Today's featured cookbook, Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert, is one that I mentioned several months ago here on Slashfood, but I like it so much that I thought it deserved a second mention. I pulled it off my shelf a couple of days ago, because I've been in something of a cooking funk lately and thought it might help to inspire me. I find that without the abundance of the farmers market, I have a hard time finding new things to cook. I've been rotating between pots of soup and loaves of bread for weeks now, without much variation. I thought that reading some new recipes, geared towards the quite austerity of the winter, might help me at least alter the variety of soups I'm making (I switch between carrot based soups and chicken with veggies and rice).

And inspire me it did. I'm excited to try out the recipe for Maple Parsnip Soup as well as the Shredded Beet Salad (it's amazing to me how just changing the way you cut a vegetable can change the way your taste buds experience it). Over the weekend, I'm planning to make Bounty Rice, which is a sort of deconstructed stuffed cabbage, spiced with oregano and basil. You can find the recipe after the jump.

This last weekend, I drove down to Washington, DC to visit a good friend who moved there from Philly in July. After I had had the opportunity to admire her adorable apartment and fantastic neighborhood, we hopped into my car and headed for the Maryland suburbs to hit several locations of the Value Village thriftstore chain.

In addition to picking up a new set of measuring cups for $1.20 (the 1/3 cup measure is missing it's handle) and a set of measuring spoons for $.80 (they looked as if they'd never once had the opportunity to measure anything) I acquired six new cookbooks. A couple are old Sunset guides to entertaining or casseroles (don't worry, I plan on sharing some of the good recipes with you all) but one seems to be especially worth the two bucks I paid for it.

It's call Simply in Season and is a collection of recipes (primarily vegetarian) that are organized by season. It's put together by the Mennonite Central Committee, the same folks who brought us the More with Less cookbook (another terrific cooking resource that I've used many times over the years). One recipe from the book that jumped out at me is for a Chard Cheese Bake. Chard is one of those plants that continues to give, making it a favorite of home gardeners and CSA farmers alike. It can be gotten cheaply at grocery stores and farmers markets and doesn't cook down to nothing the way that spinach does. This recipe is sort of like an easy quiche without a crust and I imagine that this would be equally good in the morning for breakfast or as a dinner side dish. The recipe is after the jump.

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