This Weekend in Food

Cookbook inspiration for the World Series, for Saturday morning, for a reset Sunday dinner

This weekend is my idea of heaven in terms of cooking opportunities — two World Series games, a lounge-y Saturday morning live-streaming my college senior’s soccer game, friends over for drinks at a cocktail bar around the corner before dinner chez nous; then a low-key reset Sunday dinner, time to mentally prepare for the onslaught of nausea-inducing news consumption that will wear me down all week long. Hooray! While I am grateful for a good cookbook all the time, I am especially grateful these days, as I stare at the newest crop of fall winners on my dining room table, all of them offering not just inspiring dinner ideas, but also the promise of comfort and control, however temporary…

I spent most of today leafing through them, slowing down my pinball-machine brain, and below is a rundown of what I plan to audition for my various cooking events this weekend. In the interest of “make new friends but keep the old,” and also because these books are so new that you might not own them yet, I’ve also included links to my own stand-bys, recipes pre-approved a hundred times over, ready to be made on autopilot all weekend long…