Presents a series of techniques and tips for solving common kitchen problems in preparing and serving meats, fruits, vegetables, spices, and condiments.

The experts at "Cook's Illustrated" magazine, who work in "America's Test Kitchen, " bring cooks no-nonsense recipes, equipment reviews, and the results of blind-taste tests!

The Best Simple Recipes offers more than 200 full-flavored easy-to-prepare recipes that can be on the table in 30 minutes or less in an easy-to-read paperback format. Just because time is short, it doesn't mean you have to settle for a can of soup or a sandwich for dinner, or making one of the many boring and flavorless fast recipes (which often aren't even as fast as they promise). Our test cooks have created more than 200 recipes that keep the ingredients and cooking time to a minimum and offer tons of flavor and plenty of variety. By combining steps, minimizing pans, and employing a little test kitchen trickery, our test cooks have made naturally fast recipes even faster, and they've made recipes that traditionally take hours ready for the table in half an hour. And while they used a minimum of ingredients, one thing they didn't minimize was flavor.

For nearly 15 years, Cynthia Lair's iconic cookbook Feeding the Whole Family has been the source for parents who want to cook one healthy meal for the entire family, including babies. Feeding the Whole Family starts with the basics of creating a whole foods diet, from understanding grains and beans to determining what meats are acceptable to eat. Lair then applies these lessons to cooking for young children and babies aged six months and older. In each recipe, Lair offers special instruction on how to adapt it so that younger children can enjoy the dish while parents can eat a more complicated version. All recipes utilize easy-to-find ingredients, are simple to follow, and will be enjoyable for both child and parent. With a new foreword by Mothering magazine's editor and founder Peggy O'Mara, Feeding the Whole Family is a necessary staple for all families.

This book presents a new perspective on creativity: that creative innovation depends on inside-of-the-box thinking. It shows that creativity builds on what we know and how we use old ideas to produce new ones. In a highly readable format, Robert W. Weisberg uses case studies of seminal creative advances, such as Leonardo's 'Aerial Screw' and Frank Lloyd Wright's award-winning house, 'Fallingwater.' These fascinating examples are evaluated alongside cutting-edge research to present an analysis of creativity that challenges us to think differently about this intriguing cognitive ability.

365 Quick Tips is a collection of our editor's favorite picks from thousands of kitchen tricks and shortcuts submitted by our readers over the last eight years. One of the most popular sections of Cook's illustrated magazine, quick tips are easier (often surprising) ways of performing a kitchen task which either saves time, money or just makes you a better cook. Inside you will find truly original ideas for getting the lumps out of polenta (use an immersion blender), knowing when your steamer is out of water (add marbles to the bottom of the pot), and melting chocolate without a microwave (use the burner of an electric drip coffee machine). The quick tips are organized alphabetically and beautifully demonstrated through hand-drawn illustrations.

Innovative solutions to everyday cooking challenges from our team of test kitchen MacGyvers—the test cooks at Cook’s Illustrated magazine A kitchen hack is an unusual, easier, and/or better way of performing a task that often saves money and time or improves the quality of the outcome. In this wacky but eminently useful collection of kitchen hacks, you will learn how to outsmart tricky tasks and face down kitchen challenges (big and small) with innovative and clever ideas from Quick Tips, the most popular feature in Cook’s Illustrated magazine (900,000 circulation). Kitchen Hacks is a beautifully designed guidebook to hacking your kitchen . . . and beyond!