HURRAY--MORE COOKBOOKS!

Our library had a cookbook exchange last week. They had

people bring in our old cookbooks and for every book

you brought in you could pick out another from the ones

that other people brought in. What a great idea! They also

had a lot of cookbooks out that were from previous book

sales, so there was actually quite a bit to choose from.

I brought in 10 of my cookbooks and picked out 9 to

bring home. I have already made 2 of the recipes and

really liked them both. The Colonial Cookbook in the

bottom left corner is pretty neat, with old fashioned

measurements. I wanted it because I am really trying

to learn to cook even more from scratch with as few

"special" ingredients as possible. To me a special

ingredient is anything that doesn't preside in my

cupboard, refrigerator or freezer at all times.

The recipe I made was called Bubble & Squeak.

The only ingredients were green cabbage, a bit of

bacon, potatoes, garlic, salt & pepper. Now that's

what I call simple! It was really good and total

cook time was maybe 30 minutes. You don't

get much more basic than cabbage & potatoes.

I am looking forward to reading more about pressure 

cooking too. My sister gave me a pressure cooker and I 

know it can really cut down on cooking time and also 

preserves a lot of the nutrition in food. And the Thai book? 

Oh my word I could eat Thai food everyday and the 

ingredients are simple and very good for you.

The library also had demonstrations from different people

going on while we were looking through the books. That 

was such a great idea. How often do you get to ask a

professional chef any questions you have about cooking?

The first demonstration was by the chef of a local very

nice restaurant. He showed us how to professionally

cut up a whole chicken into parts. I liked the fact that

he was up on prices and pointed out that buying a

whole chicken is much cheaper than buying one

already cut up. He also demonstrated how to cut

up beef tenderloin into steaks. I think he said it

the piece he was cutting was $11.69 a pound and he 

got 8 Filet Mignon steaks from it. His restaurant 

charges $34.00 a plate for for those steaks. Like

he said, you can pay me or buy this yourself, cut

it up correctly and save a lot of $$$.

We moved on to learning how to make tortillas.

Easy-peasy. Who knew? I have always bought them

in the store for $4-6.00 a package of 8. This lady

made 8 of them in about 10 minutes total time

for about 75 cents. And the taste--no comparison

to store bought. Plus there are no preservatives

in these (BIG bonus in my book)

Our next demo was also from a local chef that just

returned from 2 months in Italy. He showed how

to make pasta and how to make it paper thin on

a pasta machine. Then we got to taste some

ravioli cooked with meat inside and drizzled

truffle oil he brought back from Italy. The pasta

was so tender it melted in my mouth. The truffle

oil was what I call very Gourmet. It was really

good, but I couldn't eat a whole lot of it. Plus

it was $30.00 for the thin bottle he had.

Then we watched a pie crust being made. This

was a no brainer for me simply because I make it

all the time, but she made some good points and

she whipped together an apple pie in no time.

Then they gave away the pie to someone in the

audience. I was close--they chose it by birthday

but someone beat me out.

And last was a bean dip being made called

Cowboy Caviar. It looked really good, with lots

of cilantro, tomato and onion, but I don't like

things like garbanzo beans and corn in dips, 

so I didn't even try it when they passed it around. 

Everyone else looked like they enjoyed it though.

Overall it was a very fun evening, free of charge

and I learned a lot. I hope they end up doing

this again soon!