Soul Food Love by Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams

It's not often that I get emotionally involved in a cookbook, but the stories at the front of this book really touched me. The history of the women, the reasons why they cooked the way they did, and the emotional ties to food, cooking, and kitchens is a huge part of why I love this book.

And it's that history that makes the recipes make sense. Because on first glance, I wasn't sure how an avocado salad fit into a soul food cookbook.

Caroline Randall Williams is the now-generation of a long line of black women who grew large as they grew older. She decided to break that cycle and eat healthy while keeping her soul food heritage, and she also wanted to help her mom break out of the cycle as well.

I generally shy away from diet books or those that claim to be healthy because they often tend to eliminate food groups, embrace fads, or feel like deprivation. This book is none of that. It's good food that you can eat almost every day, with a few indulgences thrown in.

But, as she points out, the food that many know as soul food - rich and salty and fatty - was not meant to be everyday food - it was celebration food. And if you eat celebration food every day, it becomes less special.

Salmon Croquettes are one example of a well-loved family recipe that she updated. My own mother also used to make something similar, although in my house they were simply called salmon patties. Williams noted that in "back in the day," the salmon croquettes were filled with rich binders and fried in an inch of bacon grease, while these patties use egg as the binder and are seared in olive oil.

I like her version better.

Williams noted that this book has recipes that you can make without requiring trips to fancy food stores, and without ordering online. You can make these whether you shop at Walmart or Whole Foods, whichever fits your budget or your mood.

I like that. While I love hunting for new ingredients, I also like making easy and approachable dishes that I can decide to make, shop for, and have on the table in the same day. I've got a handful of recipes bookmarked - including that Salmon Croquette recipe, and others that will have to wait for summer produce to hit the markets and a salad that might show up on the Easter table this year.

As soon as I've got a recipe to show off, I'll have it over at Cookistry. Stay tuned for that.

I received Soul Food Love from the publisher at no cost to me.

Hit and Nun

I was totally amused by Hit and Nun by Peg Cochran. From the title, you might think it's about a convent ... from the cover, you know there's pizza involved. But how do nuns and pizza tie together?

The heroine of the story, Lucille Mazzarella, is an old-school middle-aged Italian wife and mother who works part time for a church. That doesn't sound like the setup for a mystery novel ... but then Lucille is the sole witness when the owner of a nearby pizza parlor stumbles into the church and dies.

But he's not dead from natural causes - of course, he's been murdered.

Lucille apparently has a reputation as an amateur detective ... of course ... so she and her gal-pal Flo get themselves involved in figuring out who the murderer is.

No only does Lucille feel responsible because the guy died in front of her, but he was also the owner of her favorite pizza place.

Lucille goes as far as applying for a job at a competitor's pizza parlor - she suspects he might be involved -  and all while she manages to cook for her husband and extended family, and annoy her adult daughter who has moved back into Lucille's home with her husband and infant..

A running joke through the book is that Lucille read about the paleo diet in a magazine at the "Clip and Curl" while she was waiting to get her hair done, and she decides to give it a try. Of course, she didn't read the whole article, so the reasoning she uses to decide what "cavemen" ate is pretty funny.

Lucille is an interesting character. She goes from being down-to-earth and traditional to being goofy and flighty in the blink of an eye, but somehow it works. By the end of the book, some of the decisions she makes are downright daft, but it still works. By that time, we're used to her goofiness, and we follow along on the ride.

This is definitely a lighthearted mystery that won't give you the creeps late at night, but will leave you shaking your head and laughing.

I received a digital version of this book at no cost to me for the purpose of a review.

The Pi Moment of the Century - and lots of PIE cookbooks

Happy π Day! Are you ready to party like a pastry chef? Or a pie eater?

Today at 9:26 a.m. plus 53 seconds, the date and time will give us the first 10 digits of the number π which we spell as Pi, which is pronounced just like Pie.

So the foodies among us tend to celebrate the day with food rather than algebra. Specifically, pie.

For my own celebration, I made a cheesecake (because cheesecake is more pie than cake) from the book The Great Big Pressure Cooker Book.

It's not a pie book, or even a baking cookbook, but I really liked the cheesecake recipe. I wrote about that book here, along with the recipe for the cheesecake..

The first time around, I used the basic recipe in the book, but this time around, I used the alternative method of whipping the cheesecake filling before cooking, to make it more fluffy as opposed to more creamy.

It was good ... it was more of a New York style cheesecake - light and fluffy and airy. But I'm a midwesterner, so I prefer the creamy version. I'll be making it again, I'm sure. But I wouldn't refuse the fluffy version, if someone served me a slice.

Here's the whipped one - I topped it with a sweetened sour cream, because I felt like it.

And here's the creamier version:

That's my pie, but how about some books about pie and pastry? I've got a ton of general baking books, and baking books that exclude pies, but not that many that are only about pies and pastries.

On my bookshelf right now is:

The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum

Pie in the Sky by Susan G. Purdy

The Complete Book of Pastry by Bernard Clayton Jr.

Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook by Alan Rosen and Beth Allen

Pie it Forward by Gesine Bullock-Prado

Pie it Forward was the book I wrote about for Pi Day in 2012, and there's a lovely blueberry pie recipe on the post, too. Mmmm. Pie.

I have one pie-centric cookbook in my Amazon cart that I haven't purchased yet, but I intend to:

Mrs. Rowe's Little Book of Southern Pies by Mollie Cox Bryan

And ... this is really cool - I've got a book coming. It was just released today - on Pi Day. I'll be reviewing it after I've had some time to have fun with it:

The Norske Nook Book of Pies by Jerry Bechard and Cindee Borton-Parker.

So, now it's your turn. Do you have any other pie books that you recommend? Tell me about your favorites in the comments, and feel free to link to any reviews you've done.
For a whole bunch of pie recipes, check out today's post on Cookistry, where I have 55 pie and pie-related recipes!