LTH Home

Great Books, literature, reading

Great Books, literature, reading
  • Forum HomePost Reply BackTop
    Page 2 of 4
  • Post #31 - August 17th, 2005, 12:04 pm
    Post #31 - August 17th, 2005, 12:04 pm Post #31 - August 17th, 2005, 12:04 pm
    Just finished two more books some might enjoy.

    Candy freak: A jouney through the chocolate underbelly of America.
    The author, Steve Almond ( the history of his family name is funny), is a creative writing teacher at Boston College. His style reminds me of David Sedaris. There are sentences that you have to read to others because they are hysterical and so well crafted. I love how he describes how he experiences the world via his mouth.

    I thought it was a sweet summer treat and a calorie-free way to induldge your senses.

    Warning: he makes some politically charged comments toward the end, some will love, some will not...but we can all get along when it comes to candy!!

    Finding Betty Crocker
    I enjoyed this book's illustrations (old advertising pictures and copy). The author goes a little overboard sharing too many letters written to "Betty". But my parents grew up in the depression (my Dad is a proud member of the Clean Plate Club) and it was interesting for me to see how it affected cooking and meals.

    Thanks for all the titles you have shared!
  • Post #32 - August 17th, 2005, 12:15 pm
    Post #32 - August 17th, 2005, 12:15 pm Post #32 - August 17th, 2005, 12:15 pm
    I forgot to mention a website (among others) that Steve Almond shares in the back of Candy Freak.

    www.sweetnostalgia.com
    will bring back some childhood memories
  • Post #33 - August 19th, 2005, 2:32 pm
    Post #33 - August 19th, 2005, 2:32 pm Post #33 - August 19th, 2005, 2:32 pm
    The first of Reichl's self-indulgences was likewise enough.


    I've very rarely heard this voiced and couldn't agree more. It was as vain as her coy shots on the editor's page at Gourmet.

    One of the best and most overlooked books for both writing and recipes is Molly O'Neill's A Well Seasoned Appetite. Formerly the food editor of New York Times' magazine, the book is obviously divided into seasons, and then subdivided into essays on individual seasonal ingredients with 3-4 recipes using that ingredient following. As I have a relatively small kitchen, only the cookbooks that I am currently cooking from are allowed a space on a kitchen shelf, the others are squirreled away on shelves in other rooms. This book is nearly always in the kitchen. It has a great mix of everyday recipes (like the outstanding "Arabic Eggplant" I made last evening) and indulgences (such as Chicken with Morels, Fava Beans, and Spring Potatoes - adapted from Le Cirque and using 4 cups of fresh morels). Speaking of morels, it was this book that introduced me to them along with fiddleheads, shad and pea greens. The book's lovely cover illustration of a peach is long gone and its pages are stained and covered with notes. I've often given it as a housewarming present when I was able to locate it. You won't find it at a Barnes & Nobel, but if you're willing to buy it used, you can get it cheap: .94 cents to be exact on Amazon.
    MAG
    www.monogrammeevents.com

    "I've never met a pork product I didn't like."
  • Post #34 - November 29th, 2005, 6:17 pm
    Post #34 - November 29th, 2005, 6:17 pm Post #34 - November 29th, 2005, 6:17 pm
    While reading through the "Top 10 Cookbooks" discussion, I followed the link to these posts. I was a little surprised that no one has mentioned any books by Sophie Coe (given that some of the most interesting posts on this site come apparently come from someone who won her namesake award). A friend recommended her book entitled "America's First Cuisines". Thus far, I've only skimmed through it, but it seems very interesting.

    Here's a description from amazon.com

    Sophie Coe, anthropologist and culinary historian, gives us a cook's tour of the nuclear areas of New World civilization. Her book is a botanically, zoologically, and nutritionally informed synthesis of information on the New World's contribution to the world's inventory of foodstuffs and, most importantly, on how the use of these foodstuffs coalesced in the culinary cultures of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca. It is the first work of its kind on the past civilizations of the New World. . . . This book is essential reading for Americanist anthropologists as well as scholars in a variety of other disciplines, and it constitutes serious pleasure reading for lay readers who are cooks, eaters, and students of foodways.


    Her book on the history of chocolate was also recommeded to me.
  • Post #35 - November 29th, 2005, 8:59 pm
    Post #35 - November 29th, 2005, 8:59 pm Post #35 - November 29th, 2005, 8:59 pm
    Anthony Bourdain's first book was about Typhoid Mary. She was a professional cook. It's an interesting read because of the sympathy he felt for her.

    I recommend Appetite for Life, the biography of Julia Child and In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis. The chapters on Ms. Lewis' childhood and the foods she ate are priceless!

    Epitaph for a Peach was a wonderful book. I always remember it when summer rolls around and I look for ripe peaches.

    I'm looking forward to a biography on Maida Heatter. She sounds like she's had a very interesting life.

    And, let's not forget the late Laurie Colwin, who died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1992 at age 48. When she stopped appearing in Gourmet, I felt like I lost a friend.
  • Post #36 - January 12th, 2006, 7:01 am
    Post #36 - January 12th, 2006, 7:01 am Post #36 - January 12th, 2006, 7:01 am
    I redeemed some Borders gift cards online recently. Among the stack that arrived was the photo-essay book, Hungry Planet by Menzel & D'Aluisio. They went around the world, photographing families along with a typical week's supply of groceries.

    The photos are beautiful and the accompanying text (what I've gotten through so far) is thought-provoking. There are a smattering of recipes mixed in, but that's not the focus.

    --Zee


    from Amazon.com description:
    From Publishers Weekly
    Starred Review. For their enormously successful Material World, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase—at the authors' expense—a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed—whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas—for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary—fine enough for a stand-alone volume—it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume. (Nov.)
    Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

    Book Description
    On the banks of Mali ’s Niger River, Soumana Natomo and his family gather for a communal dinner of millet porridge with tamarind juice. In the USA, the Ronayne-Caven family enjoys corndogs-on-a-stick with a tossed green salad. This age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform diets worldwide. In HUNGRY PLANET, the creative team behind the best-selling Material World, Women in the Material World, and MAN EATING BUGS presents a photographic study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family ’s profile includes a detailed description of their weekly food purchases; photographs of the family at home, at market, and in their communities; and a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week ’s worth of groceries. To assemble this remarkable comparison, photojournalist ! Peter Menzel and writer Faith D ’Aluisio traveled to 24 countries and visited 30 families from Bhutan and Bosnia to Mexico and Mongolia. The resulting series of photographs and facts is a 30-course feast of visual and quantitative information. Featuring essays on the politics of food by Marion Nestle, Charles C. Mann, and Alfred W. Crosby, and photo-essays on international street food, meat markets, fast food, and cookery, this captivating chronicle offers a riveting look at what the world really eats.
  • Post #37 - January 15th, 2006, 10:23 pm
    Post #37 - January 15th, 2006, 10:23 pm Post #37 - January 15th, 2006, 10:23 pm
    I was perusing "The Great American Meat Book" by Merle Ellis and really find his comments, writing, and recipes refreshingly simple and basic. I'm going to have to eat my through it over the next couple of years.
    Bruce
    Plenipotentiary
    bruce@bdbbq.com

    Raw meat should NOT have an ingredients list!!
  • Post #38 - August 7th, 2006, 7:07 pm
    Post #38 - August 7th, 2006, 7:07 pm Post #38 - August 7th, 2006, 7:07 pm
    Earlier today I posted about John Edge's Hamburgers and Fries and Cathy2 asked whether it was a good read.

    Well, I finished it on the train home today (and thanks to a ridiculous CTA delay, scanned back through it about six times!) so I thought I'd try to follow up a little. Also, it had me wondering about book talk here on LTH, which led me to this thread which I hadn't seen before.

    So far I've read the first three of Edge's Quartet: Fried Chicken, Apple Pie, and Hamburgers and Fries. The fourth, Donuts, is on its way. I'm not an extremely critical reader, but I have enjoyed all of these. I like travel-oriented food writing, and all of these are more about unique places that serve up the food than about historical matters. From recollection and a little flipping through, H&F is the only one that really even worries much about history, with a chapter recounting the popular story of the Mongol origins of burgers (with a little debunking) and recounting the "hamburg steak" terminology.

    Mostly, the books string together chapters focused around single restaurants or regional dishes, with a recipe or two at the end of each chapter.

    On the local front, the FC book's brief fourth chapter spends a few pages on Chef Luciano and offers a recipe "inspired by" the chicken there, and the Fries chapter of H&F briefly namechecks ghetto fries from Max's Italian Beef.

    These won't pass for academic, and they're not as funny as Calvin Trillin, but they are pretty enjoyable reading. I suppose it speaks to my tastes to note that I wanted to try just about everything from the fried chicken book, but only really had one pie pique my interest (Señor Pie's green chile apple pie, Albuquerque, NM). The burgers were a mixed bag, mostly because of my general disinterest in cheeseburgers (about a quarter of the book) -- but I'm really curious about Cuban fritas and the onion burgers of El Reno, Oklahoma, and I had no idea Philadelphia was ground zero for french fries (by Edge's reckoning, at least.)
  • Post #39 - August 8th, 2006, 8:17 am
    Post #39 - August 8th, 2006, 8:17 am Post #39 - August 8th, 2006, 8:17 am
    i havent had a chance to scan all the other suggestions on this thread, yet. but in case no one has mentioned LAURIE COLWIN, someone needs to. aside from her marvelous novels, she had 2 books on food, Home Cooking, and More Home Cooking. they are part memoir and part recipes, and all parts are worth reading. she was a very down to earth, accessible writer with simple tastes. a lot of her chapters appeared in a column she wrote for Gourmet magazine as well. i always thought she was too good for Gourmet. it broke my heart when she died at age 48 of a heart attack in the mid 90's. justjoan
  • Post #40 - August 8th, 2006, 2:06 pm
    Post #40 - August 8th, 2006, 2:06 pm Post #40 - August 8th, 2006, 2:06 pm
    I agree with the recommendation for The Apprentice. I thought the book was interesting and very entertaining.

    On the other end of the spectrum, I recently read Poisons of the Past, an empirical study of the affect that certain food disease had on the rye bread eaters of medieval Europe. Once you get past the charts and graphs, the actual prose is very interesting. If you love empirical studies, this will be right up your alley. Basically, all that devil-fear and witch hunting may be traceable to diseased bread.

    Although somewhat cheesy and technically a travel book, Under the Tuscan Sun contains enough recipies and food-related anecdotes to be worthy of a mention.
  • Post #41 - August 8th, 2006, 3:23 pm
    Post #41 - August 8th, 2006, 3:23 pm Post #41 - August 8th, 2006, 3:23 pm
    I just finished up an interesting read - Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. It's by Bill Buford, a writer for The New Yorker, and it describes his time spent in Mario Batali's kitchen at Babbo and his trips to Italy to apprentice as a pasta-maker and butcher. Along the way he also delves into some historical info on pasta and Tuscan cuisine.

    I'm a novice when it comes to food preparation and history, but I found it easy to read and very interesting.
    Last edited by ba11man on August 8th, 2006, 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
  • Post #42 - August 8th, 2006, 4:25 pm
    Post #42 - August 8th, 2006, 4:25 pm Post #42 - August 8th, 2006, 4:25 pm
    Cinny's Mom wrote:I agree with the recommendation for The Apprentice. I thought the book was interesting and very entertaining.

    On the other end of the spectrum, I recently read Poisons of the Past, an empirical study of the affect that certain food disease had on the rye bread eaters of medieval Europe. Once you get past the charts and graphs, the actual prose is very interesting. If you love empirical studies, this will be right up your alley. Basically, all that devil-fear and witch hunting may be traceable to diseased bread.

    Although somewhat cheesy and technically a travel book, Under the Tuscan Sun contains enough recipies and food-related anecdotes to be worthy of a mention.


    the same way that sleep paralysis/hypnogogic/psychopompic dreaming has developed a folklore of incubi/succubi/and the grim reaper...interesting how relatively objective altered states devolve into superstition...

    to jump back to beloved ergot rye: one man's shifty wallpaper is another's attacked-by-demonic-forces
    Being gauche rocks, stun the bourgeoisie
  • Post #43 - August 9th, 2006, 1:55 am
    Post #43 - August 9th, 2006, 1:55 am Post #43 - August 9th, 2006, 1:55 am
    Laurie Colwin was mentioned by Apple way back. And I agree that she is sorely missed.

    My latest great food read is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I cannot begin to describe what a great book this is.

    If you're looking for something to keep you on your diet: Fast Food Nation. Cripes. :shock:

    On a cookbook note, I enjoyed the Pat Conroy Cookbook - no Edgerton, but a fun read nonetheless.
  • Post #44 - August 9th, 2006, 7:24 am
    Post #44 - August 9th, 2006, 7:24 am Post #44 - August 9th, 2006, 7:24 am
    I recently read Poisons of the Past, an empirical study of the affect that certain food disease had on the rye bread eaters of medieval Europe.


    If you're interested in this topic, another book, perhaps a bit more reader-friendly, is Piero Camporesi's Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe.
    "The fork with two prongs is in use in northern Europe. In England, they’re armed with a steel trident, a fork with three prongs. In France we have a fork with four prongs; it’s the height of civilization." Eugene Briffault (1846)
  • Post #45 - August 28th, 2006, 10:47 pm
    Post #45 - August 28th, 2006, 10:47 pm Post #45 - August 28th, 2006, 10:47 pm
    I'm just finishing Heat by Bill Buford. He really pops Mario Batali's bubble.
  • Post #46 - September 18th, 2006, 8:26 am
    Post #46 - September 18th, 2006, 8:26 am Post #46 - September 18th, 2006, 8:26 am
    I just finished Heat last week and I think those of you with passion for food and drink (you all fit the bill) might enjoy this book. Staff writer for The New Yorker, Bill Buford sees himself as a “comfortable cook” and he volunteers to become Mario Batali’s “slave”. This adventure leads to other apprenticeships with some of Italy’s masters. It is each master’s passion and Buford’s vivid descriptions of these characters that make this book such a feast for the senses.

    Buford travels to Italy to learn pasta making from some pizzeria owners in Porretta and he becomes obsessed with his quest to discover when cooks started adding eggs to pasta dough. He searches cookbooks back to the 1,500s in pursuit of the first “eggy recipe.”

    He shares part of his pasta lesson as he makes “angelically yummy munchkin food” (tortellini): “You next tip the top part of the triangle forward, as though it were bowing in an expression of gratitude, and then (the crucial step) pull the other two corners forward, as though securing the bowing had in a headlock. You then press it all together to form a ring. When you turn the pasta over, you’ll be astonished by what you created; a belly button. (What can I say? It’s wildly erotic.)”

    My favorite part of the book is when Buford becomes an apprentice in Dario Cecchini’s butcher shop in Panzano in Chianti. The butcher has his own way with words, “A butcher never sleeps. A butcher works in meat during the day and plays in flesh at night. A true butcher is a disciple of carnality.” The lively discussions about wine, oil and cows encourage a renewed appreciation of food.

    There are so many wonderful passages and I’ll leave you with one more:
    “Enrico’s olive oil, I can testify, is very good, but there are a lot of good olive oils, made by other nutty earth artists with no interest in money, obsessed with smell, looking over their shoulders to make sure they’re the first on their mountain to pick their greenly pungent unripe olives, squeezing the tiniest amount of intense juice from their oldest trees. The viscous, gold-green liquid that dribbles out from their stone-like fruit is unlike any other oil I have tasted, and the madders chauvinistically boast that none of it leaves Italy.”
  • Post #47 - September 18th, 2006, 5:53 pm
    Post #47 - September 18th, 2006, 5:53 pm Post #47 - September 18th, 2006, 5:53 pm
    yes, Buford's the "foodie" buch du jour

    I'm about 2/3rds done...he's taut and energetic when not overly self-referential and turgid

    I infer an impression off the reek; popular fawning perfumes any deep crit.: among the thugs! Granta!! journalismus!!!

    so so-far it's good not great, certainly not a contemporary lit. culinary Rubicon:

    a diverting read, but why am I asking for more?

    :

    the third Ruhlman lies in wait

    ---

    I'm interspersing Heat w/ my dipping into McDowell's long o.o.p. (23 yrs!)
    Blackwater saga...I discovered a cache of the orig. serial in Southern IL last year.

    Wow!

    if you have any clue as to this *find* then you know the cult is deserved---imagine Faulkner's Roanoke tales, darkling jewels, set amongst gilded, irridescent verdigris-encrusted Southern Gothic settings...how these novels(this novel) have remained out of print for so long...it's a *damned* shame
    Being gauche rocks, stun the bourgeoisie
  • Post #48 - October 3rd, 2006, 7:41 am
    Post #48 - October 3rd, 2006, 7:41 am Post #48 - October 3rd, 2006, 7:41 am
    For another taste of Bill Buford, you might want to pick up the current issue of the New Yorker (Oct. 2), where, among other things in his essay on the Food Channel, he points his finger at those responsible for Rachel Ray, Gaida, and other depredations.
    "The fork with two prongs is in use in northern Europe. In England, they’re armed with a steel trident, a fork with three prongs. In France we have a fork with four prongs; it’s the height of civilization." Eugene Briffault (1846)
  • Post #49 - October 13th, 2006, 8:36 am
    Post #49 - October 13th, 2006, 8:36 am Post #49 - October 13th, 2006, 8:36 am
    The New Yorker article by Buford about the Food Network (which I found to be quite interesting) is also available online.
  • Post #50 - October 13th, 2006, 8:53 am
    Post #50 - October 13th, 2006, 8:53 am Post #50 - October 13th, 2006, 8:53 am
    But I have met a playmate of the month! And I went to 7th grade with another one!

    So there is hope I'll have a tomato like that someday...
    Watch Sky Full of Bacon, the Chicago food HD podcast!
    New episode: Soil, Corn, Cows and Cheese
    Watch the Reader's James Beard Award-winning Key Ingredient here.
  • Post #51 - October 13th, 2006, 9:01 am
    Post #51 - October 13th, 2006, 9:01 am Post #51 - October 13th, 2006, 9:01 am
    bryan wrote:Laurie Colwin was mentioned by Apple way back. And I agree that she is sorely missed.

    My latest great food read is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I cannot begin to describe what a great book this is.



    I'm about one-third the way through The Omnivore's Dilemma, and although I find Pollan a bit shrill at times (all right already, I feel terrible about eating beef!), his insights into the science of food and the economics of the industrial food chain are fascinating.

    Hammond
    "Don't you ever underestimate the power of a female." Bootsy Collins
  • Post #52 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:02 am
    Post #52 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:02 am Post #52 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:02 am
    Two books I've read in the past year make fascinating pair:
    My Life in France, by Julia Child
    The Apprentice, My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin

    What links the two is that Julia Child writes as an American who falls in love with the culture and food of France, whereas Jacques Pepin emerges as a classically trained French chef who falls for American culture. And yet, as we know, the two became great friends.

    Both books, recommended by others in this thread, are excellent reads, and if someone hasn't read either yet, I think they'd make a great pair to read in succession.

    Jonah
  • Post #53 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:08 am
    Post #53 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:08 am Post #53 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:08 am
    Nice observation. I'd read both in the past year and enjoyed them both. I hadn't thoght to make the connection that you do but I think it's apt. And I heartily recommend either or both, as well.
    Gypsy Boy

    "I am not a glutton--I am an explorer of food." (Erma Bombeck)
  • Post #54 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:30 am
    Post #54 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:30 am Post #54 - February 22nd, 2008, 8:30 am
    Jonah wrote:The Apprentice, My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin


    I especially enjoyed the first half or so of the book where Pepin talks about his early years in kitchens in France and then New York (Pavillon, etc). His entrepreneurship was quite impressive, as were early relationships with Beard, Claiborne (but not Genet :lol: ).
    "Don't you ever underestimate the power of a female." Bootsy Collins
  • Post #55 - February 22nd, 2008, 10:25 am
    Post #55 - February 22nd, 2008, 10:25 am Post #55 - February 22nd, 2008, 10:25 am
    Pepin's training in France was definitely Old School.
  • Post #56 - February 22nd, 2008, 11:46 am
    Post #56 - February 22nd, 2008, 11:46 am Post #56 - February 22nd, 2008, 11:46 am
    David Hammond wrote:
    Jonah wrote:The Apprentice, My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin


    I especially enjoyed the first half or so of the book where Pepin talks about his early years in kitchens in France and then New York (Pavillon, etc). His entrepreneurship was quite impressive, as were early relationships with Beard, Claiborne (but not Genet :lol: ).


    Did he mention his relationship with Howard Johnson's, where he worked there with Pierre Franey?

    Regards,
    Cathy2

    "You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
    Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways,
  • Post #57 - February 22nd, 2008, 11:53 am
    Post #57 - February 22nd, 2008, 11:53 am Post #57 - February 22nd, 2008, 11:53 am
    Pepin writes extensively about his time there. He writes quite favorably about the food he and Franey developed, claiming that that there was one meal he served to a well known chef, not telling him it was a pre-frozen dish they'd worked on, and chef thought it excellent. He does not in any way look down upon what they were doing, and loved that it was better paying, and easier hours than working the line in a kitchen. In Pepin's telling, things began to go downhill when the owner's son, a business school type, took over, and the quality of the food began to drop. Pepin left and opened a soup only restaurant in New York, Le Potagerie.

    Jonah
  • Post #58 - February 22nd, 2008, 3:43 pm
    Post #58 - February 22nd, 2008, 3:43 pm Post #58 - February 22nd, 2008, 3:43 pm
    Hi,

    I have read accounts about their Howard Johnson's efforts. They seemed to have a lot of fun. The first effort began by preparing a meal Howard Johson approved of. ONce they were past that hurdle, then they began scaling up to mass production with the taste the same as approved initially.

    I went to Howard Johnson's during the 1960's with my family. They had all those frozen plainly labeled containers. I would inquire about it, but my parents had no interest. After learning the backstory, I was more sorry they didn't agree. Of course, what influence does an 8-year-old have over the family dining plans?

    Regards,
    Cathy2

    "You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
    Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways,
  • Post #59 - November 14th, 2008, 2:14 pm
    Post #59 - November 14th, 2008, 2:14 pm Post #59 - November 14th, 2008, 2:14 pm
    “Waste-not, want-not.” “A little mold never hurt anyone.” “That will build character.”
    I grew up hearing these phrases from my folks who surely heard them from their folks.

    If some of these are familiar to you, you might get a kick out of Little Heathens
    Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
    . I loved this whole book, but it’s the chapter titled FOOD that I think LTHers will most enjoy.

    “I think it’s a universal trait to wallow in memories of the tastes, fragrances and textures of foods from one’s childhood,” writes Kalish. Bacon, one of her favorite food items, takes center stage and and brings back a flood of memories. She shares that before cholesterol warnings, bacon was used for frying and flavoring, meat was eaten at most every meal and cream was found on “just about everything”.

    Before concern for germs, pies and cakes were tested for doneness with a piece of straw plucked from the kitchen broom. Recipes include carrot marmalade, apple candy pie, wilted lettuce salad, marshmallows and the world’s best head cheese. (I listened to this book in the car. Food chapter is found on discs 4 & 5.)

    There are also detailed descriptions of the dishes, utensils appliances and pantry. The kitchen is the hub of the house where everyone gathered there for food and drink, light and warmth. There’s a great chapter on gardening too.

    It’s interesting that we are now trying to get back to some of the “old-fashioned” ways including farmers markets, canning, eating local, eating better for less money and respect for nature. Kalish’s memories show appreciation for the values and self-sufficiency of times past.
  • Post #60 - November 15th, 2008, 7:29 am
    Post #60 - November 15th, 2008, 7:29 am Post #60 - November 15th, 2008, 7:29 am
    Oooh, and please don't forget one of my favorite books of all time (albeit fiction from a food lover's POV)....

    "Like Water for Chocolate".
    Happy Taster Gal

    THE PARSNIP - Ogden Nash
    The parsnip, children, I repeat
    Is simply an anemic beet.
    Some people call the parsnip edible,
    Myself, I find this claim incredibl
    e.

Contact

About

Team

Advertize

Close

Chat

Articles

Guide

Events

more