A few more titles that work well for anyone interested in local food.
Is there a more iconic seafood spot than Ivar's? Acres of clams, gallons of chowder. Yes, I know, there's Duke's, too, but Duke Moscrip doesn't have a cookbook this season, and Ivar's--courtesy of the peripatetic ghost-writer Jess Thomson--does have one. Chowder's not all that complicated: clams, potatoes, celery. Duke's uses bacon and heavy cream; Ivar's uses half-and-half. The trick, obviously, is scale. Ivar's is a pretty good-sized company, 25 units and counting, not to mention supermarket sales of the chowder. More than chowder, though: the tried and true recipes for Ivar's crabcakes, salmon sliders, halibut and blackened ling cod. The title? Heh-heh. "Ivar's Seafood Cookbook: The O-fish-al Guide to Cooking the Northwest Catch." (Sasquatch Books, $29.95)
- Cynthia Nims turns out cookbooks like some people turn out blog posts, Her latest is a series of seven individual Northwest Cookbooks that draw from content she a decade ago: crab, salmon, wild mushrooms, appetizers, even breakfast. Best of all, they're on Kindle, so easy to download and keep on hand. (Rose Street Editions via Amazon Digital Services, $3.50 each)
- Erin Coopey's "Kitchen Pantry Cookbook" (Quarry Books, $29.95) teaches home cooks how to make mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, salad dressings and stocks. The sorts of things, in other words, that every household used to make, before Kraft, Campbell and the four H's (Heinz, Hunt, Hellman, and Hidden Valley) came along with their jars, bottles and powders. We've become so attached to the artificial flavors (and high-fructose corn syrup) that it can be a bit of a shock to taste homemade ketchup, for example, but the freshness is well worth the extra effort .
- And finally, a suburban Seattle Microsoftie named Jonathan Bailor will release a book next month called "The Calorie Myth" (HarperWave, $29.99)that blames so-called bad calories for weight gain. "What if you could eat more, exercise less, lose weight and live better?" Bailor asks. It's hardly his first foray into the world of nutrition; a tireless software inventor, he also hosts a radio show, blogs for Huffington Post, and runs a personal training company. Bailor's self-help shtick postulates that people have an ideal "set point" weight, and that consuming "good" calories (peanut-butter chicken stir-fry, chicken & cabbage carbonara, berries with lemon sauce) makes it easier to maintain that weight.
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