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Cooking vegetarian has always been easy for me. I eat some fish and fowl, but don’t really miss those flavors when meals are meatless. Dabbling in entirely plant-based cooking, however, sometimes feels like new and different territory. Arriving at creamy textures without cream or milk or butter, using substitutes for eggs, and giving dishes good savory, umami flavor without cheese has been a fun learning process. One of my favorite, recent, vegan experiments was revisiting the carrot dog fad as pigs in a blanket . So, I was delighted to practice more plant-based cooking with the new book The Wicked Healthy Cookbook: Free. From. Animals . Chad and Derek Sarno are self-proclaimed plant pushers. I like that, and I might be a bit of a plant pusher myself. They encourage readers to eat 80% healthy and 20% wicked, and they offer lots of big-flavor ways to achieve that with the recipes. The beginning of the book lays out good lists for kitchen equipment and pantry ingredients as well as tips ...

There was a time when I lived to shop. Nothing was better than spending a day immersed in clothing, shoes, and accessories to try on, compare, and decide what to take home. At some point, I became much lazier about shopping. Now, I’d much rather open several tabs in a web browser to compare and decide and order online. But, one thing that would make me want to shop in person is the prospect of a great lunch or dinner as part of the outing. Have you ever dined in a department store or clothing store? I have a couple of times. In both cases, the restaurants gave a feeling of providing for your every need. You can shop awhile, take a break, have a snack or a meal, and everything you could want is right there. That sense of generous hospitality was evident in the new book The Freds at Barneys New York Cookbook by Mark Strausman of which I received a review copy. The book is full of crowd-pleasing dishes from Freds, the restaurant inside Barneys, that can now be found in the Madison Avenue...