I make no secret that I own a lot of cookbooks. In spite of having more than 200, I occasionally add new ones to the mix, although I’ve become a lot more discriminating. While my eye appreciates pretty food photography, if a cookbook warrants more than just a check-out from the library, it has to have many recipes that I can actually envision making, and it can’t be too terribly similar to another book already in my personal library. If the cookbook author brings their voice to the book (i.e., it’s not merely a collection of recipes), then that’s another point in their favor.
I asked for and received two cookbooks for Christmas that met those parameters, David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen and Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy.
In the interest of reestablishing my footing in the kitchen, which had languished a bit in the harried grad school years, and actually using my cookbooks,* I’ve issued myself a little challenge for 2015. A Cookbook Challenge.
Every month, I will pluck three cookbooks from my shelves and cook from them. My intent is to primarily choose books I haven’t cooked from yet (yes, there are a number of those), but if I pick books I’ve already used, I will pick recipes I haven’t made yet.
January’s Cookbook Challenge picks are (drumroll):

         
Each of these cookbooks are brand spanking new to me. I received a review copy of Plant-Powered for Life from author Sharon Palmer, RDN, whom I interviewed for my upcoming column in this Sunday’s Seattle Times.  (I’ll be reviewing Plant-Powered for Life and her first book, The Plant-Powered Diet, here on the blog on Monday.) I bought Clean Food last month, finally, as it had been on my to-get list since I interviewed author Terry Walters a few years ago. (I’m actually cheating a little…I’m also cooking from her book Clean Start, which I currently have checked out from the library.)

* I had better start cooking from them, since I can’t seem to part with them…I occasionally make an attempt to weed some out, but at best have parted with a very few books in which the recipes seemed oddly dated.

Disclosure: I participate in the Amazon Affiliate program, which means that if you buy one of the books mentioned in this post after clicking on an embedded link, I may earn a commission. This fact does not influence what books or products I mention on my blog. My opinions and recommendations are always 100 percent my own.