Fresh Food Fast

We got this book Fresh Food Fast: Delicious, Seasonal Vegetarian Meals in Under an Hour about a year ago, maybe?  There are lots of excellent meals in this book- all sorted by seasonal availability.

I really like the fact that they are meals, so he tells you when to start what piece for the different elements- so that the meal is all done at the same time.  As someone without a ton of natural cooking skills, this is really nice training that has improved my meal prep skills and planning all around.

We have tried several recipes from Peter Berley online who also wrote a book called The Flexitarian Table: Inspired, Flexible Meals for Vegetarians, Meat Lovers, and Everyone inBetween. I’m not sure that this cookbook sounds up our alley, since I think we aren’t cooking meat anymore, but flexitarian was a new word for me- when I discovered Peter’s Berley’s recipes and by extension this book. It really sums up how we end up eating- as someone who has occasional meat consumption.

Here is the link to buy the book, but his recipes tend to show up all over the web.

The only con that I have is some of the ingredients are a little hard to find.  Obviously we can find them in Minneapolis, but not at our neighborhood grocery store or even a Whole Foods… which makes this a little difficult.  Peter’s mastery of flavor combinations makes up for this, and a majority of the recipes do not have this problem.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

We got this book last summer and it really is quite excellent.  We went through a spurt last fall where we were making repeat batches, then we hit a lull… and I have picked it up again.  Sam’s Club has these large-ish (6 quart square covered transparent containers for restaurants) where we can store the dough and honestly, it doesn’t even average to 5 minutes a day at this point- I bet it is way less.  Our family is able to devour an entire loaf in a sitting.  We are concentrating on the first lesson: the boule.  It is turning our consistently even though our oven can be inaccurate at times.

Here is the book and their website, which has additional recipes: artisanbreadinfive.com.  They have a new book out called Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Has anyone tried a recipe from this new or original book?

Here are a couple of our most recent loaves.