No time to write, so you get a list

I've been reading a lot lately, but I don't have time to blog about it at the moment, so I'll just list the books I've read lately and blog about them later:

• Elizabeth Smart: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
• Northrop Frye: The Great Code
• Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism
• John Ayre: Northrop Frye
  
• Donna Hay: Off the Shelf
• Steven Pratt: Superfoods Rx
• Steven Pratt: Superfoods Healthstyle
• Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth

As you can see, most of the reading has been for my thesis, but when I've got time, I'll tell you about it. It's quite interesting.

Donna Hay- New Food Fast

Donna Hay is beyond fantastic, in so many ways. My mother tells this story of seeing her on CityLine (if you've ever lived in Toronto and watched TV in the morning or have a mother who did, you've seen this show), and she's on there, cooking and chatting up a storm, with a big rip in her sweater. Totally doesn't care. She's just a mom who wants to cook good food for her family that looks and tastes great, and that's exactly what her books and magazine are about.

This book, New Food Fast, is a godsend even for me, who only has one (albeit always very hungry) fiance to feed, and not two or three kids. Our deal is that I cook most nights and he does the dishes, and so although I sometimes find having to come up with the ideas for meals every night (this I mind more than the actual cooking of them), I don't have to do dishes, which I'm grateful for. But when I come home from work or school at 6:30, and Jonathan is already hungry, I need to find something that I make that is quick, tasty, and uses ingredients that I've already got. And in comes Donna Hay. The book is divided into chapters on meals that take about 10 minutes, about 20 minutes, and about 30 minutes. 10 minutes! How can you go wrong? And her ideas are delicious. How about Pasta with Smoked Salmon and Dill Sauce, Pasta with Scallops and Lemon Butter (drool), or Miso Soup with Chicken and Noodles? All in 10 minutes. None of her recipes has a ton of ingredients, they're all easy to make, and Hay is obviously as interested in variety and nutrition as she is in speed of preparation.

The other best thing about this book is the photography. Donna Hay has used the same food photographer for all of her books: Petrina Tinslay. Her photos are so gorgeous- fresh, colourful, simple, and absolutely delicious looking. I could just look at the photos and ignore the recipes and still think this book was a treat. I definitely need to work on building my collection of Donna Hay books, because one is definitely not enough.

Janet & Greta Podleski- Eat, Shrink & Be Merry

Janet & Greta Podleski have been publishing goofy cookbooks for over a decade now. Their first and second books, Looneyspoons and Crazyplates, are some of the best-selling Canadian books around (cookbook or otherwise). Their success comes from both their utter silliness, and the fact that their food actually tastes really good.

Each cookbook is filled with trivia about healthy eating, exercising, and the foods that are in each recipe. All of the recipes have dorky, punning titles like "Wowie Maui Chicken" (pineapple chicken), "Britney's Spears" (roasted asparagus) and "A Bundt in the Oven" (blueberry coffee cake) that are accompanied by hilarious cartoons. I've made a number of the recipes from this book, and they've all turned out really well. "Mashed Fauxtatoes" are really good- whipped cauliflower that looks & tastes like mashed potatoes. I'm going for "The Grill of My Dreams" (barbecued pork tenderloin) and "No Way Jose!" (Mexican lasagne) next. Janet & Greta (who are now a trained chef and a trained nutritionist, which they weren't when they started writing cookbooks) really try to make sure that their recipes are healthy, full of fruits & veggies and whole grains, and great tasting. It works. I love their "Crazyplates" frozen meals too. Way better than Hamburger Helper, that's for sure.

I know a lot of people are nervous about cooking, but this book is incredibly simple, and fun to read (which is the reason that it is included in a reading blog!) I flip through it just for fun, not even when I'm worrying about what the heck to cook for dinner the millionth night in a row. Yes, the goofy titles sometimes drive me crazy, but the food is good, and what more can you ask for?