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thecandlelightlibrary
Thank you to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for sending me a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
I love reviewing cookbooks! It’s always so exciting to try new things, and cookbooks help me stay on track to meet my goal of 52 new recipes each year. Now, with my state’s mandatory stay-at-home order during COVID-19, it’s the perfect time to try out some new recipes. Besides, who doesn’t love a cookie?
100 Cookies is a delicious cookbook that covers all sorts of cookies, from traditional Soft Chocolate Chip and classic Fudgy Brownie to the extravagant Red Wine Cherry Cheesecake Swirl Bars and decadent Ginger Cookies with Salted Caramel Ice Cream. There are 100 recipes (each cookie is numbered, for your convenience), but counting each listed variation and the “Extras” needed (such as lemon curd), there are considerably more recipes to try out.
This book was clearly well thought out and a lot of time was spent on it. Each recipe includes: a photo, author notes (I always appreciate their reasons behind a recipe), title, approximate yield, ingredients/recipes used, and step-by-step instructions. One of my favorite parts, though, is how nearly everything is made from scratch. Does a recipe call for caramel? You can make it at home! Need marshmallows or lemon curd? Try homemade! If you’re running short on time, you can of course substitute store bought, but I appreciate this extra step.
Now, what you’ve probably been waiting for: how can I recommend a cookbook without also trying at least some of the recipes? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered - although I must mention that during my state’s current stay-at-home measures I was limited to recipes with ingredients I already had on hand. So far I’ve tried four of the recipes in 100 Cookies:
1. Chocolate Sugar Cookies: 4/5. These were quite tasty and different - I can’t say I’ve ever tried a chocolate sugar cookie before! I did use dark chocolate unsweetened cocoa powder (most recipes call for just regular unsweetened) and the batter ended up being quite dry. I added the dry mix by the spoonful to my mixer and used the start/stop method to incorporate, but I still ended up with flour and cocoa powder all over my kitchen.
2. Cardamon Chocolate Sugar Cookies (a variation of the Chocolate Sugar Cookies): 3/5. While they smelled fantastic, I don’t think I was able to taste the cardamom but the cookies were definitely less sweet than the regular chocolate versions. Next time, I might try this variation with regular sugar cookies.
3. Snickerdoodles: 5/5. This is perhaps the best snickerdoodle recipe I’ve ever tried - these were AMAZING. For all you cookie dough lovers out there, this cookie dough is also incredible (and I’m sharing this as a diehard chocolate chip fan).
4. Pumpkin Buttercream (used for Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies): 5/5. To be honest, the snickerdoodle cookies did not last long enough for the frosting to be made. So, instead of making sandwich cookies I frosted one cookie. On its own the pumpkin buttercream is delicious (and would probably be a great frosting for brownies), but I don’t know if it was my favorite thing to be paired with a snickerdoodle.
Once I'm able to get more supplies, I'm looking forward to working my way through even more of the recipes in this cookbook.
Also included in 100 Cookies are some helpful extras: a how to use this book, general baking advice, important notes (such as how she measures flour for her recipes), cookie baking tips, specific baking ingredients and reasons for using them (such as she uses unsalted butter unless otherwise noted and why), baking equipment used, music to bake to (who doesn’t enjoy finding new tunes?), common conversions, a bibliography, and additional resources (such as Penzey’s Spices and places to search for bakeware).
One final note: before receiving an ARC copy of this book, I was unfamiliar with both the author and her baking blog. I'm glad to have discovered it! Thank you again to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.
I love reviewing cookbooks! It’s always so exciting to try new things, and cookbooks help me stay on track to meet my goal of 52 new recipes each year. Now, with my state’s mandatory stay-at-home order during COVID-19, it’s the perfect time to try out some new recipes. Besides, who doesn’t love a cookie?
100 Cookies is a delicious cookbook that covers all sorts of cookies, from traditional Soft Chocolate Chip and classic Fudgy Brownie to the extravagant Red Wine Cherry Cheesecake Swirl Bars and decadent Ginger Cookies with Salted Caramel Ice Cream. There are 100 recipes (each cookie is numbered, for your convenience), but counting each listed variation and the “Extras” needed (such as lemon curd), there are considerably more recipes to try out.
This book was clearly well thought out and a lot of time was spent on it. Each recipe includes: a photo, author notes (I always appreciate their reasons behind a recipe), title, approximate yield, ingredients/recipes used, and step-by-step instructions. One of my favorite parts, though, is how nearly everything is made from scratch. Does a recipe call for caramel? You can make it at home! Need marshmallows or lemon curd? Try homemade! If you’re running short on time, you can of course substitute store bought, but I appreciate this extra step.
Now, what you’ve probably been waiting for: how can I recommend a cookbook without also trying at least some of the recipes? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered - although I must mention that during my state’s current stay-at-home measures I was limited to recipes with ingredients I already had on hand. So far I’ve tried four of the recipes in 100 Cookies:
1. Chocolate Sugar Cookies: 4/5. These were quite tasty and different - I can’t say I’ve ever tried a chocolate sugar cookie before! I did use dark chocolate unsweetened cocoa powder (most recipes call for just regular unsweetened) and the batter ended up being quite dry. I added the dry mix by the spoonful to my mixer and used the start/stop method to incorporate, but I still ended up with flour and cocoa powder all over my kitchen.
2. Cardamon Chocolate Sugar Cookies (a variation of the Chocolate Sugar Cookies): 3/5. While they smelled fantastic, I don’t think I was able to taste the cardamom but the cookies were definitely less sweet than the regular chocolate versions. Next time, I might try this variation with regular sugar cookies.
3. Snickerdoodles: 5/5. This is perhaps the best snickerdoodle recipe I’ve ever tried - these were AMAZING. For all you cookie dough lovers out there, this cookie dough is also incredible (and I’m sharing this as a diehard chocolate chip fan).
4. Pumpkin Buttercream (used for Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies): 5/5. To be honest, the snickerdoodle cookies did not last long enough for the frosting to be made. So, instead of making sandwich cookies I frosted one cookie. On its own the pumpkin buttercream is delicious (and would probably be a great frosting for brownies), but I don’t know if it was my favorite thing to be paired with a snickerdoodle.
Once I'm able to get more supplies, I'm looking forward to working my way through even more of the recipes in this cookbook.
Also included in 100 Cookies are some helpful extras: a how to use this book, general baking advice, important notes (such as how she measures flour for her recipes), cookie baking tips, specific baking ingredients and reasons for using them (such as she uses unsalted butter unless otherwise noted and why), baking equipment used, music to bake to (who doesn’t enjoy finding new tunes?), common conversions, a bibliography, and additional resources (such as Penzey’s Spices and places to search for bakeware).
One final note: before receiving an ARC copy of this book, I was unfamiliar with both the author and her baking blog. I'm glad to have discovered it! Thank you again to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.
Uncertain Harvest: The Future of Food on a Warming Planet
Ian Mosby, Sarah Rotz, Evan D G Fraser
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Regina (NYU) Press for sending me a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
Last year I read The Fate of Food by Amanda Little and it turned out to be one of my favorite books of 2019. The Fate of Food is a fascinating look into current, global issues within the food industry and the various approaches in the works for solving these issues in the future. Ultimately, The Fate of Food asks you this: is our current path sustainable, and if not, how can we fix it?
So, you can imagine how excited I was to continue that conversation with Uncertain Harvest. As it turns out, I really enjoy reading about the future of our food industry. Who knew, right?
Uncertain Harvest is a look into the complexity of our current global food system and questions whether or not our current system is sustainable. If not, how might we build a global food system that’s more resilient, adaptable, equitable, and less wasteful? The focus is on Canada (understandable, considering the authors are Canadian), but that does not make it inaccessible to an American audience.
The real strength of this book, I found, was the questions it made me ask beyond the text. Here are just a few of the questions I found myself asking:
- Do you believe our current global food system is sustainable (environmentally, socially, economically, morally, etc) for our current, growing population?
- What does it mean to have a sustainable food future?
- How many days’ worth of food do you, on average, keep in your home? Also, has the current global pandemic changed this for you?
- How much of the food in your home was locally grown? How much of that food do you know exactly where it came from (city and country)? How much of that food did you purchase when it was actually in season?
- What will we be eating in the future? And how are we going to produce it?
- Two of my favorite questions brought up in Uncertain Harvest: What will we find in the grocery store of the future? Why should we even have a grocery store?
- What does food security mean to you?
- How familiar are you with the topic of “food fraud”? Do you think you’ve ever eaten or purchased an item that was incorrectly - or misleadingly - labeled?
- What eating habits of yours are cultural? Which were passed down through your family?
- Which crops do you think will be essential components of our future?
If you find yourself wanting to explore any of this questions, I would recommend picking up Uncertain Harvest. Not all of them are addressed within its pages (some of those questions were things I asked myself), but it explores so much more.
For example, Uncertain Harvest addresses many aspects that are generally overlooked (at least, in my experience), and I appreciated the time spent on showcasing multiple points of view and bringing up several points I was previously unfamiliar with. In one chapter, Uncertain Harvest takes a look at the increase in technological advancements available to farmers. Can this technology provide food security for our future? Or will an increased reliance on technology mean the decrease in ecological knowledge that farmers currently are stewards of? What about the costs of technology, such as how expensive they can be and that sometimes only large-scale corporations can afford them and farmers must substantially increase their debt in order to stay afloat?
As you can imagine, Uncertain Harvest takes a look at many hot topics, such as beef consumption. I really appreciated how the authors didn’t pick one solution when they discussed a topic and they didn’t necessarily agree with each other with what solutions might be the most effective for a more sustainable food system.
For example, with beef consumption, Uncertain Harvest looks at beef’s relatively large carbon footprint. One reason for this is beef is associated with large amounts of deforestation (primarily in places such as South America). Uncertain Harvest then discusses how environmentally sustainable farms help minimize beef’s overall impact but they also generally are smaller farms with slower-finishing animals (to market) and higher costs for consumers. So, Uncertain Harvest asks, will our current beef industry (exactly as it is today) be able to support a growing global population, with more people consuming more beef as globally the standard of living increases? If the beef industry is able to adapt to such an increased demand, what might be the costs of the beef industry growing? Or, might the beef industry shrink from its current scale and become a luxury item available only to the richest who can afford its expense? Uncertain Harvest doesn’t necessarily pick a solution, but like I mentioned earlier, its strength is in getting you to think about multiple aspects of a topic.
Beyond hot topic issues, Uncertain Harvest also looks at topics that don’t get as much press. For example, the sushi experiment the authors ran while discussing food fraud will stick with me for a long time and has made me more conscious about food labels and the products I purchase.
In all, this book has made me ask myself a lot of questions and like The Fate of Food, there are many things that will continue to stick with me. Thank you again to NetGalley and University of Regina (NYU) Press for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.
Last year I read The Fate of Food by Amanda Little and it turned out to be one of my favorite books of 2019. The Fate of Food is a fascinating look into current, global issues within the food industry and the various approaches in the works for solving these issues in the future. Ultimately, The Fate of Food asks you this: is our current path sustainable, and if not, how can we fix it?
So, you can imagine how excited I was to continue that conversation with Uncertain Harvest. As it turns out, I really enjoy reading about the future of our food industry. Who knew, right?
Uncertain Harvest is a look into the complexity of our current global food system and questions whether or not our current system is sustainable. If not, how might we build a global food system that’s more resilient, adaptable, equitable, and less wasteful? The focus is on Canada (understandable, considering the authors are Canadian), but that does not make it inaccessible to an American audience.
The real strength of this book, I found, was the questions it made me ask beyond the text. Here are just a few of the questions I found myself asking:
- Do you believe our current global food system is sustainable (environmentally, socially, economically, morally, etc) for our current, growing population?
- What does it mean to have a sustainable food future?
- How many days’ worth of food do you, on average, keep in your home? Also, has the current global pandemic changed this for you?
- How much of the food in your home was locally grown? How much of that food do you know exactly where it came from (city and country)? How much of that food did you purchase when it was actually in season?
- What will we be eating in the future? And how are we going to produce it?
- Two of my favorite questions brought up in Uncertain Harvest: What will we find in the grocery store of the future? Why should we even have a grocery store?
- What does food security mean to you?
- How familiar are you with the topic of “food fraud”? Do you think you’ve ever eaten or purchased an item that was incorrectly - or misleadingly - labeled?
- What eating habits of yours are cultural? Which were passed down through your family?
- Which crops do you think will be essential components of our future?
If you find yourself wanting to explore any of this questions, I would recommend picking up Uncertain Harvest. Not all of them are addressed within its pages (some of those questions were things I asked myself), but it explores so much more.
For example, Uncertain Harvest addresses many aspects that are generally overlooked (at least, in my experience), and I appreciated the time spent on showcasing multiple points of view and bringing up several points I was previously unfamiliar with. In one chapter, Uncertain Harvest takes a look at the increase in technological advancements available to farmers. Can this technology provide food security for our future? Or will an increased reliance on technology mean the decrease in ecological knowledge that farmers currently are stewards of? What about the costs of technology, such as how expensive they can be and that sometimes only large-scale corporations can afford them and farmers must substantially increase their debt in order to stay afloat?
As you can imagine, Uncertain Harvest takes a look at many hot topics, such as beef consumption. I really appreciated how the authors didn’t pick one solution when they discussed a topic and they didn’t necessarily agree with each other with what solutions might be the most effective for a more sustainable food system.
For example, with beef consumption, Uncertain Harvest looks at beef’s relatively large carbon footprint. One reason for this is beef is associated with large amounts of deforestation (primarily in places such as South America). Uncertain Harvest then discusses how environmentally sustainable farms help minimize beef’s overall impact but they also generally are smaller farms with slower-finishing animals (to market) and higher costs for consumers. So, Uncertain Harvest asks, will our current beef industry (exactly as it is today) be able to support a growing global population, with more people consuming more beef as globally the standard of living increases? If the beef industry is able to adapt to such an increased demand, what might be the costs of the beef industry growing? Or, might the beef industry shrink from its current scale and become a luxury item available only to the richest who can afford its expense? Uncertain Harvest doesn’t necessarily pick a solution, but like I mentioned earlier, its strength is in getting you to think about multiple aspects of a topic.
Beyond hot topic issues, Uncertain Harvest also looks at topics that don’t get as much press. For example, the sushi experiment the authors ran while discussing food fraud will stick with me for a long time and has made me more conscious about food labels and the products I purchase.
In all, this book has made me ask myself a lot of questions and like The Fate of Food, there are many things that will continue to stick with me. Thank you again to NetGalley and University of Regina (NYU) Press for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.
Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet-One Bite at a Time
3.5/5 - Loved the narration style but had trouble getting into the story.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood
Minor: Cursing, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail
May 2020: Still as magical this time around! Lirael is on my list to get to this year and since it's been so long since I last read Sabriel I'm glad I took the time for a reread. Definitely one of my favorites!
