summer may be over, but grilling is not.

Today I am presenting you with two AMAZING cookbooks (you're welcome.) I have recently started teaching myself how to cook, so I've been obsessed with cookbooks as of late.

The Big Green Egg Cookbook: Celebrating the World's Best Smoker & Grill was put together by a fantastic team - foreword by Ed Fisher, recipes by Sara Levy, text by Lisa Mayer and Photographs (love!) by Mark O'Tyson. Together, they created the biggest (and best) cookbook you've seen this year, by far. I must be honest, these recipes are a bit above my palate level, considering my favorite food is grilled cheese. Just because they are a bit fancier than I'm used, doesn't make them any more difficult to make, (okay, maybe a little because let's be serious, grilled cheese is pretty easy). The main course (meat) section is ginormous, filled with recipes from beef & lamb to chicken and seafood. Appetizers, baked goods, and of course the "egghead" recipes. The EGG is apparently a ceramic cooking dish that will make your meat moister than cooking on the grill. To use this book, you do not need this cooker, but it is highly recommended to achieve maximum results. You can cook every one of these hundreds of recipes in an EGG, that's pretty amazing in itself.

On to more traditional grilling. Steak with Friends: At Home, with Rick Tramonto, obviously written by Rick Tramonto is not solely steak oriented. Tramonto begins with appetizers as well, cold and hot - convenient eh? He covers soups, sandwiches, lobster pot pie, vegetables and others sides along with an entire steak (and many other meat) section, including the glazes. Yum. He gives the basics, like how to tell if your steak is done, to those of us who are just embarking on this cooking journey. He includes a lot of sauces, which is fabulous for a condiment lover like myself, and he does not forget about dessert! Highly recommended, the recipes are not difficult or overly detailed. You beginners will not get migraines while trying to figure out how to make a three course meal out of this book.

Either cookbook will give you recipes to impress your friends and family. I suggest both because they are completely different and will give you A LOT of different recipes to cook up your favorite meat and sides.

***To win a copy of either of these books, e-mail your name, address and the book title to jenileerose@yahoo.com!