Date Night In: More Than 120 Recipes To Nourish Your Relationship

To reinvigorate their marriage, busy parents Rodriguez and her husband, Dave, committed to a weekly date night including a home-cooked meal. The author, a food consultant and cooking instructor, featured the dates in a series of posts on her award-winning blog Not Without Salt (notwithoutsalt.com), and here, she's compiled 25 of them into a cookbook. Organized by season, each of these themed dates (e.g., feasting on spring, wooed by fried chicken, a Flemish feast) begins with an introductory essay, followed by a four- to five- course menu with shopping lists, a time line, and recipes. These special-occasion meals offer a mix of sophisticated and comfort foods (e.g., fennel-crusted lamb chops, BBQ pulled pork sandwiches with apple and radicchio slaw) and usually include a cocktail, a starter or snack, a main course, and dessert.