holiday cooking | The Cheshire Library Blog

A library patron recently recommended a cookbook to me that brought back memories of Christmases past (without the ghosts!)

The book is Christmas Comfort Classics: A festive collection of warm and cozy comfort foods plus sweet ideas for sharing with family & friends.

A spiral-bound book with chapters titled with feel-good labels such as “Frosty Morning Breakfasts” and “Cozy Meals for Busy Days”, this cookbook delivers up such treats as Apricot-Almond Coffee Cake, Wonderful Winter Chowder, and Apple-Cranberry Bake. I got hungry just reading the titles. Each recipe is prefaced with a short tale from the contributor, reminiscing about a past holiday or family gathering and is followed by a holiday tip such as how to add holiday fragrance to a room or how to make your own tree ornaments.

There is one recipe, Connecticut Supper, that, being a Connecticut resident, immediately caught my eye. Ground beef, potatoes, and cheddar cheese plus cream of mushroom soup. It immediately conjured a kitchen warm with good scents, keeping the cold and dark winter night at bay.

It’s not all plain cooking, though! You can find recipes for Sour Cream Spaghetti, Warm Cranberry-Honey Brie, Crab-Stuffed Mushrooms, Port Wine Cranberry Dressing and more. Who says cozy can’t be special?

I’m not someone who adores cooking but this book has me interested in trying some of these recipes this winter. So thank you, dear library patron, for your recommendation. It’s going to make my holiday season.

No matter which holiday you celebrate, we have many holiday and cozy cookbooks on our shelves that can give you some great new ideas for your own celebration. Take a look:

Holiday Cookbooks

Comfort Food

Ree Drummond

Ree Drummond is an award-winning blogger, New York Times bestselling author, food writer, photographer, and television personality. She started out her life in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, later attended college in Los Angeles, CA., and now lives outside of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. She thought after having tasted the big city life in Los Angeles, she’d spend the rest of her life in a big city. She planned on attending law school in Chicago and was just about to move there when she fell in love with a cattle rancher and ended up right back in Oklahoma. She lives on a ranch with her husband and four children. You can read all about her life in her book, BlackHeels to Tractor Wheels – which, by the way, is expected to become a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

As a way to keep in touch with family and friends, she started a blog called ‘The PioneerWoman’. Little by little she added different topics, but when she added a section on cooking with photographs detailing how to make a dish, the blog took off and her cookbooks became wildly popular.

Her newest cookbook, The Pioneer Woman: A Year of Holidays, was released on October 29, 2013. It’s a collection of recipes, photos, and homespun humor to help you celebrate all through the year. There are menus for breakfasts, brunches, lunches, dinners, parties, deliveries, and feasts. All are accompanied by fun instructions and step-by-step photographs. It’s a creative and entertaining book to help you plan each holiday.

Her other cookbooks are: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier. She has also written several children’s books based on her bassett hound, Charlie. Charlie the Ranch Dog, Charlie the Ranch Dog: Charlie’s Snow Day, Charlie the Ranch Dog: Where’s the Bacon, Charlie Goes to School, and Charlie and the Christmas Kitty.

Her blog, ‘The Pioneer Woman’, is a lively, entertaining and informative account of her daily life as a ranch wife and mother. She also has a television show on the ‘Food Network’ called – The Pioneer Woman.

Come to the library to check out all her books!