sassy pepper and friends
A sassy lady pepper stands in the foreground in front of a merry band of dorky veggies doing a kick line
Plant-based cooking with a side of snark
sassy pepper and friends
A sassy lady pepper stands in the foreground in front of a merry band of dorky veggies doing a kick line
Plant-based cooking with a side of snark
sassy pepper and friends
A sassy lady pepper stands in the foreground in front of a merry band of dorky veggies doing a kick line
Plant-based cooking with a side of snark
Good Recs2023-03-07T17:23:18-05:00

Good Recommendations

A few of my favorite things that make plant-based life easy and fun.

7 Essential Cooking Gadgets

The first serious home baker I knew was my friend Jan. How do you do this?, I asked, sitting in Jan’s Ithaca kitchen, sliding a forkful of decadent, velvety-dense, tangy-sweet, artery-clogging (yet worth it), New York-style cheesecake into my mouth.

Jan pointed towards the KitchenAid Mixmaster on the counter.

“It’s easier to be a good baker if you have the right tools,” Jan told me. Until that moment, I’d assumed the only people who would own such a serious-looking appliance would already be “good bakers.” It had not occurred to me such an appliance could help you become a good — or better — baker.

Though it would be years until I started to cook, I did not forget my friend’s advice.

Here’s my list of 7 essential gadgets that make cooking easier, and recipes more delicious. Don’t wait until you identify as “chef” to buy them.

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My 10 Favorite Cookbooks

In the early days of my learning-to-cook journey, (before Al Gore invented the Internet), I was a sucker for just about any cookbook that had “Vegetarian” in the title. My library was impressive. It took a cross-country move (i.e., packing) for me to realize I didn’t cook from most of those books. Some had a couple dog-eared pages with smears of dried sauce, signifying my go-to recipes. But the rest? Inspired writing, and hunger-inducing, air-brushed food photography do not always translate into useful cookbooks. I gave many of them away. (Today, I’d deposit them in my Little Free Library, but those weren’t invented yet, either).

Now, here’s how I buy a cookbook.

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