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Google Books, Bed Bath & Beyond does Food and February 2011 Wrap-Up

February 2011 Wrap-Up on TeenieCakes.com

Winter finally arrived in Southern California. Temps have been low and this last weekend some parts that usually don’t see snow, did! Alas, we were hopeful that we would wake up to a soft, white blanket of snow {sigh}, but mother nature passed us by again.

I’m looking forward to Spring, bright happy colors, the awakening of deciduous trees and some Spring-like fare in the produce aisles.

I featured a couple of soups this month, one was a rendition of a childhood favorite. We called it fideo, but finding out later as I got older, fideo was the pasta noodle used. These days I used the estrellas (stars) or alphabetas/letras (alphabet) macaroni pasta. Also, great for entertaining or a lazy weekend morning, Banana Cinnamon Roll Bites with Pecans are an easy-to-do tasty treat and for Valentine’s Day we had some chocolaty Bouchons and Pink Macarons filled with Honey, White Chocolate Ganache.

Read on after the recipe wrap up as I introduce you to Google Books for possible cookbook research and sampling and a refreshing discovery at Bed, Bath and Beyond…an interesting and fun food section in test markets now!

February 2011 Recipe Wrap-Up

Bed Bath & Beyond’s Specialty Food Section in collaboration with Cost Plus

After the holidays I walked into a local Bed Bath & Beyond and was mesmerized by a new section they arranged in the store stocked with specialty foods ranging from ethnic, assortment of spices, baking goods, hard to find candies, chips and cookies, various liquers, pasta and various cooking oils, etc.    It was a pleasant surprise and San Diego is just one of three test markets for the Bed Bath & Beyond association with Cost Plus World Market.     The other two test markets currently include Totowa, New Jersey and Elmsford, New York.

What I liked about the store was the assortment of products that are not easily found in my local markets without having to find or travel to a specialty store.     Since our local Bed Bath & Beyond is centric to an area where I shop, I love the convenience of finding things like dried udon or soba noodles, an assortment of novel pasta colors and shapes and certain cookies I looked for during the Fall and Winter holidays for dessert garnishes.    Most of all, I just like having another choice for specialty items at competitive, better prices than the local food market chains (which are ridiculously raising their prices and you might not even notice unless you start price comparing).

I’m hoping their test markets do well and that they’ll expand their selections.   Hopefully more locations will be rolled out so that other areas can enjoy their specialty food sections too.

Other sources about the collaboration:

Google Books – For Research and Previewing

Google Books

I love books. My favorite place to shop more than any other place is Amazon.com. Reading the reviews and previewing the books I’m interested in are such invaluable tools today when online shopping. I can really appreciate being able to look through pages of a book and read through the table of contents and index or view the layout and style of a book before I purchase it.

If you enjoy books, cookbooks or are doing research of some kind, take a look at Google Books if you’re not already familiar with it:

  • You can search the full text of over seven million books through Google Books and they’ve also added magazines.
  • If the publisher has given permission, you can preview the book – sometimes the entire book, even if it’s out of print.
  • In some cases you can buy or borrow the book.
  • Read more About Google Books

So how is this of interest to a Foodie?

Cookbooks and magazines. After you’ve read the reviews wouldn’t you like to see more about what the cookbook has to offer?    How about trying a recipe or two to find out for yourself if it’s something worth adding to your cookbook collection?   Have you ever purchased a cookbook… great cover, presentation, reviews – you try a couple of recipes and just never used it again!   The cookbook was just “okay.”     Well, now you have another tool in your arsenal as a consumer to give it a try or flip through more of the pages than just the Amazon.com preview and further verify for yourself if this book is for you.

The image example is of one of my favorite authors and cookbooks by Carole Walter.  I was surprised at how much content was included in the text preview.

Give it a try.   What do you think?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Magic of Spice says

    Great round up of course…Love the idea of Bed Bath and Beyond with the World market. As for the Google book preview, sounds cool. I generally buy the majority of my books through Google, will check it out.

  2. Sara says

    Seriously? Bed Bath & Beyond together with Cost plus? I love those stores. I need to go check this out this weekend. Thanks for the tip!

  4. redkathy says

    Love these wrap ups, especially those macrons they are fabulous!!! I can imagine how excited you were to stumble upon that food goldmine in Bed Bath And Beyond. We have one less than a mile away, just imagine how often I would have been there (lol)
    As for Google, they have way too much control. Did you notice the recipe sub heading on Google search? I did a search for your exact title of those beautiful macarons (honey-white-chocolate-ganache-filled-macaroons) and no return under recipes. Google has no clue and abandoned it’s original stance on search if you ask me, it’s now about $ and only $. They are really hurting small businesses why originally relied on them to fill the onsite gaps. Sorry for the rant but I think Google so go local!

    • Cristina - Teenie Cakes says

      Hi Kathy and thank you. I”m glad the wrap-ups are enjoyed.

      Thanks for sharing about Google Recipes. I hadn’t seen it, didn’t even hear about it before you mentioned it. I guess in order to be included in their search results you need to tag your recipes with a microformat that must meet their specifications in order for it to “maybe” be included. I’ll have to read more about it, as I tried tagging one of my recipes and it failed their critera 🙁

  5. RKM says

    Those soups look delicious! What a fast month, thanks for the recap. Your photo’s make me so hungry! Looking forward to March, have a wonderful weekend.

    • Cristina - Teenie Cakes says

      Hi RKM: It was a terribly quick month. I’m glad the photos make you hungry…that means I’m achieving one of my goals on this site! =) Thanks and have a wonderful weekend yourself!

  6. Peggy says

    So exciting to hear about Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Our actual World Market is actual closer to me than Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but it’s nice to see certain retailers expanding their arsenal!

  7. Amy Bakes Everything says

    Digging the bouchons and macarons! so cute and yummy! I’ve done google books before, on accident – I googled a sentence and a Google Book came up – I got 45 pages of free cake decorating advice!

  8. Kate @ Diethood.com says

    Drooling over those macarons with white chocolate ganache! Amazing! And the photos are incredible.

    Thanks for the heads up on the Google Books feature… I didn’t know that you could sneak a peek at cookbooks… thanks for letting me know!

  10. Samantha says

    I missed your entry on the roasted potato soup. It looks colorful and sounds so good. I’m going to check our BB&B and hope they try the test market there too. We could use more variety in our markets and thanks for sharing about Google Books. I never even heard about it.

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