Piling on the retailers of America, who would like all red-blooded Americans, Christian or no, to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the food media has come out with a strong message to shoppers: Buy cookbooks for Christmas.
Publishers' Weekly lifestyle books of 2011
Local pick: Mourad Lahlou's Mourad: New Moroccan
The New York Times' notable cookbooks of 2011
Local picks: Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz's Mission Street Food, Mitchell Rosenthal's Cooking My Way Back Home, Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco
San Francisco Chronicle's booze-book picks
Local pick: Charles Neal's Calvados: The Spirit of Normandy
Serious Eats' cookbooks of the year
Local pick: Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty (publisher: Chronicle Books)*
Punk Domestics' favorite DIY books of 2011
Local pick: Karen Solomon's Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It
U.K. Guardian's "Books for Giving"
Local pick: Jennifer McLagan's The Odd Bits (publisher: Ten Speed Press).
HuffPo's best cookbooks of 2011
Local pick: Hank Shaw's Hunt, Gather, Cook (technically, Shaw's from the Sacramento area, but that's within the locavore zone)
SF Chronicle's list of present-worthy cookbooks
Local picks: Ryan Farr's Whole Beast Butchery, plus a host of other local cookbooks published earlier in the year
* On a personal note, SFoodie cooks from this one constantly.
