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Monday, December 10, 2012

Judging a Book by Its Cover: The Southern Slow Cooker Cookbook

Due out August 2013. Hang tight kids!
UPDATE: I just found out that The Southern Slow Cooker is officially available for pre-order as of today!  So excited! Pre-order on Amazon.

They say never to judge a book by its cover, but the fact is we all do. Just walk into any Barnes and Noble (or hit Amazon.com) and visit the cookbook section and you'll see all those books with smiling celebrity faces and food porny photos with grab-you-by-the-shirt catchy titles and subtitles which, more often than not, bear words like "simple", "fresh" and "foolproof". This is the nature of our highly competitive game, to rope you in with luscious photos, peppy titles and sleek artwork that gets you to click, pick-up, open and flip pages, or simply remember come Christmas gift time.

Only a few days ago, we (me and the folks at Ten Speed Press) decided on the cover (shot by Erin Kunkel) for "The Southern Slow Cooker" cookbook and it wasn't easy. We narrowed the choices down to three based on recipes in the book-- a lovely shot of black-eyed peas and stewed tomatoes, a soul satisfying photo of a bowl of beef stew and the picture above featuring a bowl of Chesapeake Bay crab and corn chowder topped with fresh corn relish. All three of these recipes are built for slow cooking, so theoretically any of them could grace the book's cover. However, we wanted this cover to truly stand out, not only from the hundreds of other cookbooks out there, but also from other slow cooker cookbooks (which tend to feature lots and lots of stew, chili and the like), so crab chowder it is. It's Southern, fresh and flavorful, perfect for the slow cooker and a little different from the rest.

And I'm going to come right out and say, I like it. A lot. Naturally, I hope you do, too, so much so that you'll just have to get a copy when the times comes (behold the shameless plug). In the meantime, I am down to the final copy edits and crazy as it sounds, the book will soon be available for pre-order. How the heck did that happen so fast?

Stay tuned here, here and here for updates, sample recipes and all other kinds of slow cooking goodness, and I'd love to hear what you think of the cover so feel free to chime on in!

Best to everyone this holiday season....
Kendra

4 comments:

  1. It's a gorgeous cover. I mean, I didn't see the other two photos, but I think you made the right choice!

    Nice to "meet" you over on G+. I'm much more active on fb, but I'm trying to figure out the G+ thing. Guess we'll all learn it together!

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  2. Thank you Jenni. So nice to meet you on G+ I am still learning the ropes over there, too...ha

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  3. I love it! The cover really will stand out from the rest of the pack... though I'm biased, because I ADORE corn and crab chowder. Dying to try that recipe.

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  4. Thank you so much Casey! It's funny. Getting that recipe down was about the death of me. I just couldn't get it to turn out right. After multiple tries, I finally got it down and thankfully so since it's the cover....ha You will like it. Very fresh and flavorful.

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