Although I have amassed quite a collection of French livres de cuisine over the years, my first cooking teachers were magazines.

In fact, the periodicals that guided my initial experiences have become an official triad for marketing purposes: “Le Trio Gourmand.” Guide Cuisine, Cuisine Actuelle and Cuisine Gourmande are the members of this cooking magazine trio.

These three culinary musketeers may not be the most glamorous French cooking mags, but they certainly are the most practical for French working women — and, more occasionally, men.

Guide Cuisine provided me with plenty of culinary inspiration back in the days when I had time to purchase cooking magazines every month, cut out all of the most interesting recipes and try some of them each week. A recipe that I lovingly saved from an issue of Guide Cuisine circa 1990, carrot flan, has become a family favorite and is one of those dishes which lends itself to infinite variations. Seventeen years later, the April 2007 issue inspired me, this very day, to whip up a quick chocolate cake. The “Biscuit Chocolat-Cannelle” looks like a basic gâteau and was truly simple to bake, yet the recipe spiced it up with cinnamon, making it an original treat.

Despite numerous facelifts, Guide Cuisine has remained the least gourmet publication in the gourmet trio. According to press material from publishers Prisma Presse, its core audience is “working women who have interests outside of the kitchen and search for various ideas with short preparation times.”

Sounds like me! I’d better start buying Guide Cuisine again…

Cookbooks by top chefs often fall into the latter category - but not Les Légumes de Mon Moulin by French chef Roger Vergé.

I was pleased to find while researching a recent blog post that this book was translated into English about eight years ago. From the availability on Amazon, I’m not sure Roger Vergé’s Vegetables in the French Style is still in print, so you might want to act quickly if you are interested in acquiring this lovely and practical vegetable cookbook.

Vergé’s ratatouille recipe is tops, and last weekend I tried out his Cremée de Navets et de Pommes de Terre — basically a turnip and potato gratin. There are a few extra steps compared to a normal gratin recipe, such as half pre-cooking the vegetables and then gently warming them in a cream sauce before baking the dish, but the result is worth the effort.

This book’s vegetable dishes do go beyond the basics — but just a bit.

They are generally simple to cook and call for everyday ingredients. If you want to pep up your vegetables “in the French style,” I would definitely recommend you get your hands on this translation — before it’s too late!

Also on the Thanksgiving theme, Marian Burros presents the results of the New York Times turkey-roasting test, and pronounces a Heritage Foods turkey the winner. At $71 to $119 for an 8 to 10-pound bird, some of us will probably be gobbling up other options.

In an article that is topping the site’s “Most-E-mailed” list as I write, Mark Bittman shares the secrets of making fantastic bread – without kneading! If you don’t believe the article, check out the video presentation of the method, and click here for the recipe.

If bread isn’t on your menu for the weekend, you can try out buckwheat crepes – a French favorite, especially in Brittany – with Roasted Cauliflower, Turnip and Leek Filling. The crepe recipe calls for equal portions of whole-wheat, white and buckwheat flour, but you could also try it out with buckwheat flour only as I have here in France. If you do, tell me what you think of the result!