Gratitude for family

Cookbooks from Trisha Yearwood and Ree Drummond are seasoned with love

Nearly two years into the pandemic, unpredictability continues to rule our cooking lives.

But the pandemic produced more adept, agile home cooks. And more than anything, it made us grateful for family while recognizing what we’re eating and whom we’re cooking for.

Those themes can be found in new cookbooks from two of Food Network’s biggest stars, Trisha Yearwood and Ree Drummond, queens of unpretentious, everyday cooking. Both books were written during the pandemic, and they reflect a spirit of perseverance and devotion to family.

‘Trisha’s Kitchen: Easy Comfort Food for Friends & Family’ by Trisha Yearwood with Beth Yearwood Bernard

In her fourth cookbook, the sunny host of “Trisha’s Southern Kitchen” found the silver lining in time spent in quarantine.

“We’re more in tune with our food, how it’s grown, and how it gets to our table, and we’re taking responsibility for providing that love and care to our families,” she writes.

Family looms large in “Trisha’s Kitchen,” filled with photographs of her country-music-superstar husband, Garth Brooks (who wrote the book’s foreword), her sister Beth (familiar to fans of the show) and her niece and nephews. There are recipes from family members, including Grandma Yearwood’s “HundredDollar Cupcakes,” and loving recognition of her late parents, Jack and Gwen Yearwood, who taught their family how to cook and “how to laugh, how to bring that kitchen to life.”

The book includes recipes for homey coffee cakes, sticky buns and sky-high biscuits. Her Southerness comes out in dishes such as Instant Pot collard greens, potato salad, fried pork chops, shrimp and grits, fried catfish, hot honey cornbread, sweet tea pickles and muscadine jam. And her international flair comes through in recipes for beef moussaka, tamale pie, meatballs in marinara, smoked ham carbonara, gnocchi and pear Charlotte.

‘The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Super Easy! 120 Shortcut Recipes for Dinners, Desserts, and More’ by Ree Drummond

The seventh cookbook from the rural blogger turned culinary superstar might be her most intimate, a loving tribute to the Oklahoma clan familiar to fans of “The Pioneer Woman” show.

All the Drummonds figure prominently, including her cowrancher husband, Ladd, and the children who have grown up since the show began in 2011.

The book was written during a time Drummond said her relationship with home cooking, something that always brought her great joy, shifted. It became a chore, and she found herself ungrounded.

“I started giving myself permission to chill out. To use more frozen bread dough as pizza crust,” she writes. “Once I crossed over that threshold … I fell in love with the peaceful, easy feeling that took over my cooking life.”

“Super Easy!” is just that: recipes with fewer steps and a more simplified process without sacrificing flavor. There are Buffalo chicken totchos made with frozen Tater Tots, sheet pan salad of oven-roasted vegetable, 11-Can Soup (a dump-and-stir delight), stromboli and pizza made with frozen bread dough and storebought focaccia rounds, oneskillet meals and easy-bake casserole.

Drummond loves Tex-Mex and devoted a chapter to dishes such as enchiladas, chorizo burgers, fish-stick tacos and a classic tamale pie made with packaged cornmuffin mix.