Burnt Toast

From America's most beloved comedic actress and the star of Desperate Housewives comes a personal, heartfelt, and often very funny manifesto on life, love, and the lessons we all need to learn -- and unlearn -- on the road to happiness Teri Hatcher secured her place in America's heart when she stood up to accept her Golden Globe for Best Actress and declared herself a "has-been" on national television. That moment showcased her down-to-earth, self-deprecating style -- and her frank openness about the ups and downs she's experienced in life and work. But what the world might not have seen that night is that Teri's self-acceptance is the hard-won effort of a single mother with all the same struggles most women have to juggle -- life, love, bake sale cookies, and dying cats. Now, in the hope that her foibles and insights might inspire and motivate other women, Teri opens up about the little moments that have sustained her through good times and bad. From the everyday (like the importance of letting your daughter spill her macaroni so she knows it's okay to make mistakes) to the rare (a rendezvous with a humpback whale -- and no, he was not a suitor), the message at the heart of Burnt Toast -- that happiness and success are choices that we owe it to ourselves to make -- is sure to resonate with women everywhere.

A delicious new memoir from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry A family history peppered with recipes, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good offers a humorous and flavorful tale spanning three generations as Kathleen Flinn returns to the mix of food and memoir readers loved in her New York Times bestseller, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. Brimming with tasty anecdotes about Uncle Clarence’s divine cornflake-crusted fried chicken, Grandpa Charles’s spicy San Antonio chili, and Grandma Inez’s birthday-only cinnamon rolls, Flinn—think Ruth Reichl topped with a dollop of Julia Child—shows how meals can be memories, and how cooking can be communication. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good will inspire readers (and book clubs) to reminisce about their own childhoods—and spend time in their kitchens making new memories of their own.

A gifty, funny, and practical guide to transforming the most lackluster of ingredients into a delicious meal, making bad food good and making good food even better, from the author of the New York Times bestselling and IACP Award–winning Twelve Recipes. Dinner is looking meh. Maybe the stove was left unattended for just a second too long for your original plan; maybe the on-sale meat at the supermarket isn’t looking quite worth the savings after two days in the fridge. Do you waste food and time trying to start from scratch, or money ordering takeout? No, you face up to the facts, step up your game, and transform that cooking conundrum into a delicious meal. The best way to do that? Follow the guidance of Cal Peternell, a chef coming out of the restaurant kitchen to meet cooks where they are with this funny, practical manual for making Bad Food Good. Though many pro chefs may be able to get their sustainably sourced, locally grown, 100 percent grass-fed, organic ingredients and gently guide them through careful preparation to a simply sublime dish, most of us don’t achieve farm-to-table perfection in every step of the process. From facing down third-day leftovers that have lost a little of their luster to the limits of their local supermarket’s quality, many home cooks start at a disadvantage. With his signature dry wit and years of experience cooking for everyone from high-end restaurant patrons to his hungry family, Cal Peternell is here to level the playing field with this bag of tricks for turning standard (or substandard) fare into a meal to be proud of, troubleshooting such situations as: Making the best of burned food (Burned your toast? Time to make Cheesy Onion Bread Pudding!) Hacking packaged food (including 5 variations on “Hackaroni and Cheese”) Things restaurants often do wrong and you can do better (including pesto, queso, bean dip, ranch, and more) Spicing up lackluster vegetables (Brocco Tacos dazzle both in name and in flavor) Snazzing up dishes with “special sauces for the boring” (including vegetable purees and an infinite variety of savory butter sauces) Cal also includes a series of hilarious Old Man cocktails, ranging from the Bitter Old Man (one part bitter, one part brandy) to the Wise Old Man (8 ounces water and a good night’s sleep). Up your cooking game by learning how to spin anything in your pantry or fridge into something special with Burnt Toast and Other Disasters.

Arthur and Stella Crandall, two dogs, are for the most part content with their lives until a fly comes along and grants Arthur three wishes.

In a world fraught with diet-culture and weight stigma, many parents worry about their child's relationship with their body and food. This down-to-earth guide is an invaluable resource allowing parents to take proactive actions in promoting a friendship with food, and preventative actions to minimize the risk factors for the development of eating disorders, particularly when early signs of disordered eating, excessive exercise, or body dissatisfaction have been noticed. It provides clear strategies and tools with a practical focus to gently encourage parents and teens to have a healthy relationship with food and exercise by centralizing joy and health. Coming from a therapist, a dietician, and an adolescent medicine physician, with insightful case studies from an array of young people from different backgrounds, this multidisciplinary author team delivers friendly, strategic guidance based in a wealth of expertise.

Winner of the 2015 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Award Forewords by Alice Waters and Michael Pollan In this dazzling, full color cookbook and kitchen manual filled with lush photographs and beautiful drawings, the chef of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse offers basic techniques and essential recipes that will transform anyone into a confident home cook. When his oldest son was leaving for college, Cal Peternell, the chef of San Francisco’s legendary Chez Panisse, realized that, although he regularly made dinners for his family, he’d never taught them the basics of cooking. Based on the life-altering course of instruction he prepared and honed through many phone calls with his son, Twelve Recipes is the ultimate introduction to the kitchen. Peternell focuses on the core foods and dishes that comprise a successful home cook’s arsenal, each building skill upon skill—from toast, eggs, and beans, to vinaigrettes, pasta with tomato, and rice, to vegetables, soup, meats, and cake. Twelve Recipes will help home cooks develop a core repertoire of skills and increase their culinary confidence. Peternell tells you what basic ingredients and tools you need for a particular recipe, and then adds variations to expand your understanding. Each tip, instruction, and recipe connects with others to weave into a larger story that illuminates the connection between food and life. A deeply personal book, it was written by the chef alone and it glows with warmth and humor as he mulls over such mundane items as toast and rice to offer surprising new insights about foods that only seem exceedingly ordinary. It’s a book you’re as likely to keep by your bedside as your stovetop. With Peternell as your guide, the journey is pure pleasure and the destination is delicious. Twelve Recipes features gorgeous color photos and inset illustrations by Peternell’s wife and sons (all artists), and forewords by celebrated chef Alice Waters and New York Times columnist and bestselling author Michael Pollan.

After breaking his arm on set, Wolf's Landing stuntman Ginsberg Sloan finds himself temporarily out of work. Luckily, Bluewater Bay's worst B&B has cheap long-term rates, and Ginsberg's not too proud to take advantage of them. Derrick Richards, a grizzled laid-off logger, inherited the B&B after his parents' untimely deaths. Making beds and cooking sunny-side-up eggs is hardly Derrick's idea of a man's way to make a living, but just as he's decided to shut the place down, Ginsberg shows up on his doorstep, pitiful and soaking wet, and Derrick can hardly send him packing. Not outright, at least. The plan? Carry on the B&B's tradition of terrible customer service and even worse food until the pampered city boy leaves voluntarily. What Derrick doesn't count on, though, is that the lousier he gets at hosting, the more he convinces bored, busybody Ginsberg to try to get the B&B back on track. And he definitely doesn't count on the growing attraction between them, or how much more he learns from Ginsberg than how to put out kitchen fires.