Happiness is a new cookbook

… or three.

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Today, after 11 days of contemplating my culinary goals for 2014, I picked up Better Homes and Gardens’ Ultimate Soups and Stews Book. More details on my resolutions are coming soon, but one — as you may have guessed — is to make more soup. This decision may have been slightly influenced by the Polar Vortex.

For Christmas, my mom and dad gifted me cookbook No. 2, Stephanie Izard’s Girl in the Kitchenwhich had been on my Amazon wish list for two years. I’m a huge fan of her Chicago restaurant, Girl & the Goat, so am really looking forward to cracking this one open.

The third cookbook is Grilling, from the Williams-Sonoma Collection. Now technically, this cookbook isn’t mine. I gave it to Mike as a Christmas present, since he mans the grill in our house. (Not that he needs a cookbook — he has a sixth sense about spices and grilling that drives my OCD, meat thermometer-wielding self crazy.) Whether Mike ever peruses its pages or not, we now have a grilling cookbook on our bookshelf. And that ain’t a bad thing.