Flower Child
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Local blogger and cookbook author Alex Snodgrass recently released her second cookbook and coincidentally, her first is the only cookbook I use on a weekly basis.
When it comes to weeknight meals, cookbooks often induce tired-head with unreasonable requests, random ingredients and use of too many gadgets. A friend continually talked about Defined Dish by Snodgrass, so I got the book and tried a recipe. Thirty minutes later I had a sheet pan of vegetables and chicken shawarma with a lemon-tahini sauce that I’ve made weekly since (I triple the tahini-lemon elixir and keep it on hand for everything).
Snodgrass was raised in Celina and lives in Dallas now, where she’s been blogging and creating recipes for several years. Her recipes include a lot of variety, including Tex-Mex, Mediterranean and Asian dishes, but her mom’s Italian heritage really shines through.
As a bonus, Defined Dish, as well as her second cookbook, The Comfortable Kitchen, is Whole30-friendly, which I honestly had to Google to see what that means exactly (it means it’s healthy, not-so-exactly). So, it’s a weeknight cookbook with solid and reliable recipes that happen to be healthy. Defined Dish has gone on to become a New York Times’ bestseller.
The Comfortable Kitchen is sitting pretty at No. 1 on The Wall Street Journals’ hardcover non-fiction list and No. 2 on The New York Times Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous chart, just under Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart.
A Comfortable Kitchen has 105 recipes, most of which are paleo or close to it, and offers simple ingredient swap-outs for more custom diets. Like the first book, the goal here is busy weeknight dinners along with some nicer dishes for when friends come over. Here’s a handy list of all the recipes in the book if you’re inclined to get a sneak peek.
If you’d rather get a taste of her recipes before investing in a book, you can try a spin on Snodgrass’ most signature dish of all, her Italian meatballs, at Flower Child, which has several locations around Dallas, including at Inwood Village, Rosewood Court and at Preston and Royal.
