A cookbook is a book that contains information on cooking, and a list of recipes. It may also contain information on ingredient origin, freshness, selection and quality, e.g. the Slow Food movement's ark of taste criteria.While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by the main ingredient of the dishes, Japanese cookbooks usually group them by cooking techniques (e.g., fried foods, steamed foods, and grilled foods). Both styles of cookbook have additional recipe groupings such as soups, sweets.

Meryl Streep will be playing Julia Child in the Columbia Pictures movie Julie & Julia. The film is an adaptation of the 2005 book by Julie Powell which is based on her blog. A blog she wrote when she spent one year cooking a different recipe every night from Child's classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Diesel engines powered by pure vegetable oil...Sounds like an add from the back of a comic book. But in reality diesel engines can be powered by cooking oil with sometimes simple conversion. Before long there will be the smell of fryers in the air!

Julie Powell has won the first award for books based on blogs over 89 other contenders. Powell's blog was her adventures in trying to cook the recipes from Julia Childs' book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", entitled "Julie an Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, and 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen"