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"When I was growing up, canning was for old folks and cranks and separatists,” writes Liana Krissoff in her introduction to Canning for a New Generation. But not anymore. With soaring food prices and the increasing popularity of all things domestic and DIY, there’s never been a better time to revisit the centuries-old techniques of preserving food at home.

This hip, modern handbook is filled with fresh and new ways to preserve nature’s bounty throughout the year. Organized by season and illustrated with beautiful photographs, it offers detailed instructions and recipes for making more than 150 canned, pickled, dried, and frozen foods, as well as 50 inventive recipes for dishes using these foods. Basic information on canning techniques and lively sidebars round out this refreshing take on a classic cooking tradition.

About the author
Liana Krissoff, a freelance recipe tester, editor, and writer, is the author of STC’s Secrets of Slow Cooking and Hot Drinks for Cold Nights. Krissoff lives with her husband and daughter in rural Carlton, Georgia.

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Using lard in cooking dates at least as far back as the 1300s. It is prized by pastry chefs today, and it is an excellent cooking fat because it burns at a very high temperature and tends not to smoke as heavily as many other fats and oils do. Rediscovered along with other healthful animal fats in the 1990s, lard is once again embraced by chefs and enlightened health-care professionals and dietitians.

Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother's Secret Ingredient offers you the opportunity to cook like your grandmother, while incorporating good animal fat into your diet once again. Lard is the key to the wonders that came from Grandma's kitchen, and with lard, you can turn out stellar Beef Wellington, Bierocks, or crispy Southern Fried Chicken. Serving your family the 150 treats you enjoyed in your younger days when you visited your grandparents' farm is as easy as flipping a page in this great cookbook. Try your hand at creating fluffy Grandma's Homemade Biscuits, tasty Spanish Corn Bread, delectable Fried Okra, sweet Chocolate Kraut Cake, a Perfect Pastry piecrust for a delicious Butterscotch Peach Pie, or Rhubarb Dumplings.

You will never regret adding Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother's Secret Ingredient to your cookbook collection. Don't be afraid to bring a little lard back to the table; your taste buds will be glad you did.

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Ripe is a different kind of cookbook. Arranged by color, Ripe takes hungry readers and cooking enthusiasts on a stunning visual tour of product, from the extremely approachable to the somewhat exotic. Lighthearted stories, spectacular photographs, and simple ingredient combinations tempt and inspire you by appealing to your senses, and your sense of play. With 150 photographs and 75 delicious recipes organized by color, Ripe celebrates the visual beauty and culinary potential in all fruits and vegetables.

Red: Beets, Cherries, Pomegranates, Radicchio, Rhubarb
Orange: Apricots, Kumquats, Nectarines, Persimmon, Yams
Yellow: Bananas, Corn, Lemons, Squash Blossoms
Green: Artichokes, Avocadoes, Fava Beans, Honeydew, Kale, Zucchini
Purple and Blue: Eggplant, Figs, Plums, Blackberries, Blueberries
White: Bosc Pears, Coconut, Jicama, Parsnips, Potatoes

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It is difficult to think of a food more basic, more essential, and more universal than bread. Common to the diets of both the rich and the poor, bread is one of our oldest foods. Loaves and rolls have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and wheat has been found in pits where human settlements flourished 8,000 years ago. Many anthropologists argue that the ability to sow and reap cereals, the grains necessary for making bread, could be one of the main reasons why man settled in communities, and even today the concept of “breaking bread together” is a lasting symbol of the uniting power of a meal.

Bread is an innovative mix of traditional history, cultural history, travelogue, and cookbook. William Rubel begins with the amazing invention of bread approximately 20,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and ends by speculating on the ways in which cultural forces and advances in biotechnology may influence the development of bread in the twenty-first century. Rubel shows how simple choices, may be responsible for the widespread preference for wheat over other bread grains and for the millennia-old association of elite dining with white bread. He even provides an analysis of the different components of bread, such as crust and crumb, so that readers may better understand the breads they buy. With many recipes integrated with the text and a glossary covering 100 breads, Bread goes well beyond the simple choice of white or wheat.

Here, general readers will find an approachable introduction to the history of bread and to the many forms that bread takes throughout the world, and bread bakers will discover a history of the craft and new ways of thinking that will inspire experimentation.

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Fresh-from-the-chicken eggs are increasingly available everywhere, offering great nutrition and unbeatable flavor. Whether you’re collecting your eggs from a backyard coop or buying them at farmers’ markets and local farms, Jennifer Trainer Thompson has 101 delicious recipes to help you make the most of them. She includes a wealth of breakfast favorites with new twists, from the perfect soft-boiled egg to French toast, omelets, eggs Florentine, and huevos rancheros. Fresh eggs shine in classic dishes such as Caesar salad, spaghetti carbonara, eggnog, deviled eggs, and homemade mayonnaise. And you’ll love Thompson’s creative recipes for every meal of the day, from smoothies and appetizers to casseroles and stews.

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Vegan chef of one of the top 50 food blogs on the Web, HappyHerbivore.com, Lindsay S. Nixon, shares recipes each month with hundreds of thousands of her followers, showing that a vegan diet is not only healthy but delicious, too.

Now, Nixon combines some of her tastiest recipes in The Happy Herbivore Cookbook, each made with no added fats, using only whole, plant-based foods. It’s easy to make great food at home using the fewest number of ingredients and ones that can easily be found at any store, on any budget.

The Happy Herbivore Cookbook includes:

• A variety of recipes from quick and simple to decadent and advanced
• Helpful hints and cooking tips, from basic advice such as how to steam potatoes to more specific information about which bread, tofu, or egg replacer works best in a recipe
• An easy-to-use glossary demystifying any ingredients that may be new to the reader
• Healthy insight: Details on the health benefits and properties of key ingredients
• Pairing suggestions with each recipe to help make menu planning easy and painless
• Allergen-free recipes, including gluten-free, soy-free, corn-free and sugar-free

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In this beautifully photographed book, master baker Jan Hedh teaches us the basics for baking delicious artisan breads right in our own ovens. Hedh offers a cookbook full of recipes for all occasions—from daily loaves for sandwiches to delectable sweet breads for special occasions. This cookbook includes master tips on how to bake bread for maximum taste and aroma, the proper way to knead dough, the type of flour to use, and the correct baking time and oven temperature. With his wide breadth of recipes from all over the world—including Italian, French, Swiss, German, Arabic, and of course Swedish breads—this book is a must-have for all those who love to bake.