As the mother of a 5-year-old daughter who loves cookies, baking, hearts, and decorating anything (not to mention being myself a former 5-year-old who loved cookies, baking, hearts, and decorating anything), I’ve been wanting to make these ever since I saw them in Julia Usher’s Cookie Swap, published in 2009.

But back then the daughter was 3, the son was 8, and the mother was on more deadlines than she knew what to do with.  Valentine’s Day 2010 passed with no marbled heart cookies, and so did Valentine’s Day 2011.  2012 looked as if it would go the same way–mom about to go to a conference, the usual pile of deadlines, and the cookie paraphernalia buried who-knows-where in the pantry.  Still, I ordered a set of Ateco heart cutters before I left, hoping they just might arrive on time.

And I stole out of the conference mid-session to go to that mecca of sugarcraft, NY Cake and Baking Supply, where I found the Chefmaster Liqua-Gel and silver dragées that could make these long-delayed hearts a glittering reality.

With only one alteration (subbing butter for shortening, ’cause Crisco gives me the heebie-jeebies), Zoe and I somehow managed to bake the gingerbread cookies, mix up the royal icings, and decorate two batches of cookies in time for Valentine’s Day–even turning out a few with spectacular marbling effects, thanks to some deft work with a toothpick.

Dinner was late, the table covered in frosting, I missed one self-imposed deadline, and woke up with a sinus headache from licking sugar off the toothpick, but was it worth it?  Just ask Zoe.

All About Roasting‘s subject is one less ripe for schooling–we can all, pretty much, roast a chicken.  But the section on vegetables (and perhaps the section on seafood) more than justify the cost of admission.

Read the review here.

Although the book could be more forthcoming in its particulars, for the most part I was happily surprised.  These are easy-to-like, simple-to-prepare dishes that seek to entertain more than educate.  It’s not necessarily a must-have for your overflowing cookbook shelves, but overall I’d consider it a good value.

Read the full review here.

Thicker, fruitier, sweeter, hotter-per-gram, and way garlickier than the wildly popular sriracha, Dua Belibis is perhaps not for everyone.  When it comes to getting the stuff out, Dua’s bottle is more crazy-making than a ketchup bottle.  It comes out in either tiny, wimpy blobs or giant, incendiary blobs, and you inevitably get a gummy red collar of crusty sauce by the neck about midway through.  Plus, it’s impossible to find, or so I thought till last week.

I had already combed the shelves of every Asian grocer in my area and shown the bottle to the regretful proprietors.  I had done the Internet search.   I was down to my last hard-to-dislodge 1/8-inch of Dua, which I was conserving by means of trying not to cook the things I like eating it with: fried rice, dumplings, chili, noodles.  This self-imposed and untimely Lent was obviously unsustainable.

But this weekend, while tromping round the Bay with my son while in between readings of A Spoonful of Promises, I discovered the New Mei Wah supermarket on Clement St.  A behemoth of a shop, I thought at first it was one of those Asian markets that looks like it’s going to have everything, but actually has nothing you want.  But as it turns out, New Mei Wah is one of those Asian markets that looks like it’s going to have everything and actually does.

At least, it has Dua Belibis, right there in the Indonesian section.  As to the rest, who cares?

Since Dua comes in bottles greater than 3 oz., there was no question of getting it onto an airplane.  Prevailing upon the patience of my hosts, who drove me into Chinatown the next day, I went to the Stockton Street post office and mailed my Dua home.  The postage was about $10, which is more than 4 times the price of a bottle of Dua.

Do you have any doubt that it was worth it?

Only problem is, somewhere between 200 and 300 books came in over the fall, and I want to keep them ALL.  But my bookshelves are already full.  It’s time for some ruthless winnowing.  Heartbreaking, but there you have it.

This morning I rolled up my sleeves and hit the “Single-Subject” section of my library.  Do I really need 4 books on pasta?  8 books on meat cookery (and even more than that on seafood)?  Agonizing over every one, I part with a book here, a book there.  So long to the matched set of little gift cookbooks on Apples, Squash, and Tomatoes–so pretty, but not actually useful. So long to the fifth book just on soup.  Adieu to the Very Ambitious Salad book and the hardbound edition of the seafood book I use in paperback.  Farewell to the book on flavored butters–I think I can figure those out for myself.  Goodbye, sort-of-disappointing stew book!

All in all, I drop about 40 books into the “gift” pile.  Hurray!  Now I have room for I Love Meatballs! and Salsas of the World and yet another book of salad dressings!

To tell the truth, the single-subject section is actually the easiest to winnow.  Most of the books are not on my cookbook-indexing website, Eat Your Books, (an indexed book is harder to part with! ), and the quality is not as consistent or the depth of knowledge as great.  The main virtue of a single-subject cookbook is that it makes it easy to look up, say, a blueberry recipe when blueberries are in season.  But searchable databases make that so easy anyway…so a single-subject book has to have some other compelling virtue (say, thoroughness, or helpfulness) for me to keep it.

I’ll be moving on next to the Baking section, which–despite being the least used section of the  library–accounts for the most calories I consume over the course of a year.  But’s that’s OK.  At least I can find my treadmill now.

Listen here.

I tested this book quite a while ago, in the fall.  But as is so often the case, the review got pushed down the queue because other cookbooks of more immediate interest kept arriving, and then there was the holiday roundup season, etc. etc.

There isn’t a seafood cookbook published today that doesn’t have the word “sustainable” right up front…I guess the message is that if you’re going to make a withdrawal from the world’s dwindling supply of fish, you ought to do it as  responsibly–and deliciously–as you can.

Read the full review here.

This year’s picks, many of which were favorites on other lists as well:

Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi
Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch, by Nigel Slater
The Food52 Cookbook by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs
Molto Batali: Simple Family Meals from My Home to Yours by Mario Batali
American Flavor by Andrew Carmellini
Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal by Jennifer McLagan
Lidia’s Italy in America by Lidia Bastianich
All About Roasting by Molly Stevens

My editor and I had also talked about featuring books previously reviewed and worth revisiting, but the Globe must have run out of room in the section for that portion of the review.  These were:
The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden
My Japanese Table: A Lifetime of Cooking with Friends and Family, by Debra Samuels
The Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert
Cook This Now, by Melissa Clark
The Fearless Baker: Scrumptious Cakes, Pies, Cobblers, Cookies, and Quick Breads that You Can Make to Impress Your Friends and Yourself, by Emily Luchetti
Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen, by Heidi Swanson.

The recipe:

The ingredients: butter, onions, bay leaves, orzo pasta, scallions, Greek yogurt, lemons

The book: American Flavor, by Andrew Carmellini

Why I tried it:  I was running late one night and needed to punt when it came to dinner, so I decided to look for the simplest possible recipe I could find from one of the season’s new books.  This was pretty much it.  I saw that it had butter and scallions, and since scallions simmered in butter is one of my favorite ways to start any recipe, I was sold.  As I soon discovered, the scallions never get simmered in butter in this recipe at all.  But by then it was too late, and anyway it was obviously turning out delicious anyway.

Why I love it:  I’m almost embarrassed to be so crazy about this recipe, because it’s so dang easy.  (Then again, I also love those meatballs you have to make with a zillion pots, which makes up for it I guess.)  I love the way you use Greek yogurt to make a cream sauce without cream.  The technique’s totally different from the way you usually make pasta, too.  No boiling and draining, which seems to leave the orzo slimy right after being cooked and glue-tacky 30 seconds later.  It’s made like a risotto, which seems to do wonders for the texture.  And at the end there’s a manic dose of lemon to tie it all together.