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From W be easy Chicago this is Nurdett. I'm Greta Johnson. We did it. We made it to another weekend and somehow it is December,

which means now is the perfect time to sit back, relax, and reflect on some of the best stuff of the year.

Coming up over the next couple of weeks,

we are going to talk about the best books, the best podcasts,

and the best TV of 2023,

but to kick things off today we are talking about the best

cookbooks with one of our favorite eaters. With us today is Alex Bags who

writes about food.

Alex, welcome back.

Thanks for having me again.

So before we get into your actual picks, I'd love to know,

like this year felt a little different to me in terms of cook-o-o-o-cooks,

but I can't tell if that's just because I'm sort of out of the loop or if it was like maybe sort of an off-year

compared to some of the abundance that we've experienced more recently. What do you think?

Yeah, I don't know if it's our subjective feeling, you know, maybe not of a cookbook's

called to you specifically, but I do think, you know, if you think about the lag and the time

like a cookbook deal happens and then when it comes to life I think the cookbooks that came out this year were probably the ones that had to go through

The phase of being bought and written like peak pandemic so I wonder if that's why it feels yeah I don't know what to take from that I also it was kind of like I don't I had plenty of books that I really

...