The Adult Department at the Homewood Public Library currently hosts a monthly recipe club. Every month a new theme will be chosen and each attendee will make a dish based on that month’s theme.

Thus far, we have showcased everything from cookies to healthy favorites. You will not be assigned a feature cookbook to cook from.  Instead, choose any cookbook and pick a recipe that represents the month’s theme. Put on your apron and cook like the culinary star you are in your own kitchen. We would love for you to share your masterpiece with the rest of us and invite you to try the other delicious dishes represented as well. Don’t forget to jot down or print off your recipe so one of our staff members can make copies and pass it around.

Don’t have a cookbook that is just right? We’ve got you covered! Come on in and select one of the many cookbooks we have on our very own shelves. Still can’t find what you want? A staff member will be happy to help you locate just the right book from one of our other 39 Jefferson County Library branches.  We can have your cookbook sent and ready for pickup at the location of your choice.

During the month of June, we are taking advantage of all those local Farmer’s Markets with a “Farm to Table” theme. We look forward to trying those fresh creations and coming up with some of our own. Buy fresh, buy local and get to cooking!

For recommendations, I will start here:

Dishing Up the Dirt: Simple recipes for cooking through the seasons….

Dewey Location: 641.564 BEM

Overwhelmed with the possibility of vegetables? Look no further than this recipe book.  Andrea Bemis, who owns and runs a six-acre organic farm with her husband outside of Portland Oregon, inspires dinners by what is grown in the soil and picked by hand. In Dishing Up the Dirt, Andrea offers 100 authentic farm-to-table recipes, arranged by season. She also has a spectacular website here, where you can look up recipes for nearly any vegetable imaginable.

For more than enough recipes to get you through the “fresh” season, consider “Cooking Season by Season: 1000 recipes to cook through the year“.

Dewey Location: 641.564 COO

If you grow your own vegetables or prefer to shop at farmers’ markets and support local growers, rather than relying on bland food grown thousands of miles away, Cooking Season by Season celebrates this return to seasonality and is perfect for the home cook.

Cook it, Can it, Freeze it! Taste of Home’s Farm Fresh Favorites is all about good, honest food made from wholesome, fresh-from-the-farm ingredients.

Dewey Location: 641.564 TAS

Now fresh-picked flavor can be part of every meal you serve with this beautiful Taste of Home Farm Fresh Favorites Cookbook. With 300+ recipes for the most popular produce including corn, tomatoes, peppers, apples, berries and much more plus methods for freezing and canning to help help you preserve its goodness, this book will help you get more nutritious, healthy vegetables and fruits into your meals and help you save money by preserving them yourself.