Great Book Alert: Glamour's 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know

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Last night, Vera Wang hosted a launch party to celebrate the release of Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive's must-have new book 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know. Lots and lots of boldface fashion names including Chris Benz, Maria Cornejo, Anna Sui, Christian Cota, Rachel Roy, and Liz Lange crowded into West Village corner Italian restaurant Spasso to toast Leive.

Personally, we're obsessed with cookbooks—especially ones with great writing and sentimental stories behind them (Nigella Lawson's How to Eat is one of our all-time favorites, sometimes we reread passages from it just for fun)—so Leive's 100 Recipes is a no-brainer lovefest for us. From Glamour mag's iconic Engagement Chicken—seriously, no joke, it's a roast voodoo chicken that inspires couples to get engaged (we're kidding about the voodoo part)—to Wake Up and Make Up Sausage Biscuits to five breakfasts for Very Busy Women to I Got Thinner Eating Pasta (veg, herbs and ricotta pasta, we don't know how it makes you thinner), there's really something for everyone, even if you're a total novice in the kitchen. We love this bit in the intro:

There are many things in life that will make you feel as if you've arrived, from owning your first grown-up designer handbag to owning your own home. But there is no greater and more easily attainable upgrade than learning how to cook for yourself.

None of the recipes require wackadoo exotic ingredients, all the instructions are simple to follow and written in hello plain English, and every dish is gloriously uncomplicated, simple food, done well. Which is, at the end of the day, what most of us want to eat most of the time, right?
· 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know [Amazon.com]