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.

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Cookbook love: ‘Clean Eating 2’

CleanEating

If you want to know more about the concept of “clean eating,” the editors of Clean Eating magazine are the folks to see.

I subscribe to their magazine on my iPad, and own all three of their “The Best of Clean Eating” cookbooks. But “The Best of Clean Eating 2” takes first prize, hands down. I cook from it more than any other cookbook in my collection, clean or otherwise, and have made quite a few recipes more than once.

Our favorites: Curried Chicken with Peas, New Potato and Turkey Skillet Supper, and Thai Chili (with bulgar in lieu of meat, and sweet potatoes!).

You can also find clean recipes — for free — on the Clean Eating website.