2 . If you haven’t taken down your Christmas tree yet, no worries. Here’s an idea: have you ever thought about eating it?

Julia Georgallis has some recipes. Over the last five years, she’s been preparing carefully for Christmas dinners in London with a friend. “How can we make something sustainable around Christmas time? What can we cat? What’s the thing that no one eats and that somehow represents Christmas? And then we just decided on Christmas trees,” Georgallis says.

She turned it into a book, How to Eat Your Christmas Tree. And her idea is that it’s not that odd. Some people enjoy Christmas wine. Some people like to go shopping and most people can get behind saving the planet.

“What I aimed for this book to do, really, was to get people thinking about the odd ways that they can be more sustainable in their daily lives,” Georgallis says.

“Eating Christmas trees isn’t going to save any animals in danger or freeze any ice caps. But if we start to think about everything that we do as a whole, then that builds up, you know, and that helps,” she says.

Most of the recipes in her book use the needles from the tree. “You’d use the needles like a herb,” she says.

“And different Christmas trees kind of have different flavors. They’re quite subtle, but they do have different flavors. So fir (冷杉), which is a really popular choice of Christmas trees, gives people better feeling and atmosphere. And then you have pine, which is a little bit more delicate.”

A warning: some Christmas trees are poisonous if eaten — like cypress and cedars. And be sure your tree wasn’t sprayed with pesticides (杀虫剂) and other chemicals. “So if you have any doubt that your Christmas tree might not have been grown to eat, then maybe don’t eat it,” Georgallis says.

And, of course, don’t even think about eating your artificial tree!

So, with all those instructions and with the appropriate tree, what could we cook? Well, Georgallis’ book has all sorts of recipes for different foods and drinks. Let’s open up the world’s cuisine with simple ingredients!

3 . Top cookbooks of 2023

The Wok’s appeal is not innovation; you can find many dishes like Kung Pao Shrimp and Cumin Lamb on many Chinese restaurant menus. But you don’t have to leave your home. As far as I’m concerned, it’s worth the sticker price to learn the techniques.

Chef Mason Hereford has put to paper some of the magic that draws locals and tourists alike to his popular New Orleans sandwich shop, Turkey and the Wolf. The cookbook is full of recipes accessible to home cooks. The meatloaf is my favorite.

With seven sections focused on different regions across the country, Rick Martinez guides you through some of the essential recipes for each. The recipes are lovely, but what I love most are the stories alongside each of them. Food is deeply personal and with Mi Cocina, Martinez is sharing his life in food and inviting you to come along.

Western India and the Southern U.S. share more culinary (烹饪的) similarities than you’d think, from rice varieties to fresh tomatoes. Here, these ingredients explode in a delicious combination of seasonings and essential cooking techniques.

The “sour and spicy shredded (细丝) potato” is a typical home cooking dish in China which    1    (see) frequently at home and in restaurants because of the simple cooking method. Although it belongs to Sichuan cuisine, the dish now is    2    choice many diners can’t resist all over China. Its flavor can be flexibly adjusted by adding different    3    (amount) of peppers and vinegar. The only main ingredient (原料), potato, is    4    (reasonable) priced in all seasons. When cooked well, it    5    (look) bright and the potato shreds are clear and crisp with sour and spicy taste. It has won the love of the majority of people in China and been regarded    6    one of the best matches for rice. Here is the way of its cooking.

Wash the potatoes and remove the skin. Cut them into thin and similar shreds. Put in salt water for a few minutes    7    (remove) the starch (淀粉) and clean them well. Heat the oil in the pan. Add and fry green onion and dried peppers before adding the potato. Then add all the other ingredients    8    (include) white vinegar, peppers and salt. Fry the potato    9    it is well cooked. You should be    10    (care) that you do not overcook the potato.

7 . New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has found being confident in the kitchen is not only good for your taste buds, it’s also good for your mental health.

In total, 657 participants undertook the seven-week healthy cooking course. Researchers found those who participated in the program saw significant improvements in general health, mental health and subjective vitality immediately after the program which remained six months after completing the course, when compared to the study’s control group.

“Improving people’s diet quality can be a preventive strategy to stop or slow the rise in poor mental health, obesity and other health disorders,” Dr Joanna Rees said. “Future health programs should continue to prioritise the barriers to healthy eating such as poor food environments and time restrictions, while placing greater emphasis on the value of healthy eating via quick and easy home-cooked meals, rich in fruit and vegetables and avoiding processed convenience foods.”

The Institute has previously found a link between eating more fruits and vegetables, and improved longer term mental health in a larger study collecting more complex dietary data, implying the participants in the current study may have felt better due to improved diet. However, the study showed participants’ mental health improved despite their reported diet not being found to have changed after completing the program.

At the start of the program, 77 per cent of participants who’ identified as female claimed to be confident about cooking, compared to just 23 per cent of those who identified as male. But at the end of the program, cooking confidence and cooking skills were equal across both groups.

This change in confidence could see change to the household food environment by reducing the gender prejudice and leading to a gender balance in home cooking. This in turn may help to overcome some of the barriers presented by not knowing how to cook, such as easing the time limits which can lead to ready-made meals which are high in energy but low in nutritional value.

9 . I will never forget the first dessert class at a cooking school in France, where a group of anxious dessert students (myself included) were tasked with preparing an apple pie. It looked simple enough, but I soon realized that it was as far from simple as it could be. However, my knife and I mastered this French classic, as well as dozens of others.

After graduating, I found a job at a modern American restaurant in Florida. Despite the restaurant’s tiny kitchen, I was excited to work under Sylvia, the executive chef (主厨). The first job she gave me was to make apple pies. I couldn’t have been more excited — until I realized these pies were actually in the form of a dumpling. But my education had made me stick to French tradition. It took me a minute to get comfortable with this way of cooking again. Slowly, I was forgetting my French tradition, and beginning to go with the flow more. The response from diners was good. Our desserts were sold out on most days.

Then one day, chef Sylvia gave me the chance to make a new dessert and planned to add it to the menu for a week. Surprised and touched by the chance, I decided to go all out. I created a seasonal citrus mousse (柑橘慕斯) made with Florida oranges and pistachio croquant (a crisp, delicate cookie). But after a week, the apple pie dumplings continued to far outsell my special dessert. A sense of frustration went inside of me.

It finally made me aware that there isn’t one “right” way to understand a cuisine, or set of ingredients (配料). Where one chef can look at apples, butter, and flour and see a French apple pie, another might see baked apple dumplings. Even though each person’s translation may be different, I think they all deserve a spot on the table. And that was the most important lesson I discovered, through something as seemingly simple as fruit and dough (生面团).