The Mac & Cheese Hunt + My Favorite Cookbooks of 2021

It's almost Thanksgiving and I'm painstakingly choosing the mac & cheese recipe I'm going to use and thinking about just how many cookbooks I've bought and loved this year. Here are my favorites!

Hey there,

Happy almost Thanksgiving (if you’re in the states), happy almost Thursday, if not. :) I’m mostly off the hook this holiday because I’m hosting Christmas. So all I’m responsible for tomorrow is baked mac and cheese. I should make a recipe I’ve already used in the past and not risk the cardinal mistake of cooking a new recipe for a large group of people, but meh. I don’t love my old recipe and I feel like gambling. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? We’re short one carb? I’m sure we’ll survive.

Of course, when I had to decide WHICH mac and cheese recipe I’d make, I went into my cookbook room *cough* I mean my dining room where we don’t actually dine and where my cookbook library lives.

After staring at the shelves, I realized the answer was obvious…go with Ina. This year, of all the new cookbooks I’ve purchased, the ones I’ve gone back to the most have had the Barefoot Contessa’s smiling face on them. I mean, she’s responsible for the actual out loud cheering that happens at my house when I announce we’re having Broccolini with Cheddar from her Modern Comfort Food cookbook. My family will now pout if I make regular ol’ broccoli. They’re fancy now, apparently. It’s broccolini or nothing.

So, if you’re looking for a cookbook gift for someone, that’s my go to rec. Modern Comfort Food didn’t break the internet during the pandemic for nothing.

But for the mac and cheese recipe, I’ll actually be attempting one her recipes from her Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook minus the tomatoes on top because I don’t want a revolt from my southern family. Only breadcrumbs and cheese go on top of baked mac.

And if it doesn’t work, well, there are some blue boxes in my pantry…

But all this recipe hunting got me to thinking about which cookbooks really stood out this year because, y’all, I’ve bought A LOT of them. Buying cookbooks is one of my favorite stress shopping activities. Some of them I just like to read/look at, but most of them I want to be useful.

So since a lot of you will be doing gift shopping (or making your own wishlists) in the next few weeks, I thought I’d share my favorites. First place is the obvious. The rest are in no particular order.

Modern Comfort Food

Dinner by Melissa Clark

I really liked the practical approach in Dinner. Just the deep dive into roasting a chicken was worth it.

The Ultimate Burger

If you buy this one for nothing else, buy it for the California Turkey Burger recipe. It is turkey burger perfection—not dry, full of flavor and Monterey jack, topped with avocado, and somehow has breadcrumbs in it but that makes it moister. What?? I just can’t even. I’m hungry writing about it. This recipe has become a regular item in our dinner rotation.

Mandy’s Gourmet Salads

When I got Covid back in August (I was fully vaccinated so had a flu-like case), I lost all of my smell and most of my taste, but one of the few things I could still taste was salad, especially if it had bitter things in it like kale and lemon. I promptly became obsessed with making all the delicious salads. (If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw way too many photos of kale salads.) So I bought this cookbook during that time. And though I didn’t follow any recipes exactly, it was great inspiration for how I could dress up my salads. Plus, it’s just a pretty book.

Start Simple by Lukas Volger

I love vegetables. I find them the most interesting of the food groups because there’s so much you can do with them. Even though I’m not a vegetarian, I lean toward plant-based and get most excited about new things to do with fruits and veggies. So this book is technically vegetarian but that’s not the reason why it exists. He wrote this during the pandemic and it focuses on 11 everyday ingredients that you can spin into all different kinds of dishes. I love how simple things with very few ingredients can be turned into something wonderful. For instance, back to kale salads for a minute, I learned a technique from this book where you just take a whole avocado and some chopped kale, you massage the avocado into the kale leaves along with a squeeze of lemon and some salt and pepper and boom—you have a dressed salad that is uh-mazing. I eat this weekly now. Sometimes I throw in homemade croutons and sunflower seeds to make it fancy. Get this one if you love veggie options.

100 Cookies by Sarah Kieffer

This one looks like it’s on sale on kindle for 2.99 today. I’ve had this one since December of 2020. Many cookies have been made. They have all be great and none have been hard. The pan-banging method she uses for some is fun for letting out frustration too because, yeah, you actually bang pans—wait, that sounds dirty. ;)

Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi

I’ve had this one since 2020 as well, but it’s my newsletter and I make the “Best of” rules. Plus, it’s called Snacking. Cakes. Need I say more? I love that these are mix and dump in a pan kind of cakes. Desserts that aren’t too big of a hassle to make on like a Tuesday night, but are also good for company. I also have found that the ones I’ve made aren’t cloyingly sweet so it feels okay to be snacking on them. ;)

Alright, that’s it from me! Well, until Friday when I do my next Romantic Movie Marathon review. If you need me, I’ll be shredding $30 worth of fancy cheese (because Ms. Ina can’t just use regular cheddar, y’all.) Hopefully I’ll also be eating at least $10 worth of it.

I hope you and your family have a fantastic Thanksgiving (or Thursday) and if you have any great cookbooks or recipes you want to share, leave a comment!

—Roni

*Book links are affiliate links (Amazon, Libro.fm, and/or Bookshop.org), which means I earn a small commission if you buy through my links. Also, I receive advanced listening copies of some audiobooks through Libro.fm’s Influencer program. However, all reviews and opinions are my own.