Welcome to Litsy!

Berries & Biscuits served with ice cream. It definitely needs cream of some sort as the berries are tart. 😚😚 Thumbs up for this and the teriyaki salmon because both recipes were easy & teen approved. 👍🏾

#Mtcookbook

I love Turshen‘s books - simple and super tasty. 😋

I highly recommend making this steak! The sauce just gets better the longer it sits. I served it as tacos with homemade corn tortillas.

I'm not sure if this happens to anyone else, but sometimes I will encounter a recipe, and it will stick with me. This cake is one Turshen makes for her wife. I was intrigued by the simplicity of the recipe and the strange (to me) ingredients in the frosting. I liked that it tasted better cold. The combination of chocolate and raspberry probably moved it up a few notches.

“Stress makes food taste bad, so try not to worry too much.” Turshen‘s recipes are not complicated and the head notes for each include helpful tips (“small victories”) and plenty of encouragement. Each is also followed by spinoffs—thoughts on how to turn one recipe into many others. The two things I tried turned out great—Afternoon Cake + Best Rice Pilaf with Roasted Cabbage. Unfortunately, not a lot of the recipes are vegetarian. #cookbook

There are useful tips—“small victories”—with every recipe in this #cookbook. Above: how to cut out a circular piece of parchment paper that will fit your pan exactly. I tried Turshen‘s method today and it‘s so quick and simple I don‘t know why I hadn‘t already thought of it (instead of tracing a circle around the pan onto the paper, then cutting that out).

Put together a “what‘s in the refrigerator” stew inspired by Turshen. I blame @kristenlcoates obvi.

IT‘S TIME TO TALK FOOD AND BOOKS, our favorite thing! Head over to 24in48.com for the Hour 36 challenge, y‘all! And remember: You‘re. Doing. Great. There is no failing at this, the reading and community is the point. And we 💕 you and are SO HAPPY you are here! #24in48

Had been looking forward to reading this one for a while (her Caesar salad is named Julia‘s Caesar 😂) so maybe my level of excitement was too high. I liked it, but not as much as I had anticipated.
The Broiled Anything with Garlic and Parsley Butter was good, but the Rice Pilaf with Roasted Cabbage was only ok (maybe I don‘t like saffron?). Will try her Kinda Sorta Patas Bravas tomorrow night.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I decided if I was to review a new cookbook I needed to spend a decent chunk of time cooking from it.
This is really just my sort of cookbook very down-to-earth and unfussy. Some personal highlights for me from this were : Sour Cream Pancakes with Roasted Blueberries, Roasted Red Pepper and Pear soup, Orecchiette with Spicy Sausage, Turkey and Ricotta Meatballs, Chicken and Pea Skillet Pie and the Feel-Better-Soon Cookies.

Excellent!

A very readable and gorgeous cookbook. Each recipe comes with a headnote (source of the "little victories" - those tips from an experienced chef to make the food really taste good or preparation easier) and ends with Spin Offs for ways to use leftovers or substitute ingredients in variations. It ends with a chapter with drinks and lists of meals, etc. A must-have if you love to read about your cooking and fans of Ruth Reichl's My Kitchen Year.

I love cookbooks that tell personal stories with the recipes. 💗 (There's a yummy-sounding roast chicken recipe which reminded me that @rebeccaschinsky judges a cookbook by it's roast chicken recipe 😼)

This was a total pleasure to read, can't wait to get in the kitchen!

I ❤️❤️❤️ cookbooks, and this is the one (among many fine cookbooks published in 2016) I am gifting this year. The writing, photos, and recipes are all SO beautiful, and anything of hers that I have cooked has been easy and delicious. 🍴📚🎁❤️

My ultimate test of a good cookbook is if it's worth purchasing, after a test run of borrowing from the library. The answer with Small Victories is ABSOLUTELY YES. Turshen gives readers/cooks hundreds of recipes, techniques, and spin-offs in a familiar, easy-going manner that invites experimentation and joy in the kitchen.

The whole gimmick of this book is to take a single recipe (in this case, chopped chickpea salad), identify a "small victory" (knowing when to use a shortcut, like dressing up canned beans with fresh veg instead of cooking dried beans), and then listing multiple spin-offs on said victory (white beans with shaved fennel, black-eyed peas with collards and peanuts, black beans with tomatoes and cilantro). Multiple variations in a single recipe. ?

Working my way through a library copy of Small Victories and thinking I need to buy my own... Already made the eggplant yogurt dip and it is delicious!