The sun is shining, and nobody wants to be stuck in the kitchen. But eventually we need to peel ourselves off the lounge chair to find some sustenance, and not everyone has the strata council’s or landlord’s blessing to cook outside.

Here’s a roundup of books that serve different patio needs: a good escapist memoir, a hefty cookbook to flip through and plan a project, and a visual collection of salads to inspire today’s meals.

First, the memoir. Picnic in Provence: A Memoir With Recipes (Little, Brown) is the second book by Elizabeth Bard, a follow-up to her 2010 book Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, With Recipes. If you haven’t read the latter, get a copy first. Lunch in Paris tells the tale of how New Yorker Bard travelled to Paris, fell in love with her now-husband, moved there, and totally changed her life. Hands up if you’ve had that daydream? It’s not all warm brioche, though, which makes the book that much more interesting.

Picnic in Provence picks up 10 years after the couple settle down in the City of Light. They impulsively buy a house in Provence, have a baby, and work toward opening an ice-cream parlour. But before you have a chance to get bitter with envy, Bard weaves in a not-so-rosy story line about the challenge of bonding with her little boy and memories of her father’s mental illness. Interspersed with recipes for things like grilled sardines, and ice cream with lavender honey and thyme, this is a pleasant, engaging book that doesn’t gloss over the fact that fantasy is always anchored in reality.

Those interested in Korean cooking will want to get their hands on a hot new book by YouTube star Maangchi. Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking (Thomas Allen & Son) is a hefty hardcover by the Korean woman who goes by her online handle (which means “Hammer”) and now lives in New York. The well laid-out book gives clear recipes for traditional Korean dishes with a plethora of photos to guide you along.

Recipes run the gamut from perilla-leaf pancakes to braised burdock root to ginseng candy, with plenty of soups and stews, the “cornerstones of Korean cuisine”, in between. There are many dishes well suited to summer, too, such as gimbap, Korea’s answer to sushi. “The biggest difference between the two is that the rice in gimbap is seasoned with sesame oil, and the rice in sushi is seasoned with vinegar,” she says of the rolls, which are a favourite for picnics and packed lunches.

Chapters on traditional fermented foods and kimchi and pickles get to the heart of the cuisine. There’s even a recipe for a staple ingredient in other dishes, gochujang hot pepper paste. Maangchi writes that the homemade version “has a much deeper, more complex flavor and a richer color and consistency” than store-bought varieties.

Finally, Salad Love (Appetite by Random House) is the book that will propel you off the patio and into the kitchen—and then back onto the patio. London-based Italian author David Bez spent a year creating a new salad for lunch every day in the office where he’s an art director. He’d shoot a photo of each salad before he ate it, and then blog his creation.

The result is a highly visual cookbook that reads like a flipbook of healthy, inspirational meals. Think fresh combinations like tuna, chickpeas, green beans, and red peppers, or crabmeat, avocado, nori, and cucumber (see below). Bez presents his recipes simply: each consists of two short lists of ingredients to assemble for the salad and mix up for the dressing. Presto! And since he put his salads together using his desk as a counter, there’s no reason you can’t bring everything outside and chop and toss there on whatever surface you can find.

Hot sun, cool salad. Welcome, summer!

David Bez's crabmeat, avocado, nori, and cucumber salad

Assemble salad ingredients

2 oz (57 g) watercress
1 avocado, chopped
¾ cup (185 mL) chopped cucumber
2 oz (57 g) cooked crabmeat (for a vegan alternative, replace with 3½ oz [100 g] red bell pepper or 1 carrot)
1 sheet toasted nori (seaweed), thinly sliced
1 tsp (5 mL) toasted sesame seeds

Mix dressing ingredients

1 Tbsp (15 mL) sunflower oil
1 tsp (5 mL) light soy sauce
Pinch of salt and pepper
Pinch of wasabi powder

Yield: 1 main-course-sized salad. Recipe has not been tested by the Georgia Straight.

Adapted from Salad Love (Appetite by Random House, 2015) by David Bez. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.