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. 

I have a lot of cookbooks. A lot. I haven't counted them but it's probably in the triple digits. And of those scores of titles, there are only three dedicated to desserts. One is by Maida Heatter, another is by Lindsey Shere and the final is this one, Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich. Read on for why this book has a special place on my shelf. More

It's the brand spankin' new year and with this fresh start often comes a desire to make changes and improvements in our daily diet. While this is an admirable pursuit, sometimes in our enthusiasm we tend towards extreme depravation which is never sustainable and only leads to failure. What's needed is a sensible plan, one that is varied, delicious and interesting and (whoopsie!) just happens to be really good for you. Enter Dr Andrew Weil's new cookbook True Food, a true blessing for anyone but especially those who want to take the stealth approach to eating well. More

What a great year for cookbooks. Despite the almost daily release of a new culinary app, and despite the thousands of incredible online cooking resources [wink, wink] and the continuing explosion of cooking shows, people are still enamored of good old-fashioned cookbooks. In the end, most of us still want to spread a cookbook out on the kitchen counter, a rolling pin holding the binding open, grease splattering across recipes, and we also still want to curl up in bed, turning the pages and feeling the paperstock of a good cookbook. They line our bookshelves and top our refrigerators like art.

While I can name at least fifty outstanding cookbooks published this year, I don't want to overwhelm you. So here are just fifteen that really stood out to me; books that reminded me of why I love to cook. More

Leaf through Ludo Lefebvre's new cookbook, LudoBites: Recipes And Stories From The Pop-Up Restaurants of Ludo Lefebvre, and you'll understand why the reservations for the entire run of the last incarnation of LudoBites, his pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles, sold out in under a minute: his delight in the sensual pleasure of food is evident in the description of every dish. (Remember his charming kitchen tour, too?) Ludo's palate is rooted in a love and respect for the cooking, food, flavors and food traditions of his native France. But what launches his food into the stratosphere is his deep-seated curiosity about the world, with each dish a question answered by a taste experience, one that also involves your eyes and your nose. More

A few years ago Australian Rohan Anderson did what many of us only dream of doing: he decided to live as much as possible on the food he grew, raised or hunted himself. He started a blog called Whole Larder Love to document his observations and adventures. Luckily for us, that blog has turned into a book by the same name, just released here in the USA. Read on for my review and a recipe from the book. More

While you are probably familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert and her best selling book Eat, Pray, Love, it's not likely that you have heard of her great-grandmother, Margaret Yardley Potter or her 1941 cookbook At Home on the Range. If this is true, then I highly recommend you remedy the situation and get your hands on a copy of this forward-thinking cookbook, which was just released by the folks at McSweeney's. More

Waiting in a line that curves around the block is practically part of the experience when you go to San Francisco's beloved Bi-Rite Creamery. Luckily, you are usually with friends, or else you tend to make friends as you collectively wait your turn. The conversation meanders, as it will, but eventually it always comes back to, "What are you going to get?" For anyone who has waited in that line and then been forced to choose — oh, the agony of indecision! — this book is for you. More

Even after visiting Seattle for years, Pike Place Market is still one of my first stops when I get into town. I'm convinced that you can find anything there if you look hard enough: dried mushrooms for risotto tonight, that weird spice no one else has heard of, a cookie to revive your weary soul. It's a magical place. In this new book of recipes, tips, and stories, Jess Thomson has perfectly captured both this magic and the very spirit of Pike Place Market. What's your story of Pike Place Market? More

I am a visual learner. Never is this more clear to me than when I thumb through a cookbook like Ripe by Cheryl Sternman Rule with its incredible food photographs by Paulette Phlipot.

The fruits and vegetables practically jump off of the pages in 3D, and my brain understands their curves, colors, and yes, ripeness in a way that description alone could not accomplish. It's enough to make a gal hungry. More