Weekend Cooking: The List Edition

As some of you know, we celebrated my mother's 90th birthday last week. It involved two travel days and three days of fun adventures. We had one day home and it was July 4 already! All of this is to explain why I haven't cooked lately, and I haven't had much time to read either. What's a Weekend Cooking host to do?

I decided that this week is the perfect time to share some food-related links I've collected. I also thought it'd be fun to give you a look at a few of the food and cooking books I have my read and review list. Maybe you'll get to them before I do.

Hope you're staying as cool as possible this summer. . . . I can tell you that our A/C window units are barely keeping up. Don't ask me about my second-floor home office!

Links to Explore

• Ice Pops! We love homemade ice pops! I make all kinds of fruit-based pops in the summer; some are boozy, some are austere sugar free, some are rich -- all, however, are refreshing. Right now I have banana/sweet cherry pops in the freezer. Want some ideas for making your own? Martha Stewart has 40 recipes, and Bon Appetit offers a guide to all things ice pops.
• Eat Your Veggies! We use our grill all year round (even when it's snowing), but it's a particular godsend when I can't stand the thought of turning on the stove or oven. You don't have to be a meat eater to love your grill: Delish collected 20 recipes for grilled vegetables, and Serious Eats found 18 recipes.
• Easy Entertaining! We're mostly wine drinkers, but sometimes it's fun to offer an eye-catching and refreshing mixed drink to guests. The only problem is, who wants to play bartender all afternoon or evening? Yay for cocktails in a pitcher. You'll find 11 pitcher cocktail recipes at Saveur and 12 recipes at Town and Country.
• Shop Locally! From May to November, we buy most of our food from local producers at one of our several farmers markets. We're experienced market shoppers, but if you aren't or just need some advice, Cooking Light has 7 excellent tips for how to shop like a pro, and Kitchn has 10 tips for proper etiquette and what to expect.

Food Books on My eReader

Some of the following books I have checked out from the library, others are review copies, and still others are in my personal collection. Some are newly published (or about to be published), and others are older. All are on my current reading list.

• Basque Country by Marti Buckley: Cookbook of food from (duh) Basque Country
• Milk by Mark Kurlansky: Food history
• Bread Toast Crumbs by Alexandra Stafford: No-knead breads & how to use them
• Cook It in Cast Iron by Cook's Country: Special equipment cookbook
• Feast by Anissa Helou: Cookbook of food from Islamic countries
• Sugar by James Walvin: Food history
• Fix, Freeze, Feast by Kati Neville & Lindsay Ahrens: Freezer cookbook
• A Bite-Sized History of France by Stéphane Henaut & Jeni Mitchell: Food history

Note: Photo of cocktail pitcher by Tom Coleman / Saveur.

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Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

NOTE: Mr. Linky sometimes is mean and will give you an error message. He's usually wrong and your link went through just fine the first time. Grrrr.
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