Tag: cooking

Spice Up Your Life with Chile Peppers!

Posted on by Jamie

You’ve seen our Take It, Make It activities for children, but have you checked out our take home activity for adults? Every other month we have Spice Up Your Life packets available at both Aurora and Dillsboro. June’s packet includes three different kinds of chile pepper spices, recipes, and the history of the different spices! Once you pick up the packet, check out our online resource AtoZ Food America for more information about the spices and for more recipes to try! All you need is your library card number to sign into the website.

If you try one of the featured recipes, send a photo of your completed cuisine to stephanie@eapld.org, and we’ll show your creation on one of the library’s social media pages.

 

Baking with APLD

Posted on by Shelby

Listen, now is not the time to go on a diet. The holidays are staring us right in the face and the cold weather is making us layer up, so the time is right to experiment with all kinds of baking. The Aurora Public Library District can help! Instead of going out and buying tons of cookbooks you’ll only flip through once, check out up to ten cookbooks at a time for two weeks (+ two renewals on top of that = a potential month and a half of borrowing a book).

(Since I let you in on that little secret, you now have to bring me a sample of whatever it is you bake.)

The cookbooks begin on the nonfiction shelves with the call numbers 641. If you’re anything like me, you’ll easily get lost in the cookbooks, so it might be more fun for you to browse in person rather than going through our online catalog. But you can certainly do both! Personally, I can’t wait to check out American Cookie by Anne Byrn.

Maybe you’re looking to experiment with baking bread. We have all sorts of books with recipes for bakers of all levels.

 

Or maybe you want to start making more pies, tarts, or brownies. These might be some of the most underrated items of all the baked goods, in my opinion.

 

What about cakes? We have tons of titles on baking and decorating cakes to help you hone your skills. There are tons of new flavors to try too, instead of just plain white or chocolate cake. You can experiment with fillings and various flavor combinations to your heart’s content.

 

And we can’t forget about cookies! There plenty of titles for you to check out about all kinds of cookies, too, whether you’re looking for cake mix cookies, no-bake cookies, Christmas cookies, and more.

 

If you have little ones, we also have lots of books for baking and cooking with children. You’ll love spending time with children, making memories, and helping them learn new skills. Plus, with kids, anything goes, so that means you get to lick the batter, too! (I would have done that normally, but this isn’t about me.)

Maybe you’d rather browse online for recipes. Sign on to one of our public computers with your library card to scour the Internet to your heart’s content. If you need to print a recipe off, it’s only $.10 per black and white page or $1.00 per color page. You can also make copies directly from the books with our public copy machines.

It’s getting colder and the weather might start to get a little dicey, so you might not want to make the trip to the Library. We understand, and you’re in luck because you can also download baking titles digitally straight to your device from the Indiana Digital Download Center with OverDrive. Flip through digital recipe books and screenshot the images so you can have the recipes forever.

I want to help you hibernate this winter surrounded by baked goods and comfort food. So, Happy Reading! (And Eating!)

Cooking with Kids Around the World

Posted on by Shelby

September 13 is National Kids Take Over the Kitchen Day! Sometimes it can be hard to let go and let your little ones have free range anywhere, much less the kitchen where there are sharp knives, fire, and other dangerous items. The Aurora Public Library District has plenty of physical and digital copies of books to get your kids cooking with minimal supervision on your part!

Studies have shown that letting your kids help you out in the kitchen will make them more likely to eat what you put in front of them, including vegetables! So, if you do find yourself in the Library, here are some books you can check out for your kids to help make dishes from around the world:

If your family loves eating out but hates the bill afterward, try these cookbooks with your favorite ethnic recipes that you and your little chef can make right at home:

 

If you can’t stop in the library, be sure to check out a kid-friendly cookbook from OverDrive. You can prop your iPad, tablet, or smartphone up and cook straight from there! Let us know what you make!

Happy Eating! And Reading!