The High-Energy Raw Vegan Diet

Tuesday June 14, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Malletts Creek Branch: Program Room

Making Meals Mindful: Satisfaction Beyond Satiety

Monday May 9, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Food 52 – Good Food for Every Week

Wed, 03/23/2016 - 5:32pm by Eahagen

Food 52 began as a website for home cooks looking for ideas and support. The Food 52 philosophy promotes good, healthy, homemade cooking every week of the year. The mantra: “How you eat is how you live!” You can find many of the Food 52 cookbooks in the AADL catalog. The books are inspiring; they offer quality recipes using quality ingredients, but with simple instructions (yes, simple enough for semi-lazy cooks too, I can attest) and include mouth-watering photographs.

The Food52 Cookbook: Seasonal Recipes from our Kitchens to Yours Volume 2 is organized by week and contains exactly 52 recipes ranging from entrée to dessert, including “Roasted Cauliflower with Gremolata Bread Crumbs” and “Almond Cake with Orange Flower Water Syrup.” Each recipe is followed by community reviews and extra tips, much like you would imagine finding on a website.

Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes that Will Change the Way You Cook is organized more classically with sections for breakfast, snacks, salads and main courses (both meaty and meatless). Again, the photographs are inspiration enough to break out the spoons and skillet! I can’t help but share more recipes with you, including “Currant Cottage Cheese Pancakes” and “Salt-Baked Herbed Salmon with Red Onion-Caper Viniagrette.” Yum! Paging through these books will surely inspire your next meal.

For a full list of available Food52 cookbooks, see here.

The Fermentable Harvest

Monday August 22, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Malletts Creek Branch: Program Room

Spice: The Variety of Life (including Herbs)

Tuesday April 5, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
Grade 6 - Adult

A Bouquet of Flours (including Gluten-Free)

Wednesday March 9, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Downtown Library: Secret Lab
Grade 6 - Adult

Sometimes Love Means Cooking for Someone

Sun, 01/17/2016 - 5:38pm by hanxanth

I've put up lists of the library's yaoi manga before. Now, most scholars and readers will tell you that most yaoi manga, despite depicting boys love, is aimed at a female audience(check out this book if you're interested in learning more). These series are highly dramatized, romanticized, and on the whole very misleading about relationships between men. Thus I bring to you What Did You Eat Yesterday?

This manga series focuses on Shiro and Kenji, a gay couple that lives in Tokyo. Kenji works as a hair stylist, and Shiro works at a law firm. But no matter how busy their days are, they always share dinner together. The series focuses a lot on the relationship between the two main characters and how they deal with being gay in the conservative city of Tokyo, and how they discuss their difficulties over dinner, which Shiro usually cooks (there are quite a few pages in this series devoted to cooking). This is a more down-to-earth relationship, very believable, with none of the drama or overly romanticized scenes of standard yaoi series. The best part about this series is that it isn't entirely marketed to a female audience! So if you want to see a manga that more accurately depicts a gay relationship as well as a sweet story, check it out!

Then, whether or not you like the series, you can try Antique Bakery. This is a more standard yaoi series, short with only 4 volumes, but it still has an emphasis on food! And the series has even been made into an anime and a Korean drama if you're interested.

Ready, Set, BAKE!

Fri, 01/08/2016 - 8:48am by Sara W

Have you gotten hooked on The Great British Baking Show yet? Whether you are watching on Netflix or catching it on PBS, it's adorable and addictive, and will send you searching for a Victoria sponge recipe that uses American measurements.

Here are some ways AADL can foster your newly-awakened baking obsession:

Bakers looking to stretch their skill sets will find the recipes and instruction they need in The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: All-Purpose Baking Cookbook, which covers everything from A (apple pie) to Y (yeast breads), and probably something that starts with Z, too. Along with helpful technique tips, this cookbook provides ingredient and equipment advice helpful to bakers at all levels.

Dorie Greenspan's Baking: from my home to yours is a gem - Greenspan is a true expert and offers recipes ranging from easy to ambitious, but she provides plenty of illustrations and guidance along the way. Her World Peace cookies are not to be missed.

There's also The Cook's Illustrated Baking Book: baking demystified with 450 recipes from America's most trusted food magazine, or Baking Illustrated: a best recipe classic, both produced by the team at Cook's Illustrated, and which are heavily tested and laboriously detailed. As the founder of Cook's Illustrated, Christopher Kimball has cemented his reputation as a provider of precise instruction, and he's built a dedicated fanbase through hosting PBS' America's Test Kitchen and his appearances on public radio's The Splendid Table.

If bread is more your cup of tea than sweet desserts, try Flour Water Salt Yeast: the fundamentals of artisan bread and pizza by Portland, OR-based Ken Forkish. Bakers who are serious about bread will find both excellent recipes and the reasons why they work in this bread-baking bible. For bread-lovers who do have a sweet tooth, Beard on Bread by the inimitable James Beard is a good fit. Like all of Beard's work, it is eminently readable, but the recipes within are a little sweeter and softer than bakers interested in a more artisan-approach may desire.

True disciples of The Great British Baking Show may have to check out Mary Berry & Lucy Young Cook Up a Feast just to satiate their Mary Berry fixation. She's a good-hearted master home baker who provides tried-and-true methods for foolproof recipes, and instructions for getting things done ahead of time so you can properly enjoy an event for which you are baking.

Fiction lovers might enjoy The Art of Baking Blind by Sarah Vaughn, a story about contestants in a baking competition who learn a thing or two about attempting to leave their real-life struggles behind and aiming for culinary perfection. There's also Simply From Scratch by Alicia Bessette, about a widow who enters a baking contest to shake off her grief, and ends up finding a friend in a motherless neighbor girl who came for the desserts, but finds more benefit in the companionship.

Knead any more proof of AADL's baking resources? No? How about another baking pun? No again? Well, happy baking, friends!

2016 Michigan Notable Books Announced!

Mon, 01/04/2016 - 11:43am by Sara W

The 2016 Michigan Notable Book Award winners have been announced! These are books recognized by the Library of Michigan for "celebrating Michigan people, places, and events."

There are 20 books on the list, covering a wide variety of topics and aimed an an array of different audiences, including children's books, nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. This list covers the Michigan Notable titles available for borrowing through AADL, but wait, there's more! Back in October, AADL hosted David Maraniss for a discussion of his book, Once in a Great City: a Detroit story, which can be downloaded or viewed directly library's site.

This list will lead you to explorations of niche Michigan industries, celebrations of famous Michiganders, National Book Award-finalist storytelling, and mouth-watering recipes. So, congratulations to our new Notable authors, and next time you seek a pleasant, Michigan-inspired read, look about you.

Mix It Up!

Thu, 12/31/2015 - 8:56am by manz

You got a new fancy blender for Christmas. Now what? It’s time to mix it up! While there are a plethora of smoothie recipes online and in books, here are a few recent faves that offer simple recipes with a punch and without a lot of fuss.

The Blender Girl Smoothies offers 100 gluten-free, vegan & paleo friendly recipes, which include many solid and delicious recipes as well as quick info on how to go rogue and just DIY up your own concoction. With so many books and online blogs with smoothie recipes it's nice to have a collection of stellar recipes all in one quick spot and it's my go-to book when the blender's out! To contrast those healthy smoothies... 101 Blender Drinks is not super new, but the cocktail recipes included will have you grabbing a bag of ice and longing for summer patio days.