Looking for the perfect cookbook to gift to your foodie friends and family members? Look no further than our blog partners! Here are 35 cookbooks to give as gifts this year. (Or to put on your own wishlist!)
This post does include affiliate links, but we promise to only share with you products that we truly love and support. Additionally, when you use our affiliate links and support our blog partners, it helps to keep down the cost of your Once a Month Meals membership. Just something to consider if you are going to be making a purchase anyway.
We work with some amazing bloggers who allow us the use of their tasty recipes and mouthwatering recipe pictures in our database. But many of them have also written cookbooks! We would like to recommend them to you as you are finishing up your holiday gift purchases, but they can really make a great gift any time of the year (house warming, birthday, wedding, or just because!) The others on this list are favorites we have purchased or seen in a sneak peek.
Top Cookbook Picks
These three books are at the top of our gift list this year!
100 Days of Real Food: Fast & Fabulous: The Easy and Delicious Way to Cut Out Processed Food, by Lisa Leake of 100 Days of Real Food
Staffer, Kim, received a copy of Lisa’s new cookbook, and this is what she said:
“I love how Lisa makes eating real, nourishing food so attractive and so simple. The book includes some very helpful tips and charts for getting started in the front such as a definition of real food, grocery shopping tips, what to make and what to buy, and simple seasonal meal plans using the recipes from the book. I was also impressed that this book had so much variety while still being family friendly. There are recipes for every meal including side dishes, snacks and treats, packable lunches, and homemade staples. And the best part – freezer friendly recipes are clearly noted at the top! I’m dying to try the Moroccan Meatballs and the Cheesy Hash Brown Casserole!”
The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook for Your Instant Pot: 80 Easy and Delicious Plant-Based Recipes That You Can Make in Half the Time, by Kathy Hester of Healthy Slow Cooking
Friends, we get excited about any and all things Instant Pot! And our blog partner Kathy does too, except she is also a master of plant-based meals as she is a vegan. Her new cookbook highlights plant-based recipes for the pressure cooker and it is the perfect gift for the vegetarian or vegan in your life, or someone who just likes to eat clean, low cost meals! Of course it is perfect given along with an Instant Pot if you are looking for a larger gift.
Kathy has several cookbooks available, but here are two others that we thought you would particularly enjoy giving as gifts:
Skinny Suppers: 125 Lightened-Up, Healthier Meals for Your Family, by Brooke Griffin of Skinny Mom
Brooke’s goal with this cookbook is to get busy families around the table – which is our mission too! Her tips on meal planning and healthy eating are spot on. This book is bright, and cheery, and full of helpful tips and inspiration, and of course full of delicious recipes to help you reach this goal. Perfect gift for anyone who wants to improve their own wellness or the wellness of their family in the New Year, while still keeping things simple.
Real Food Cookbooks
Our Real Food Menu is always one of our most popular, so we are bringing you even more resources from our favorite real food bloggers – they make great gifts that you can buy from the couch!
Ebooks from Kitchen Stewardship, by Katie Kimball
Katie has been churning out amazing resources for the real foodie community for years! Her ebooks are full of tasty, family friendly recipes at reasonable prices. They make the perfect gift for someone who wants to purge the pantry in 2017 and start eating whole foods.
- Healthy Snacks to Go
- Better than a Box
- The Healthy Breakfast
- The Healthy Lunch Box
- The Family Camping Handbook
- The Everything Beans Book
- Smart Sweets
- Naturally Sweetened Treats
- Winter Soups
- Gluten-Free Snacks
Traditional Cooking Ebooks, by Wardee Harmon
Wardee and her site, Traditional Cooking School, is another deep well of knowledge for the cook who wants to learn how to eat like our ancestors. If you are feeling overwhelmed trying to get started with these techniques you can purchase ebooks as well as full ecourses to help simplify the learning process. It is like tapping into the wisdom of our great-grandparents to eat more nourishing food! What a gift that is!
- Fundamentals I and II
- Cultured Dairy and Basic Cheese
- Dehydrating
- Lacto-fermentation
- Sourdough A to Z
- Real Food Kids
- Allergy Free Cooking
- Cooking Outside
- Einkorn Baking (click Ebooks link above)
- Pressure Cooking **Our Favorite!!!**
Paleo Cookbooks
Our Paleo recipes and menus are also hugely popular! Here are some of our favorite resources and writers from around the blogosphere to wrap up and gift.
The Paleo Kitchen: Finding Primal Joy in Modern Cooking, by George Bryant of Civilized Caveman and Juli Bauer
We work together with George as a blog partner. He has an amazing story and a heck of a lot of energy. His excitement really is contagious. Oh, and his recipes are so tasty! He proves that eating Paleo doesn’t have to be boring. He wrote this book with Juli Bauer, who learned to love cooking real food and creating her own Paleo recipes when she began competing in CrossFit. This book is full of yummy recipes, it is visually appealing, and best of all it is full of encouragement and tips from the authors to keep you on track in your Paleo lifestyle.
Cookbooks from Paleo Parents
The Paleo Parents blog, written by Stacy and her husband Matthew, has gotten a facelift and a new name – Real Everything. For 7 years they have shared the story of how living the Paleo lifestyle has changed their family for the better. They wanted to share with the world that “going Paleo” wasn’t only doable for single Crossfit-ers, but that working moms, stay at home dads, and kids of all ages could benefit too! Now even though they are still Paleo, they decided to pull back and share all of the real parts of their life as a more personal blog. At any rate – they have several cookbook still available, and they make wonderful gifts!
- Eat Like a Dinosaur: Recipe and Guidebook for Gluten-Free Kids – Great for teaching kids about taking charge of their own health by teaching them to cook.
- Beyond Bacon: Paleo Recipes the Respect the Whole Hog – All things pork. Yum.
- Real Life Paleo: 175 Gluten-Free Recipes, Meal Ideas, and an Easy 3-Phased Approach to Lose Weight & Gain Health – Delicious meals and a realistic plan for healthy living.
They are also OAMM blog partners, and you can read more about them here.
The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom, by Melissa and Dallas Hartwig
Many of us on staff have attempted a Whole30 at one time or another. And many of us have succeeded too! But we relate to the struggle of finding meals that fit this very strict diet. No matter how motivated you are to improve your health and wellness, it can be difficult to adjust to this new way of cooking. While their first book It Starts with Food is an in depth explanation of why you would want to eat this way and how to make these changes, The Whole30 really focuses in on the question, so what do I actually eat? It is full of delicious and simple recipes that will keep you on track. It also includes a review of the Whole30 guidelines, tips and tricks, and some cooking instruction in case you are new to cooking from scratch. This book is well worth the investment for yourself or to give as a gift to someone who is on the road to health and wellness and need some inspiration!
Other Delicious Cookbooks
Eating Clean:The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation, and Reset Your Body, by Amie Valpone of The Healthy Apple
Former Staffer, Emma, said this when she got a sneak peek of Amie’s new book:
Her recipes are healthy, filling, and full of flavor. I had the chance to cook through our Healthy Apple Mini Menu and have been looking forward to meals more than usual! My favorites are the Gluten Free Almond Quinoa Breakfast and Brown Rice with Sun-Dried Tomato ‘Pizza’ Sauce! Amie’s sweet and encouraging disposition makes me think that even I can eat clean! Her recipes are so easy, freezable, and delicious that I had to order her latest cookbook for myself. (Read more about our blog partner Amie here.)
Organize Yourself Skinny Ebook by Tammy Kresge of Organize Yourself Skinny
Tammy is another one of our blog partners who has an incredible success story (read more here)! In her book, she shares the 5 strategies that she used to organize herself skinny – accountability, eating guidelines, meal planning, make ahead meals, and exercise. She also shares recipes and a meal plan for 4 weeks to help you get started! We have 15 of Tammy’s recipes in our freezer cooking database – and they are delish!
Crockpot Cookbooks by Stephanie O’Dea of A Year of Slow Cooking
Know someone who is obsessed with their slow cooker? Or maybe you are gifting them a slow cooker? These books make the perfect addition to their kitchen for no-fuss, set and forget meal planning! Perfect for anyone learning to cook, like a college student or newlywed, or for anyone who is busy – new/working moms, young adults starting careers, but really all of us are busy!
