On Sunday, February 3, the National Football League (NFL) will be hosting the 47th Super Bowl in New Orleans featuring the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens. I predict that the San Francisco 49ers will win. I can't make the game live, so I thought I would bring a little bit of New Orleans to my party by making some gumbo from a recipe I got from the library. If Southern Cooking isn't your style, the library has a large collection of cook books you can browse through to find the right recipes to fit your party or just to try something new.

What will you be making and who will you be rooting for this Super Bowl Sunday?

I love going to the farmers markets at this time of year.  I can indulge my love of fresh beets, wonderful, colorful carrots, fresh basil and, most of all, fresh heirloom tomatoes.  When heirloom tomatoes are in season, I have Caprese salad with supper almost every night.  But they also make wonderful cold soups like gazpacho, they are great on hamburgers, and delicious eaten plain or with just a bit of oil, vinegar and/or salt.  If you are looking for information on new ways to eat or serve these wonderful fruits, come to the library we have several books that can give you information on how to grow, serve and preserve these treasures of the garden.  

Sushi...It is my favorite. I always ask to go out for Sushi for my birthday or other celebrations.

I am from the Midwest where sushi wasn't something I had heard of before I was in college.  I worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden where they hosted a week-long Japanese Festival.  It was there, that I first tasted sushi.  And it was love at first bite!

I learned to roll my own sushi using books from the library.  It isn't hard and you don't need raw fish to be a successful sushi chef.  Good news in a land-locked state.  One of the first rolls I made was Korean Sushi - which features grilled beef.  I call it "gateway sushi" because people who think sushi is just raw fish usually really like it!

You can do it too - just check out one of these books and get rolling!

Cali Roll from Bamboo Sushi on Vimeo.

 At this time of year, nothing warms me up like a nice hot bowl of soup or stew.   I love to cook, so even though it would be very easy to just go to a store and choose from the varieties they offer, I like to make a big batch of soup or stew and have it to eat with a sandwich for lunch or for an appetizer at dinner for several days.  Since I also have high blood pressure, I am also conscious of the amount of fat and salt that can be in those packaged soups and stews and can adust the amounts of those ingredients.   Interested in making a big pot of comfort food to warm you up on a cold winter night? Come check out our selections of cookbooks.  The variety of soup and stew recipies will astound you--from delicious creamy soups to hearty, "meaty" stews.    You may even find a new favorite recipie to keep your tummy  warm and full on a cold, damp winter night. 

I've got a fridge full of leftovers and I'm not going to let them go to waste! Let's take a minute or two to go over our leftover options...

Nadia G's Bitchin Kitchen: Cooking for Trouble by Nadia G is the star of a new quirky cooking show and this book brings some of what she shares to the printed page. In this book, she has a recipe for frittata using leftovers.

I regularly use leftover pasta and some fresh vegetables and a couple of eggs to make a frittata for breakfast or brunch. It sounds fancy and tastes great too!

Maya Angelou's cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart is a downloadable ebook that has a section on leftovers.

I know I'm going to be putting the ham into a casserole and drench it with barbque sauce to make barbque ham sandwiches later this week. That is sure to be a hit with my meat and potatoes husband!

Cookbooks that focus on cooking once to make many meals are also good places to get inspiration for leftover makeovers... Better Homes and Gardens Make Ahead Cooking does just that!

Another leftover meal I'm planning on is turkey mole which will become the center of a pan of enchiladas! There's an easy turkey mole recipe on the How Stuff Works website.

Now here's your chance to share - What do you do with Your leftovers?

Have you ever wondered what life would be like with a different kind of job? While it may be fun to dream about all the possibilities, most of us will never know what it would be like to make our living as a food critic for one of the most prestigious newspapers in the nation. Luckily we can all live vicariously by reading Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl’s bestselling memoir about that very thing – her time as the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times. It turns out the position also has qualities of being an actress, diplomat, secret shopper, and celebrity in addition to the more obvious comparison of writer with a chef’s palate.

As in Ms. Reichl’s other books, favorite recipes are sprinkled throughout. Additionally, the reprinted reviews which follow chapters describing the events leading up to and through the restaurant visits are so beautifully crafted and the food described in such sensuous detail that they are just as entertaining to read several years after their original printing in the paper. As readers we are conscious not only of the appreciation of the glorious food itself but also of the extravagant use of words to convey the atmosphere of the entire experience. Along the way we also find out about creative costuming, newsroom rivalries and relationships.

Reading Ruth Reichl’s books will encourage you not just to eat, but to savor. One word of warning, you may get very hungry…