Jenn Garbee

Even before the The Ninja arrived on our test kitchen doorstep, friends offered their unsolicited opinions about modern slow cookers. "Anything with Ninja in the name sounds like it could be cool," said one. Another: "Why would anyone need a high-tech slow cooker?" We tend to agree with the latter,......

Last year was the year of canning and preserving, this year, it's vegan cookbooks. And not just celebrity vegetable-centric dinners like we've had recently, but everyday slow-cooker and sandwich fodder -- even a book dedicated to vegan "cheese." Our favorite? The gorgeous Pure Vegan book by Altadena DIY mastermind Joseph......

When the LudoBites cookbook landed with a thud on our desk, our reaction was the same as when the Ludo Truck is parked less than a block away. Other Cookbooks of the Week can wait -- there is duck fat-fried chicken to eat. Ludo Lefebvre's wife and business partner extraordinaire,......

Three star restaurants, cult wines, romantic vacation spots -- now you can add napkins to the Top 100 list fold. We mean that literally, as Denise Vivaldo's new Top 100 Step-by-Step Napkin Folds was recently released. Sure, the spiral-bound book lays on plenty of country charm with those rosebud napkin......

We don't normally take what arrives in the mail as a sign to buy Dodgers tickets. But a beer, snack and great sandwich book from different publishers, all on the same day? Two are cookbooks, Salty Snacks and Emeril's Kicked-Up Sandwiches, the third is The World Atlas of Beer, a......

Full disclosure: we didn't expect to do much more than a quick flip through of Andrew Weil's just-released True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure cookbook. Something about those eponymous vitamin packs and the "Spontaneous Happiness" (for a fee) plugs on his website had taken their sales pitch toll over the......

There's a new cooking school coming to town: chef Matthew Kenney's eponymous vegan culinary school is opening in Santa Monica this month (soft opening is Saturday), along with his vegan restaurant, M.A.K.E. The chef's growing empire includes restaurants in Chicago and Oklahoma City (where he also has a culinary academy),......

The cottage food law buzz is a timely reminder: Not all good books come in glossy, high-dollar commercial packaging. Consider two new releases from Canadian publisher Firefly Books' "Made at Home" series, Curing and Smoking and Eggs and Poultry. Both novel-sized paperbacks are written by Dick and James Strawbridge, who......

Breaking homemade brownie news: Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616) into effect today. If you've been following the bill, backed by local Assemblyman Mike Gatto, it allows the "limited" sale of "non-potentially hazardous foods." According to a statement from the Governor's office, the bill aims......

More musical bread booths at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market. Bezian Bakery has lost its lease after more than 17 years at the market. Red Bread takes its place beginning in October. The switch is due to changes initiated in recent years in the city's prepared-foods application-renewal process. Vendors......