help children cope with their emotions, Harwood recommends that parents identify their child’s feeling for them, encourage them to “let the emotions out (cry, usually, but also growl or huff),” and then close with a hug. Though Harwood includes a few tips for teens, the balance of the advice will be most applicable for younger children. Useful scripts show how parents can support kids while encouraging them to get outside their comfort zone (“You’ve got this, kid, but if something else happens and you need my help, I am a phone call away”), and Harwood brings a welcome recognition that even in the most loving families, “every parent and child is destined to have seasons of strife and struggle.” Parents of all stripes will want to check this out. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Senapathy, a science journalist and parent of two, presents an underwhelming exploration of how left-leaning parents can raise their children in ways that reflect their values. Senapathy is at their best when examining how social inequities taint traditional parenting guidance. For instance, they contend that breastfeeding’s benefits are often overstated because scientific research on the subject fails to account for the fact that breastfeeding study participants are usually wealthier and better able to afford quality healthcare than their formula-using peers, making it appear that their children’s superior health outcomes are due to breastfeeding when in actuality they reflect breastfeeding parents’ greater resources. Unfortunately, most of the book is devoted to lengthy defenses of progressive stances, crowding out the scant parenting advice. A chapter on race thoroughly debunks the notion that it has any biological basis, but suggestions to “take any opportunity to undermine race in our parenting” and “share power by setting an example” are too vague to be helpful. Parenting barely factors into Senapathy’s measured discussion of nuclear energy’s benefits and condemnation of corporate greenwashing, which concludes with familiar recommendations to recycle and eat less meat. There’s disappointingly little practical guidance, and progressive readers likely already agree with the positions Senapathy spends most of the volume defending. Despite good intentions, this falls short. Agent: Chris Bucci, Aevitas Creative Management. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Scottish music executive McGee debuts with a colorful chronicle of his years helming the record label Creation, an incubator of 1980s and ’90s indie rock. While growing up in a rough corner of Glasgow in the 1960s and ’70s, McGee became obsessed with music. In 1980, he joined the band Newspeak (later known as the Laughing Apple), with whom he soon moved to London. After learning the ropes of record production and distribution and realizing that “maybe I was better at being a manager, a hustler, and an organiser than actually being in a band,” he founded Creation in 1983. The label released singles by such bands as the Legend, before achieving a breakout success with the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Upside Down” in 1984. Later, Creation nurtured the careers of My Bloody Valentine and Oasis, resulting in a shift to a more “corporate, mainstream indie” identity, which McGee felt deviated from their “maverick” ethos and led him to shutter the record company in 1999. In energetic prose, McGee vividly recalls producing My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, which “nearly bankrupted us” thanks to front man Kevin Shields’s exacting artistic vision; the “delicate balancing act” of collaborating with flighty artists while cutting fair deals; and the highs of shaping the sound of some of the era’s most notable indie bands. The result is a riveting behind-the-scenes peek into a formative era of rock music. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Rosenstrach, who confesses to eating the occasional burger but stays strictly vegetarian Monday through Friday, stresses speed and convenience in this streamlined follow-up to The Weekday Vegetarians. An introduction, filled with meandering albeit amusing stories about texts from the author’s college student daughters asking for culinary advice, includes a list of 12 “store-bought saviors” such as pesto, jarred marinara sauce, and garlic salt. Bean empanadas are made with frozen dough, as are sheet pan pizza and a puff pastry tomato tart with blue cheese. The tone is chatty, and the recipes are familiar but easy to follow, with a focus on getting dinner on the table. A section on “cozy comfort food” features soup with curry paste and tofu; salad offerings include kale with black beans and queso, and cabbage with crunchy chickpeas; among the no-fuss skillet and sheet pan dinners are roasted leeks topped with runny poached eggs and gooey beans ’n’ cheese; and hearty pasta dishes include cheesy white lasagna with frozen peas. These basic recipes never intimidate, making this ideal for the novice cook who aspires to eat less meat. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Weymar—who in 2018 started the Tiny Pricks Project, which collects left-leaning, politically charged fabric art—debuts with a distinctive compendium in which activists reflect on art’s role in their work. The strongest entries highlight how fabric art can contribute to activism. For instance, Jayna Zweiman discusses her Welcome Blanket Project, for which contributors submit handcrafted blankets along with their family’s immigration story; the pieces and stories are briefly exhibited and then donated to refugee organizations. Other selections are authored by individuals whose words Weymar has embroidered for Tiny Pricks, such as memoirist Suleika Jaouad, who recounts her unsuccessful campaign to stop the 2021 execution of an imprisoned man she had become pen pals with. There are a handful of projects—including instructions for creating a “social justice banner” and a recipe for vulva-shaped chocolates from chef Lagusta Yearwood, which are meant to express outrage over the erosion of women’s bodily autonomy—but the focus is on activist profiles. Oddly, some have no apparent connection to crafting; for example, Tanya Selvaratnam’s account of collecting house plants to cope with emotions stirred up by writing a memoir about growing up around domestic violence feels out of place. Nonetheless, progressive crafters will be galvanized by this celebration of homespun resistance. Agent: Meg Thompson, Thompson Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink