Finding The Right Chef

Spencer and I like to use the library a lot. We check out DVD's, I track down music, we read comics, fiction, non-fiction. We I get to thinking I need to know more about a hobby I might try out, how to care for finches or look up some weird history about Utah, I'll be at the library. And most often, we love to check out recipe books. (Ok, maybe comics and DVD's beat out how often we check out recipe books, but it's a close competition.)

We'll browse the titles, and pick out a few recipes, try them out, make some edits, maybe copy the page if we like it enough. And there are some authors that we love the most, namely Jamie Oliver "The Naked Chef," Sam Stern, who's kind of like the 16 year old version of Jamie Oliver and Charlie Ayers, who was hired to be like a personal-ish chef for the Google staff for many years.

The time has come, I think that Spencer and I have found a good round of books that fit our lifestyle and ought to be made permanent resources in our home. And I've realized that all this time we've watched the Food Network, browsed recipe books, and watched what our grocery budget goes to, it's all been adding up to the time we start having a somewhat basic recipe books of our own to shape our everyday diets. And these three authors cater to us the most.

I should mention Alton Brown. We love him. But more than love his recipes, I think we mostly treat him as the ultimate authority on how to cook what and why. I recommend you seek out anything with his name on it too.

Here's the round-up, the books we've gotten the best results from, are doable and make us realize we have more control we eat than we think and what we just all-around find the most useful:

+Anything by The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver

+Sam Stern, who caters to my minimalistic, adolescent (but still so good) attitudes

+Charlie Ayers, who can make tasty food work for you

+Alton Brown, Food and Cooking Expert

+and recently, Anything by Martha Stewart, who has never yet led me astray while baking (this suggestion is mine alone since I'm the one who usually bakes out of the two of us).

So I suggest you look these people up, check out their books, try their recipes, listen to what they have to say about food and enjoy cooking. Like Robert Rodriguez said in one of his 10-minute cooking lessons on his DVD bonus features, you have to eat everyday, so why not make it something you love? Or something like that.

Until next time!~