And they can do so much more than produce foolproof rice, beans, and grains. The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook shows you how to make everything from Thai Curried Rice to Chocolate Pots de Crème with Poached Fresh Cherries, from Breakfast Barley to Turkey Chili with Baby White Beans.

    Anybody, young or old, will love these thoughtful gifts, and you're guaranteed to bring a smile to their faces, and make their day! With recipes like gingersnaps, shortbread and chocolate chip you can please the traditionalists, and with the vegan-friendly friendly recipes you can please the most health conscious of your friends - there is something in this book for everybody! There is even a chapter on Christmas recipes from around the world, so why not have a Christmas Evening and show of these unusual treats to your family and friends? With the "Best Christmas Cookie Recipes: Easy Holiday Cookies 2014" book, you don't have to be an expert baker, the recipes are quick and easy, and most importantly, they don't cost a fortune to make. So go ahead and give them a try - but watch out it may become a new Christmas tradition and you'll be making them for years to come!

    And they'll love yours the most, thanks to this festive collection of themes, snacks, crafts, drinks, and decor...all handpicked by the party monsters at Quirk D.I.Y., the Quirk Books community for makers of everything awesome. So roll back the rug, call your friends, and let's get at least one of these parties started! Party Themes include: SPARKLE PARTY, featuring Mini Candy Apples, Holiday Cake Pops, Sweet Surrender Punch, and more. OVER EASY PARTY, Featuring Huevos Rancheros Tacos, Maple Bacon Cupcakes, Golden Hog Cocktail, and more. GIANT PARTY for kids, featuring Mini Corn Dogs, Super-Small Deep-Dish Pizzas, Teensy Funnel Cakes, and more. CRAFTERNOON TEA PARTY featuring Pansy Tea Sandwiches, English Rose Cocktail, homemade Pom-Pom Headbands, and more. THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL PARTY featuring Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, Beef-and-Beer Chili, homemade Plush Penguin party favors, and more.

    It is the early days of the war in Afghanistan. SAS hero, Jock, has never fought alongside America's select Tier 1 Operators before now, but when their mission goes pear-shaped, he will find out just what they are made of... Battling against overwhelming odds in unknown territory, and with the enemy well dug-in, even the most elite soldiers with the most advanced weaponry at their disposal are put to the ultimate test of skill and courage.

    Now someone with inside knowledge is feeding clues to true crime writer Dougal Lachlan, promising him the best story of his career. Pursuing the leads means returning to Twisted Cedars, where his sister Jamie, is about to marry a man he deeply dislikes.Local Twisted Cedars librarian Charlotte Hammond prefers her mysteries - and her romances - between the covers of a good book, especially since the disappearance of her older sister, Daisy, eight years ago. But then the dark and tortured soul who is Dougal Lachlan walks into the Twisted Cedars Library asking for her help.Before long Charlotte realizes there is no safe zone. Not even in libraries...and especially not in Twisted Cedars.Twisted Cedar MysteriesBuried, Book 1Forgotten, Book 2Exposed, Book 3

    Everything classic and obscure are here (martinis, frozen and coffee drinks, shooters, punches, flavored vodkas, gins, rums, cognac, wine, novelty drinks, etc.) with 150 brand new additions. Also new to eighth edition are: more advice for the professional bartender; a newly expanded wine section with Robert M. Parker, Jr.'s Wine Vintage Guide, Parker Speaks on Wine, a glossary of wine terms, and Parker's World's Greatest Wine Values; and an expanded glossary, beer section, and cognac guide. And of course all the features that's made it the best selling drink recipe book on the market today are still there: index by ingredients; spiral bound for simultaneous pouring and reading; a complete list of martinis; detailed mixing instructions; sections on hot drinks, frozen drinks, beers, ales, lagers, and malternatives; and a list of all drink-specific garnishes.

    Many have been pulled in by the tractor beam of natural wine--that is, organic or biodynamic wine made with nothing added, and nothing taken away--a movement that has completely rocked the wine industry in recent years. While all of the hippest restaurants and wine bars are touting their natural wine lists, and while more and more consumers are calling for natural wine by name, there is still a lot of confusion about what exactly natural wine is, where to find it, and how to enjoy it. In Natural Wine for the People, James Beard Award-winner Alice Feiring sets the record straight, offering a pithy, accessible guide filled with easy definitions, tips and tricks for sourcing the best wines, whimsical illustrations, a definitive list to the must-know producers and bottlings, and an appendix with the best shops and restaurants specializing in natural wine across the country, making this the must-buy and must-gift wine book of the year.

    Now though, she is desperate to track down the stranger who saved her life. DCI Tony Morgan thought he had escaped his old career, but when he receives a call from his ex-boss to tell him that there’s been a hit and run in the area, leaving a young woman trapped in a burning car and left to die, he knows that he must return and help to investigate. Meanwhile, Megan sets out to track down the man who pulled her from the car that night, and in doing so, develops a strange infatuation for him. As secrets are revealed, and the truth starts to emerge, it soon becomes clear that Megan is still in danger, and the life-saving hero may not be everything that she wants him to be. A twisty, psychological drama combining crime, mystery and romance.

    You fight, because the blood oath will have it no other way. In An Oath of the Blood, readers are introduced to four young, but powerful elemental shifters, living in the exiled land of Pyraan. When an enemy host breaches the island's shores, a deadly confrontation ensues and, despite the heroic and poignant efforts of the shifters, the land falls to the invaders. As the only survivors, the four friends are forced to flee south into the lands from which they were banished to warn of the invasion. Heartbroken and weary, the shifters soon learn that the safe haven they hoped to find is cloaked in danger. Throughout a journey fraught with magic, prophesy, betrayal, and peril, an enduring friendship prevails, love blossoms, and a riveting saga unravels.

    Every home cook has thoughts on the right and wrong ways to use spices. These beliefs are passed down in family recipes and pronounced by television chefs, but where do such ideas come from? Many are little better than superstition, and most serve only to reinforce a cook’s sense of superiority or cover for their insecurities. It doesn’t have to be this way. These notes On Spice come from three generations of a family in the spice trade, and dozens upon dozens of their collected spice guides and stories. Inside, you’ll learn where spices come from: historically, geographically, botanically, and in the modern market. You’ll see snapshots of life in a spice shop, how the flavors and stories can infuse not just meals but life and relationships. And you’ll get straightforward advice delivered with wry wit. Discover why: Salt grinders are useless Saffron is worth its weight in gold (as long as it’s pure) That jar of cinnamon almost certainly isn’t Vanilla is far more risqué than you think Learn to stop worrying and love your spice rack.

    The largest and most comprehensive cookbook ever published on this subject, 1001 Best Hot and Spicy Recipes is composed of the very best dishes from author Dave DeWitt's collection of chili pepper?laden recipes. Created from his globe-trotting travels, from colleagues, and from research in authentic, obscure, and out-of-print cookbooks from all over the world, the book is loaded with a huge variety of soups, stews, chilies, and gumbos. It also includes a broad selection of barbecue dishes for the grill, a lengthy list of meatless entrees and vegetable options, and even a surprising array of zesty beverages, desserts, and breakfasts. Recipes are organized according to the region from which the chili peppers come: South and Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, the United States, Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Asia and the Pacific. A treasury of the very best the world has to offer of great spicy foods, no serious cook should be without this jam-packed trove.

    In Nose Dive, McGee takes us on a sensory-filled adventure, from the sulfurous nascent earth more than four billion years ago, to the sweetly fragrant Tian Shan mountain range north of the Himalayas, to the keyboard of your laptop, where trace notes of formaldehyde escape between the keys. We'll sniff the ordinary (wet pavement and cut grass) and extraordinary (fresh bread and chocolate), the delightful (roses and vanilla) and the unpleasant (spoiled meat and rotten eggs). We'll smell each other. We'll smell ourselves.Through it all, McGee familiarizes us with the actual bits of matter that we breathe in -- the molecules that trigger our perceptions, that prompt the citrusy smells of coriander and beer and the medicinal smells of daffodils and sea urchins. And like everything in the physical world, molecules have histories. Many of the molecules that we smell every day existed long before any creature was around to smell them -- before there was even a planet for those creatures to live on. Beginning with the origins of those molecules in interstellar space, McGee moves onward through the smells of our planet, the air and the oceans, the forest and the meadows and the city, all the way to the smells of incense, perfume, wine, and food.Here is a story of the world, of all of the smells under our collective nose. A work of astounding scholarship and originality, Nose Dive distills the science behind the smells and translates it, as only McGee can, into an accessible and entertaining guide. Incorporating the latest insights of biology and chemistry, and interwoven with personal observations, McGee reveals how our sense of smell has the power to expose invisible, intangible details of our material world and life, and trigger in us feelings that are the very essence of being alive.

    The New Keto-Friendly South Beach Diet combines the good fats and healthy carbs of the world-famous heart-healthy program with the advanced nutrition science of keto-all in a doctor-approved plan that is easier than strict keto diets.The original South Beach Diet defined the cutting edge of healthy weight loss. Now the creator of the classic plan combines his signature diet with the latest, most cutting-edge advances in healthy eating that are the basis for the ketogenic diet. With a new emphasis on good carbs, healthy fats, and quality proteins, The New Keto-Friendly South Beach Diet takes the powerful fundamentals of the original South Beach Diet and adds the fat-burning principles of keto. Dr. Arthur Agatston cuts through the confusion around keto and low carb diets and gives readers a step-by-step 28-day eating plan that increases satisfaction, decreases appetite, and makes it easy to lose weight and keep it off. He also explains why strict ketosis is not necessary to achieve results; the effectiveness of intermittent fasting; and the relationship between yo-yo-dieting and sugar addiction.This plan offers the benefits of keto and low carb without the pitfalls. As this new book reveals, you can boost your metabolism and put your body safely into fat-burning mode with a diet that's more flexible and more sustainable than traditional keto. And that's not all: in addition to long-term weight loss, the South Beach Keto-Friendly plan can boost mental sharpness, reduce inflammation and pain, increase your energy, and improve diabetes and heart health. Includes around 100 recipes, full-color photos, and an easy-to-follow 28-day meal plan.

    Sample recipes include: Everyone Loves Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pops, Trail Mix Truffles, Cuppa-ccino Muffin for One, Spicy Vegetable Ranch Salad, Thai Quinoa Bites, Crispy Creamy Cheesy Polenta Fries, Chips & Queso, Bananas Foster Shake, and Nourishing Spiced Mylk. As an added bonus, every recipe in Snackable is suitable for dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, peanut-free and vegan diets, and all but two of the recipes address tree nut-free needs, too.Alisa Fleming is the founder of the leading dairy-free website, GoDairyFree.org. Her credits also include the best-selling dairy-free guide and cookbook, Go Dairy Free, Senior Editor for Allergic Living magazine, and ten years as a special diet content and recipe creator for the natural food industry.

    Such was the case for Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, scientists who frequently collaborate on book and museum exhibition projects. When the conversation turned to wine one evening, it almost inevitably led the two—one a palaeoanthropologist, the other a molecular biologist—to begin exploring the many intersections between science and wine. This book presents their fascinating, freewheeling answers to the question What can science tell us about wine? And vice versa.   Conversational and accessible to everyone, this colorfully illustrated book embraces almost every imaginable area of the sciences, from microbiology and ecology (for an understanding what creates this complex beverage) to physiology and neurobiology (for insight into the effects of wine on the mind and body). The authors draw on physics, chemistry, biochemistry, evolution, and climatology, and they expand the discussion to include insights from anthropology, primatology, entomology, Neolithic archaeology, and even Classical history. The resulting volume is indispensible for anyone who wishes to appreciate wine to its fullest.