Snow Country Cooking: Good Food for the Great Outdoors

Delightfully, this simple and useful cookbook quotes poet Theodore Roethke on snow, in its Introduction. This 'snow country' is not the same freezing place that your car needs shoveling out of every few days. Rather, it's an exquisite and pristine weekend wilderness where you snowshoe, ski, or - back at the cabin - quietly read or maybe just beat everyone at Scrabble. The fine photos of snowy mountains and inviting cabin windowsills and a few interiors complement the equally beautiful photos of the hearty and appetizing food. The recipes are mostly for the sort of American "bistro" food to which many urbanites might be accustomed. It is essentially humble, but not necessarily quick to prepare. (Someone might like to stay back at the cabin, in order to cook.) There is "Four Seasons Pizza," "Three-Onion Soup with Gruyere Croutons," an omelet and a frittata, various gratins and stews, hearty hot sandwiches, and simple, good-sounding desserts and breakfasts. In addition, there are hot drinks such as Irish coffee, hot buttered rum, glogg, and chai.The ingredients should best be purchased before heading up to snow country. Pearl onions, fresh ginger, turnips, tomatillo salsa, allspice berries, prosciutto, and fontina cheese are some of the things that might be hard to find, once out of town. A few paragraphs on "The Snow Country Pantry" gives the reader advice on this.Nutritional analysis (minus sugars) is provided for each recipe along with a useful note on high-altitude cooking.This is a nice, small collection of seemingly foolproof recipes to satisfy both the winter athletes, unfussy and famished after a day on the slopes, and the folks who've spent the day indoors, enjoying the light, the views, the board games - or the preparation of some incredible meals.