If you have yet to experience the pleasure of cheese and beer together, or if you're a strict believer in pairing cheese with wine and wine alone, here's a book to open, widen, and/or convert your mindset. 

And if you're already on the beer and cheese bandwagon, there's no question that this is a book for you. 

Whether you follow the paleo diet, you're curious about it, or, heck, you just want delicious recipes no matter what diet they happen to fit into, there are plenty of fantastic dishes here for you dive into. Michelle Tam's recipes on her blog Nom Nom Paleo are often Asian-influenced, often California-inspired, and always popping with flavor. The ones she includes in her e-cookbook are no exception.

Polpo is the Italian word for octopus, and it's also the name of a restaurant located in London's Soho district that serves rustic, simple Venetian bar food.  I have never been (to POLPO or to Venice), but after looking through this cookbook from POLPO's owner Russell Norman, I want to hop a plane right now and visit both.  Given that we're still under the shadow of tax season here in my household, I will have to content myself with cooking from this gorgeous book, which believe me, will be no hardship.  

Full Disclosure: I like Gwyneth. I might even be a little obsessed. She's more or less my age and, for a very brief time in the mid 90s, I was told we looked alike. I'll take it. I was first aware of Gwyneth when we were in high school (not together, of course). I was once quoted anonymously in my school paper. She was in an Esprit ad next to it.

As I've said before, I always find the most interesting or thought-provoking things at Maria Popova's site Brainpicker. A few days ago she unearthed a rare 1961 book that is perfect for lovers of literature, art, and the melding of all that with cooking...

Fans of food and science, rejoice! Mary Roach's new book, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal explores the fascinating, at times bizarre, science behind the process of eating. Embracing the topic with infectious curiosity and her signature sense of humor, Roach enters the world of pet food tasters, plunges her arm into the rumen of a living cow, visits a prison to talk to a man with a talent for smuggling contraband in his — well, let's just call it the end of his alimentary canal — and looks into how Elvis really died. 

After spending a week regaling my friends and loved ones with my favorite surprising facts from the book, I sat down with the author to ask her a little more about her adventures.

To capture the entire sense of a place between the covers of one cookbook is no small task. Yet, here is a photo of bobbing fishing boats that feels so close that I can practically smell the salt water. And a woman making fresh couscous that I want to scoop with my hands, and a basket of silvery fresh-caught anchovies for dinner, and spirals of yellow pasta, and...and...and. Sicily is one of those cookbooks that transports and inspires. If Sicily holds a special place in your traveler's heart, this is a book you will cherish. If visiting Sicily is dream of yours, this book might just transform your "some day" into "right now." 

For his New York Times column this week, Mark Bittman sat down with Michael Pollan to talk about this new book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, out Tuesday. The book (I can't wait to read it!) is largely about the importance of cooking...