Cooking for One

Healthy Cooking for Two (or Just You): Low-Fat Recipes with Half the Fuss and Double the Taste

EatingWell Serves Two: 150 Healthy in a Hurry Suppers

A fusion of simplicity, healthy ingredients and just-right quantities, these delicious, exciting new recipes are designed for today's growing world of empty-nesters, couples without children and smaller households.

For millions of fast-paced, modern households, the old cookbook standard of "serves four" is increasingly outdated and a daily nuisance. With more than 77 million baby boomers adjusting to the Empty Nest Syndrome, and with their adult children setting up their own new homes, there is a mounting demand for quick, easy, healthy recipes yielding fewer servings.

But cooking for two people or even singles isn't as simple as cutting a recipe in half. In EatingWell Serves Two, the award-winning editors and recipe developers for America's leading food and nutrition magazine have created 150 dinner recipes from their hugely popular "Healthy in a Hurry" and "Serves Two" columns to meet the specific needs of smaller households.

More than a cookbook, EatingWell Serves Two provides a smart guide for how to shop in small quantities, how to store leftover ingredients, keep a well-stocked pantry and use easy cooking strategies that result in minimal waste while putting a healthy, delicious meal on the table in 45 minutes or less.

Filled with mouthwatering photography and tips on shopping, planning and simple cooking for two with healthy ingredients and without waste. Full-color throughout.

Going Solo in the Kitchen

Just because you are your household, don't assume eating solo limits you to having pizza, pancakes, or meat loaf in restaurants; buying them already prepared; or having to file extra portions in the freezer or the dustbin. As Jane Doerfer proves in Going Solo in the Kitchen, with no more effort than when cooking for two or more, one person can eat well and dine beautifully.

Doerfer's main strategies are to use fresh ingredients and to make friends with supermarket staff who can accommodate her needs in the land of large families. She gives detailed advice on storing foods--cooked chicken, for example, tastes better and has better texture when stored in liquid (like a sauce or broth), while potato salads and other prepared dishes keep better longer when left unsalted until just before serving.

Solo cooks do have advantages: you can eat what you want, as often as you want it, and the cost of a steak or lobster dinner is only for one.

Doerfer offers variations for recycling in case of leftovers. Her description of how to cut up a whole chicken is graphically clear (see "Chicken Management") and will save you money.

The recipes and techniques Doerfer offers will brighten the lives of solitary diners who love variety, good food, and home cooking. She provides recipes for everything you might want, from Chicken Noodle Soup to elegant Halibut with Asparagus, Cream Scones, perfectly cooked rice, and fresh, hot berry pie, made in just the right way for one. --Dana Jacobi

At last, a practical and persuasive cookbook for anyone living alone--with more than 350 delicious recipes for all occasions--filled with money-saving tips and shortcuts. Here is food that will lure the reluctant single back into the kitchen. Featured in Southern Living magazine.

Serves One: Simple Meals to Savor When You're on Your Own

Anyone facing an occasional dinner for one, making solo brown-bag lunches, or living alone will find Toni Lydecker's Serves One invaluable. She shows you how to make tabbouleh and ratatouille in modest amounts so you don't have to eat them for days. She even gives a recipe for pizza dough you can turn into perfect, single-size pies. Who needs soggy take-out when you can make your own potato and pesto pizza, or luxuriate on Sunday with a creamy Smoked Salmon Pizza? (You bake the dough, then add the topping; it's much better than a bagel!)

Lydecker tells how to make Mini Meatloaf and Oven-Barbecued Pork Ribs, just the right amount of Chicken Fingers, even your very own Shellfish Steamer, a kind of clambake. Many recipes cook in 5 to 20 minutes. When stews and soups take longer, they don't need tending. If any cookbook will ever wean you off frozen entrees and instant mixes so you eat as well on your own as with family or friends, Serves One can do it. --Dana Jacobi

This new, completely revised edition retains the spirit of the original, a deft mix of the practical and sophisticated, presented with an engaging simplicity that will fill the beginner with confidence and warm the heart of a frazzled gourmet.

Cooking Outside the Pizza Box: Easy Recipes for Today's College Student

College kids living on their own for the first time are startled to realize that now they have to cook for themselves. This attractive spiral-bound book is exactly what they need, serving up easy recipes and basic cooking methods for beginners. The resulting meals are nutritious and appetizing, more healthful and less expensive than relying on the local pizza parlor or Burger King every time hunger pangs strike. Practical advice and helpful tips instruct busy college kids on everything from food and equipment shopping and sharing a kitchen to scrambling an egg and preparing a complete, well-balanced meal. Recipes are divided into these general categories:

Munchies * Breakfast * Main Courses * Pasta and Rice * Soups * Veggies and Salads * Desserts *

Munchies include a great array of snacks and finger foods, from garlicky humus to pizza-flavored popcorn. Breakfast recipes include egg dishes, French toast, pancakes, and others. Main courses range from simple grilled sandwiches to more ambitious entrees like roasted chicken with lemon and herbs. Vegetarian dishes include tasty Portobello mushrooms with garlic mayonnaise, pan-fried Asian dumplings with dipping sauce, couscous and veggie salad, and many others. Among the dessert recipes are instructions for making brownies, cookies, chocolate cake, apple crisp, and a remarkably easy pumpkin pie. Recipes come with a special trouble-shooting and mistake-avoiding feature called Don't Let This Happen to You. Attractive line illustrations and a handy index help make this book a godsend for hungry college kids. Makes a good high school graduation gift!

Puerto Rican Cookery

Feast: Food to Celebrate Life

If you consider eating with friends and family a joyful, indulgent celebration chances are you love a good feast. And who better to carefully guide you through the daunting task of preparing that Feast than the domestic goddess herself Nigella Lawson. Written in the tradition of Nigella Bites and How to Eat, Feast is a cookbook for the sensualist that wants to eat very well, but also wants to spend time enjoying the company of their guests instead of struggling with the creation of the meal. What sets Lawson apart is not that she's a good cookbook writer, but a strong writer period. Similar to her other books, Nigella's Feast is presented as part personal memoir, part educational, and part recipe presentation. There is a nice blend of occasions including the obvious (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Easter), a few culturally specific ones (Rosh Hashanah, Georgian Feast, and Venetian Feast), feasts for kids, for vegetarians, and an elegant cocktail party. Each chapter begins with an overview of that particular "Feast." Generally, there is a personal story and experience told, an overview of the cultural importance of the feast, and a description of foods that are associated with each occasion. Impressively, every recipe begins with a personal anecdote giving that impression Nigella didn't just throw it in the book, but is experienced with the recipe and has used it with success. Take her twist on the decadent Chocolate Guinness Cake for example: "I wanted to make a cream cheese frosting to echo the pale head that sits on top of a glass of stout. It's unconventional to add cream but it makes it frothier and lighter which I regard as aesthetically and gastronomically desirable." Who can argue? The cake is to die for. So next time you need to prepare a dinner party let the goddess be your guide, and remember: Keep the preparation simple, use easily available ingredients, and take time to enjoy your guests and your meal. Feast may not be the most advanced cookbook you will own, but if you want to create excellent food with relative ease in a short amount of time, you can not beat Nigella. --Rob Bracco

Nigella Lawson, Gourmet magazine's "It Girl," New York Times "Dining In" columnist, and bestselling cookbook author, is celebrating life -- and you're invited. Feast, Nigella's most festive book yet, offers savory, spicy, and delicious recipes for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Eid, New Year's, Passover, Easter gatherings, and any time you want to celebrate food and life. This book is filled with festive recipes, and in it, Nigella offers tips, tricks, and shortcuts that will ensure you dine with ease, style, and fun. Feast also includes some surprising gems, like Nigella's Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame, and her best cheeseburger. And like her other cookbooks, Feast is a cookbook that will be treasured all year long.

Vegan Bites: Recipes for Singles

Cooking for 1 or 2 and being vegan can be a challenge, especially when you first begin. Vegan Bites is geared towards teens and those in there 20's who want to embrace a compassionate, green lifestyle. With these delicious recipes fast food and take-out need no longer be the main source of food. Beverly Lynn Bennett provides over one hundred easy-to-make recipes that encompass a wide variety of foods and cuisines with selections for every skill level and schedule. Prep time and leftovers are kept to a minimum. Local, organic and seasonal ingredients are emphasized whenever possible. From Fabulous Flapjacks, Hacienda Home Fries and Sun-dried Tomato Couscous to Mexican Maize and Quinoa Medley, Vibrant Vegetable Cornucopias and Pad Thai, you'll find all your favorites and more. Includes a week of sample menus to provide ideas for meal planning. With sound advice on how to shop economically, fulfill nutritional needs, and stock the pantry with essentials, the vegan lifestyle will be made easy and your choice validated.

Cooking from Quilt Country : Hearty Recipes from Amish and Mennonite Kitchens

Includes nearly 200 family recipes from America's heartland, a culinary folk history of the Indiana Amish and Mennonites. This celebration of farm life is a companion volume to the PBS series hosted by Adams. 64 full-color photographs.

James Beard's American Cookery