52 Weeks of New Recipes

I’ve been rather remiss in posting to this blog, as you may have noticed. I have also failed to address all the new recipes I have torn out of magazines, cookbooks, and from the web. So in an attempt to rectify both issues, I will be posting one new recipe per week; hopefully this will make a dent in the backlog of recipes I have been hoarding as well as provide new fodder for readers.

Let me be clear, however, that some recipes I try may be failures. They may not live up to my standards, but I will still write about them. As most of you know, I am my own worst critic and rarely write about mishaps and missteps, but in trying out new things, there are bound to be a few. If I am lucky, it will only be a handful and the rest will turn out to be delicious and worth replicating in your own home kitchen.

So follow along as I wend my way through the clippings and new ingredients. In the end, I know we will find more than a few gems to add to our repertoire.

Eating Suburbia Cookbook Now Available!

You heard it right, there is a new cookbook by Mrs. B…and Brilliant Daughter. A loving collaboration between the two of us for friends and family, we’ve been able to make it available to the public on Amazon.

Named after this blog, Eating Suburbia is a follow-up to Eat · Drink · Merry, a cookbook that debuted in 2010. That first book—a compilation of family favorites—was a product of this blog and our love of food. Three years and hundreds of recipes later, this second book is following in those footsteps.

I had a blast working with Brilliant Daughter on recipe testing, formatting, design. And for those of you who have eaten in our home, you should easily figure out the impetus behind the cover design. This time around we made the cover very personal (and probably less commercial), paying homage to the 4x6’ chalkboard that hung in our kitchen for almost 15 years. Our “communications center,” this utilitarian wall décor served us well, keeping track of shopping lists, phone messages, chore duty, family contact information, and, during holidays, became an oversized greeting card for our guests. And although it was retired when we remodeled, the fond memories linger and became the inspiration.

The effort behind these cookbooks is to encourage cooks to break out of a cooking rut and spice up the kitchen with fresh ingredients and some foreign flavors. As I’ve said before, I believe that the world might be a better place if the canned veggies, packaged cookies, and oversweet jams were left on the shelves, and we spent a little time digging into the garden and flour bag and treating our families and ourselves to something better.

By sharing, we hope that someone will take the next step in the kitchen by trying to make mujadara, Guinness bread, a spicy tuna roll, or the perfect pecan pie, and know that it doesn’t have to be complicated and that the end result speaks for itself.

This book is comprised of eight sections: Breakfast, Appetizers, Lunch, Dinner, Sides, Quick & Easy, Desserts, and Odds & Ends. Sidebars contain tips on shortcuts, cooking ingredients and sources. There is a bonus section in the back that contains the 10 most treasured recipes from our first cookbook, Eat · Drink · Merry.

All recipes were tested in our suburban kitchens, without any fancy equipment (unless a candy thermometer and Kitchen Aid mixer count as fancy). All ingredients are easily sourced and the majority of the recipes take less than one hour. So what are you waiting for? Take a chance, make a change—your stomach will thank you for it.

To order Eating Suburbia, head on over to Amazon here.

If you don’t have our first book, it’s still available on Lulu here.