Mini-Reviews: Foodie Nonfiction

Sometimes I have things to say about the books I finish, but not enough for a whole blog post. Enter mini-reviews! This time I focus on two recent non-fiction reads: Real Food/Fake Food by Larry Olmsted, and But First, Champagne by David White. I think both are valuable and worth reading, depending on your interests. Keep reading to find out more.

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Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It by Larry Olmsted

I like torturing myself by watching documentaries and reading books about how terrible American food is. Everyone needs a hobby I suppose. Anyway, I learned a lot from this book, such as:

• The difference between the US Department of Agriculture and the US Food & Drug Administration. The USDA is actually designed to serve companies and producers, while the FDA is supposed to protect consumers. However, the USDA is actually the more trustworthy of the two for consumers because the FDA is a useless trash fire that doesn't even bother to follow the bare minimum of its own internal policies, let alone regulate the shit other people do.
• What kobe beef actually is–I'd been looking into this before the trip to Japan, so I was surprised by how everything I read, on the internet or otherwise, was WRONG. Kobe beef is actually a genetically pure strain of cow from a very specific part of Kobe, and the genetics are what gives it its marbling and flavor, not massages and classical music and a diet of beer, as you might have otherwise heard. Also, only 3 restaurants in the US serve actual kobe beef. Everything else is fake.
• Speaking of restaurants, I had no idea restaurants could essentially call food anything they like, even if it's completely incorrect.
• The term méthode champenoise is not synonymous with méthode traditionnelle or méthode classique and can only be used for champagne, not other kinds of sparkling wines. That's because the "méthode champenoise" begins long before the wine is ever bottled and involves what grapes are grown, where, when, how they're planted, how tall they get, when they're harvested, and everything else that's part of the regulations for the winemakers of Champagne.
• I already knew that the olive oil industry was filled with completely fake products and that Italian extra virgin olive oil especially was to be avoided. But I didn't know that the best EVOO to buy is from Australia, which has the strictest regulations regarding olive oil on the planet.

Sometimes Olmsted takes the whole "fake food" thing a little far, like when he complains about Cook's labeling their wine champagne. I mean, it should really be obvious that Cook's isn't from Champagne, based on the price alone. But then maybe to some people it isn't so obvious, idk. Either way, I came away from this book with some great tips on how to read labels and what to look for to make sure I'm getting the most value for my money by buying "real" food.

But First, Champagne: A Modern Guide to the World's Favorite Wine by David White

I enjoyed the first few chapters of this book, which were engaging and well-written. When White got into the modern history of Champagne, however (namely the World War periods), it became sleep-inducing.

I also occasionally felt like White was either soft-pedaling certain facts to make the Champagne houses look good, or didn't bother to do his due diligence in his research. For example, take this passage from the beginning of Chapter Six:

Jay-Z and other celebrities abandoned Cristal after Louis Roederer's president, Frédéric Rouzaud, spoke dismissively of his new devotees.

This sentence makes it sound like Jay-Z and a few of his friends threw a fit because Rouzaud wasn't star struck. The truth is bit more complicated than that. In actuality there was an organized boycott of Cristal in the hip-hop community because they felt Rouzaud's comments were racist, or at least inspired by racism. (Fun fact: the sudden popularity of moscato in the late '00s and early '10s was thanks to this boycott. Jay-Z may have replaced Cristal with Ace of Spades, but most hip-hop artists decided to abandon champagne altogether and instead started drinking moscato.)

I certainly don't know even one tenth of what White does about Champagne, but in the small parts where I did know something, it seemed like White's information was either incomplete or not entirely accurate. That said, I did learn some stuff, the full-color illustrations were fantastic, and it's true that there isn't a book similar to this one on the market. If you're interested in Champagne, or if you're planning a wine tour of the region, this is a good place to start.




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6 Foodie Books You Should Definitely NOT Read While Hungry

Portions of this post originally appeared on Book Riot. I received copies of All For You and Mastering the Art of French Cooking for review consideration. For more on my review policies, please see my Full Disclosure page.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Fumi Yoshinaga

Shiro Kakei is a lawyer, but he's not one of these lawyers who work sixty hours a week and spend their lives at their desks. No, Shiro happily takes the most boring cases so he can put in his eight hours and go home, where he throws himself into his true passion: cooking!

I was expecting a light, entertaining slice-of-life story with What Did You Eat Yesterday?, but it was much better and more powerful than I thought it would be. First of all, for being printed in black and white, the food looked and sounded crazy delicious. This was my face the entire time I was reading:

Also, the recipes are kind of inspiring. As soon as I finished this manga, I started making side dishes for breakfast and dinner, trying to use up what we had in the fridge. I didn't consciously decide to start doing this, incidentally, it just seemed to happen naturally as an extension of reading the book. I have to agree with Shiro's boyfriend, Kenji, that adding side dishes makes the meal more satisfying. I began to feel so much healthier. Add to that Yoshinaga's beautiful, delicate drawings, awesome characters, and vignettes on how food can express love, carry memories, and is more than just following a recipe but also about using what you have and shopping for the best ingredients, and there really is nothing not to like about this manga.

Verdict: Definitely buy. In fact, after I returned What Did You Eat Yesterday? to the library, I bought a copy for myself, I loved it soooo much.

The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, ed. by Kate White

Death and food go together like sun and shade. Why? No one knows, except maybe Hannibal Lecter. In this cookbook, some of the greatest mystery writers in America (Scott Turow, Louise Penny, Mary Higgins Clark, Charlaine Harris, James Patterson, etc.) share their favorite recipes, from family standards to food straight out of their books.

For some crazy reason I decided to start reading this while I was waiting for dinner. Bad decision, or worst decision? The recipes were so good I started ROTFDMAO (rolling on the floor drooling my ass off). But even if you don't like to cook, this book is filled with entertaining stories and essays from mystery authors. I cried at Richard Castle's "pancakes are love," declaration, laughed at Nelson DeMille's Male Chauvinist Pigs in the Blanket recipe, and loved Lorenzo Carcaterra's story about Grandma Maria's Pasta Puttanesca. Lee Child closes the book out admirably with an essay on The Right Way to make coffee. The chapter on side dishes is pretty weak, but this is America we're talking about.

Verdict: Buy. Actually, this is another book I bought after borrowing from the library. Good ol library!

All For You by Laura Florand

Sassy and cute Célie is chef to one of the best chocolatiers in Paris, but her life wasn't always truffles and ganache. She grew up in the banlieue dreaming of marrying her brother's bestie, Joss, until he abandoned her to join the Foreign Legion. Now he's back, acting like nothing ever changed, and Célie has all the feels.

I've never been one of those people who get hungry or crave chocolate while reading a Laura Florand novel, although I do find her food descriptions to be fascinating and on fleek. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I can't eat chocolate, who knows. But with this book, I not only started craving chocolate, I had an entire dream about drinking hot chocolate, the one chocolate treat I really, really miss indulging in. It's kind of strange, considering that All For You is probably one of Florand's less food-centric novels. But then again, it did give me all the warm fuzzies. It's sweet and comforting and just what you need to lift your spirits, kind of like a cup of hot chocolate in book format.

Verdict: Buy.


The following books were ones I wanted to include in the above Buy, Borrow, Bypass, but life and work got in the way and I wasn't able to finish them before the deadline. However, I do still want to review them, so here they are!

Taste Test by Kelly Fiore

Nora is a small-town girl who grew up working in her dad's barbeque joint, but her dreams are much bigger than that. When she gets the chance to be on Taste Test, her favorite cooking competition show, she leaves District 11 her dad and BFF, Billy, to compete in an arena against kids from across the country. Only one can survive win the chance to study cooking in Paris. The problem is, can Nora trust the other contestants, particularly the infuriating and arrogant Christian Van Lorten?

In case you can't tell by the summary, this book reminded me a bit of The Hunger Games. Too bad that title was already taken, it would have been much better than Taste Test. Anywho, this was a really fun, quick read. I loooooooooove books where the two main characters fight all the time. Nora had a few moments where I thought her behavior was unreasonable or annoying, and the ending left almost everything completely unresolved, but the bottom line is this is the kind of book you can kick back and read in an afternoon when you're after some lighthearted entertainment. As for the food, all but one of the recipes were dumped in at the end, and none of them sounded particularly appetizing or easy to make. I wouldn't call this a book NOT to read while hungry.

Verdict: Buy or borrow.

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain

Laurent Letellier owns Le Cahier Rouge, a Parian bookstore. One day he stumbles upon an abandoned purse in the street and becomes obsessed with finding its owner after reading all the personal secrets she's written down in her little red notebook. She owns a red notebook, he owns a bookstore called The Red Notebook–clearly these two are meant to be together. But will they ever meet?

This is a charming, short novel in a similar vein to the movie Amélie, although not as fantastical and twee. It sounds like it could go into creeper territory but it really doesn't. I loved how there were a bunch of jokes you would probably only get if you spoke French–the name of Laurent's shop, for example; or the name of his daughter's cat, Putin, which can mean everything from damn to fuck depending on intonation (or the name of the Russian president, for that matter). Actually, now that I think about it, double meaning in names is kind of a theme in this book. As for why The Red Notebook is on this list, it's surprisingly chock full of delectable descriptions of food and drinking and eating, from pot-au-feu to hachis Parmentier. And if you don't know what either of those dishes are, don't worry–googling photos of them is half the fun. I started craving French food like whoa.

Verdict: Buy or borrow, but definitely read.

Mastering the Art of French Eating by Ann Mah

Francophile Ann Mah thought her dreams had come true when her hubby got a job in Paris. But just a few weeks after the big move, he had to go to the Middle East for a year, leaving Mah lonely and bored until this food writer finally had a lightbulb moment: she could write about French food! Using Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a travel guide, Mah set out to discover the stories "behind" the famous regional dishes of France.

Another day, another foodie memoir inspired by Julia Child. I mean, I get that she's a BFD to a whole generation of cooks and foodies, but it's getting to be a bit cliché at this point. I admit I had trouble getting into Mastering the Art of French Eating. I probably should have known better, seeing as how memoirs are not my thing, but I was expecting a lot more food in this book. Instead, it's mainly about Mah's struggles living as an expat–not just in Paris, but in other parts of the world (her hubby's in the diplomatic service). Which is fine, but I'm not super interested. I also thought the choices for and execution of Mah's quest were pretty damn lame. For Paris–the first chapter in the book no less–what dish does she choose? Steak and frites. Really? Out of all the dishes she could have written about? Giant snooze. In another chapter, Mah highlights two famous andouillette recipes of Troyes, but she doesn't even try them! At that point this book lost me. I will say, however, that the recipes at the back of each chapter sound tasty and I totally want to try them.

Verdict: Bypass, or borrow for the recipes.



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Top Drinks by Lauren Clark

Today's post comes from Lauren Clark, author of Stardust Summer, through ABG Reads Book Tours. Welcome, Lauren!


The title of Stardust Summer is meant to conjure up warm thoughts about spending the day at the beach or on the shores of your favorite lake or river. It's the sort of day spent in a bikini, barefoot, laughing with a group of your best friends. The grill's fired up, the sun's getting low in the afternoon sky, and all of your favorite songs are playing on the radio.

What exactly would make the day just a little more perfect? A fun and flirty cocktail might taste refreshing after swimming and waterskiing. I'm talking about something tall and very cool rather than cozy. Nothing too sweet, with lots of ice, and a few bubbles too, to keep it fresh and zesty.

Check out these Top Ten drinks, perfect for any Stardust Summer day. (Most include alcohol, but many can be made without liquor!!)



1. The Bikini Martini - The name and vivid color make this a delicious summer cocktail. Half-fill a martini shaker with ice Just mix 3 ounces Bombay Sapphire gin, a squeeze of fresh lime juice, 
2 tbsp Blue Curacoa,
1 tbsp Peach Schnapps, and
 1 tsp confectioners' sugar. Shake for 30 seconds and pour through a strainer. Add a twist of lemon zest for garnish.



2. June Bug - Blend together 3 cups of Ginger Ale, 4 tablespoons of grenadine, 4 tablespoons of orange juice, and 3 scoops of orange sherbet. Serves 4. Add a splash of white rum for the "adult" version.





3. Frozen Mango Margarita - Throw it all into the blender, puree, and enjoy! One ten-ounce bag of frozen diced mango, 1/4 cup lime juice, 2/3 cup tequila, 2 tablespoons of orange liqueur, 2 tablespoons of superfine sugar, and 2 cups of ice water





4. Electric Lemonade - YUMMY and refreshing!! Blend together 1 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, 1/3 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, 1 cup sparkling mineral water, dash ginger ale, 1 cup of vodka, and 2 cups of ice. Garnish with mint and thin lemon slices.





5. Hurricane - Perfect for parties. Add Passion Fruit Cocktail mix, lemon juice, dark rum to crushed ice. Decorate with orange slices and cherries.


6. Alabama Slammer - Okay, so Stardust Summer is set in Mississippi and New York....but this drink is too simple and delicious to skip over for this Top Ten Drink List! Just mix up 1 1/3 ounces of chilled Absolut Vodka in a glass and fill with ice-cold cranberry juice.




7. Zenzero - It's the subtle hint of ginger and honey that gives this drink a distinctive and refreshing flavor. Mix 1/8 ounce fresh ginger,
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice,
3/4 ounce honey syrup, and 2 ounces Tequila. Mix the ginger and lemon juice. Pour into a shaker filled with ice. Add tequila and honey syrup. Shake well and pour into the martini glass.



8. Gin Fizz - This takes some work, but is tasty and fun to drink! Combine 1 tbsp. powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp. lime juice, 1/2 tsp. lemon juice, 2 drops orange flower water, and 1 egg white. Add: 1 whiskey glass sweet gin, 2 whiskey glasses of cream, and 2 whiskey glasses seltzer water, plus 1/2 a glass of crushed ice. Shake, strain, and drink.




9. Sangria - A traditional favorite that almost everyone will love. You'll need 1 bottle of white wine or blush Chablis, 1 two-liter bottle of club soda, 2 cups sugar, 3 oranges, thinly sliced, and 3 lemons, thinly sliced. Wash and slice the oranges and lemons. Discard seeds. Combine all ingredients (including lemon and orange juices) in a large container. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Serve over ice.


10. Pisco Sour - Delicious and so pretty in a glass! Mix up 1 cup Pisco (a South American brandy) or White Rum, 1 cup guava nectar, 2 TSP superfine sugar, 1/4 cup lime juice, with a splash of bitters. Add lime slices and mint leaves.






What is your favorite summertime drink? I'd love for you to share your recipe for the perfect afternoon cooler!






Lauren Clark writes contemporary novels set in the Deep South; stories sprinkled with sunshine, suspense, and secrets.

A former TV news anchor, Lauren adores flavored coffee, local book stores, and anywhere she can stick her toes in the sand. Her big loves are her family, paying it forward, and true-blue friends. Check out her website at www.laurenclarkbooks.com.

Guest Post: I Was a Teenage Veggie

By Stephanie Wardrop, author of Snark and Circumstance

Like my heroine, Georgiana Barrett, I was a teenage vegetarian. But I did it back in the 1970s, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where one starts the day with a plate of scrapple and ends it with some other form of sausage and three different kinds of starch on the plate. I brought a lot of peanut utter and jelly sandwiches in my lunches and kept a much lower profile than Georgia does. Her earlier commitment to her principles makes her a much better cook than I was at her age. It took me a long time to learn to be a good veg*n (vegan or vegetarian) cook.

At first I made a lot of boring stir fries back in the dark days before one could purchase tofu at your neighborhood grocery store. But I learned my way around those precious blocks of soybean curd and discovered that if you freeze it and thaw it, you can crumble up the tofu and it’s now a cruelty-free version of ground beef, so I sautéed it with taco seasonings and made lots of nachos that non-veggies gobbled up at parties.

Cheap and Easy Peanut Noodles

An early creation, designed for the student budget, was this version of peanut noodles using good ole’ ramen packs that often sell four for a dollar! Just throw out that nasty packet of MSG and other flavorings and do this instead:

1. In one pot, boil your ramen noodles in plain water.
2. Meanwhile, in another pan, put about a ¼ cup of peanut butter, ½ cup of water or broth, about 2 T of soy sauce, some sesame oil, some ginger (fresh or powdered), and some garlic in and heat it up. The peanut butter will melt into the sauce.
3. Drain the noodles and mix them into your sauce. Serve with sesame seeds, some cilantro, chopped scallions, and peanuts.

But baking is my favorite culinary activity. Like Georgia, I love the alchemy of it. It feels like alchemy because I do not entirely understand the chemical processes that turn some pretty yucky tasting substances, like baking powder and unsweetened cocoa and whole wheat flour into something amazingly delicious. My favorite recipes at present come from two sources:

• Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s amazing Post Punk Kitchen at http://www.theppk.com/. In Snark, Georgia bakes her way through Moskowitz’s Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and you should do the same.
• Chocolate Covered Katie at http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/ which features vegan treats that are not only delicious but healthy. Her chocolate cake with a secret ingredient will change your world. You will not taste the secret ingredient or even suspect its presence, and I say this as the mother of a boy who has never willingly eaten a vegetable but scarf’s down this cake. Just try it. Trust me.

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Weekend Cooking: JAMIE OLIVER'S GREAT BRITAIN

The English are about as famous for their food as the French are for their music. I'm not saying British food is terrible, just that it has that reputation, especially in North America. But Jamie Oliver's Great Britain (or as I like to think of it, Jamie Oliver presents: Jamie Oliver's Great Britain) is a book that aims to heroicize traditional British foodstuffs, from pub dishes to pies and puddings.

As a cookbook, there is a lot that's problematic about Jamie Oliver's Great Britain. Beth Fish Reads mentioned editing and consistency issues in her review, and those are definitely present. The recipes read like Oliver dictated them into his phone and the person transcribing them couldn't always understand what he was saying. That, added to the fact that most of these recipes require really quite advanced cooking skills, means that the average person isn't going to be making most of the recipes in this book, especially if that person happens to not be British. Would I eat haggis? Wellllll... I might try it, if I was in Scotland. Would I make it myself, from scratch, in middle of the US? No I would not.

That being said, I honestly don't think the point of Jamie Oliver's Great Britain is to be a practical cookbook. Instead, it seems more like a love letter to UK food and culture. There are tons of color images, many of which are only tangentially related to food, giving it a scrapbook feel. And Oliver's focus seems to be more on telling us about the history of each dish and raising awareness of the richness, variety, and character of English (and Welsh, and Irish, and Scottish, etc.) food than giving detailed directions for beginners on how to make it. Even if you never plan on cooking a single dish in Jamie Oliver's Great Britain, if you're any sort of Anglophile, you'll probably still get a lot out of this book. And that's what completely won me over about Jamie Oliver's Great Britain.

As for actual cooking, the most approachable chapters are probably "Vegetables" and "Afternoon Tea." Like many places with short growing seasons, the UK is all about the root vegetables, and there are some fantastic recipes for potatoes here, as well as leeks (yum, love leeks), asparagus, spinach, brussel sprouts, and pretty much all my favorite veggies. "Afternoon Tea" is basically a collection of cake and cookie recipes. I decided to try out the Scottish shortbread recipe, since it only had three ingredients and didn't require that I use the Mixer of Doom.

Scottish Shortbread

--Taken from Jamie Oliver's Great Britain; makes 12 pieces

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
• 4 tbsp sugar, plus extra for dusting
• 4 oz unsalted butter

Flavoring options:

Chocolate, orange, & caraway

• Zest of 1 orange
• 1 oz good dark chocolate
• 1 tsp caraway seeds

Lavender & honey

• 2 tbsp lavender honey
• 2 tbsp lavender sugar (use only 2 tbsp regular sugar when making this version)

Lemon thyme & vanilla

• 1/2 a small bunch of fresh of lemon thyme, leaves picked
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or paste

Directions:

Preheat the oven 325 degs F. Mix the flour and sugar together in a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter with your thumb and forefinger, then add your chosen flavorings (if you're using chocolate or seeds you might want to push these into the dough at the end, after you've rolled it out) and squash, pat and push it into a dough. [Here's what I mean about unclear directions. Is the dough supposed to be the consistency of pie crust or what? I just assumed it was, but I think I still overworked the dough a bit.] Don't knead it, you just want to pat it down flat. Push or roll it out until it's 1/3-inch thick--do this directly on to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper so you don't have to move it. Once it's in the shape you want--which could be square, round or a few mall finger shapes--feel free to thumb or pinch the edges. If it splits or tears, just press it back together--but remember, the less you work the dough, the shorter and better these cookies will be.

If you want to score lines on the shortbread so that you click it off into pieces later [total nightmare, fyi], you can. Sprinkle over some sugar, then pop the baking sheet into the oven and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it--you want a lovely light golden color (unless you're making the lavender honey version, which will be darker). Leave to cool, then put away in a tin or serve. These will be delicious for two or three days and make a lovely present for someone special.

And here were my results:



These tasted very flowery and were a little flat (but maybe they're supposed to be that way?). Were they blow-my-mind delicious? Nooo. But they were tasty, and pretty easy to make.

As I said, Jamie Oliver's Great Britain might not be the most practical cookbook, but it is a fabulous collection of recipes and culture from the British Isles. By the time I turned the final page on this book, I was totally in love! Definitely something I would consider a keeper and that may, over time, prove to be a treasured cookbook.


Thank you to TLC Booktours and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book to review! The publishers are also providing a copy of Jamie Oliver's Great Britain to one lucky reader of this blog. To enter to win, please fill out the embedded form below, or go here.

Weekend Cooking: Food in DRACULA

"I don't drink... wine."

It's not that I pay particular attention to food mentions in books (honest), but in some novels the characters talk about food so often it's impossible not to notice and be slightly weirded out. The Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill, for instance. And, another vampire book (coincidence?), Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Here are just a few of the food mentions from the part I've read so far (basically Jonathan Harker's journals):

I dined on what they called "robber steak"--bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat's meat!

The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable.

I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. [Apparently this is actually chicken paprikash.]

I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.

The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old tokay [Tokaji wine?], of which I had two glasses, was my supper.

He took my arm, and we went into the next room, where I found an excellent supper ready on the table.

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem., get recipe for this also.)*

DOOD, SLOW DOWN. Who does Jonathan think he is, Anthony Bourdain? I swear to god all he does is eat. And what the heck is forcemeat? (When I first read that I thought I thought it said "horsemeat" and I seriously wanted to throw up. Maybe it's related to empenadas?)

Anyway, because I'm me, I have to wonder--why all the food mentions? Here are some possibilities I've come up with:

• Bram Stoker was a foodie and couldn't stop himself from writing incessantly about food.
• Jonathan's journals are supposed to imitate a travelogue, and eating weird stuff is one of the great joys and trails of traveling.
• Jonathan's food lust mirrors the Count's lust for blud.
• MOST LIKELY POSSIBILITY: Food, like everything else in Dracula, is a metaphor for sex.

Take, for instance, Jonathan's encounters with the vampiresses, where they "licked their lips like an animal" and sent him into a major spaz attack. Admittedly, that's pretty easy to do with Jonathan, but I think it's clear they think he's appetizing. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I think, too, all this eating eating eating sets the stage for Jonathan's paranoia that he's about to be the Count's dinner.

Have you ever read a book where the food descriptions seemed out of control, and was it by any chance a vampire novel? Because so far all the ones I can think of are.


*Dying--har har--to make some of these dishes yourself? There's an excellent blog post with the recipes Jonathan mentions at Her Raven Domain.

Weekend Cooking: THE HOMEMADE PANTRY--101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making by Alana Chernila

If we are to become people who do make butter, we might have to shift the way we see ourselves a bit. We might have to get into the adventurous spirit and unearth our own curiosity about where our food comes from. We might have to make a colossal mess of the kitchen. And we might have to slow down, at least long enough to knead a loaf of bread before the day begins.

Guys. This book is AMAZING.

When I first saw Beth Fish Reads' review of The Homemade Pantry, I thought it might be worth checking out, but I didn't have very high expectations for it. I know how these make-it-yourself-at-home books tend to go: spend lots of money on specialized equipment and lots of time, OR just go to the grocery store and buy it there. Even though I like making my own food, I can't spend tons of money on new equipment for it, and I don't want to spend my entire day in the kitchen.

I didn't realize how perfect The Homemade Pantry was for me until I picked it up at the library. I've made my own cheese (see here), baked my own bread (here), and made my own liquors (here) from scratch before. If that sounds like something you could/want to do, you should definitely pick this book up. All of those types of recipes are in The Homemade Pantry, along with many others.

The Homemade Pantry is divided into sections imitating the aisles of your grocery store: dairy, bread, cereals, snacks, etc., which makes it very easy to navigate. You'll be surprised by how many items you can make at home that you might not have thought of before, like brown sugar. I also like that Alana Chernila didn't hit on my pet peeves with this book--requiring specialized equipment and approaching it from the perspective of a chef. There are some specialized tools required, but not as many as I would have expected in a book like this; and even when Chernila does suggest a particular kitchen gadget, she addresses what you can or should do if you don't have it on hand (including a warning about NOT using glass baking dishes, which I really could have used the first time I baked bread).

Also, from what I know about some of the things I've made in the past, such as ricotta, it seems like the recipes Chernila includes here are the simplest and easiest versions you can find. You really can made your own bread, cheese, etc., without spending the entire day in the kitchen; and as Chernila points out, it's usually cheaper and better-tasting!

The Homemade Pantry makes creating food staples at home extremely accessible. If you've ever been interested in being more self-sufficient, or wondered if you really could make your own cheese, bread, butter, etc., then you should definitely check this book out.


Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking: FOODTRIENTS--Age-Defying Recipes for a Sustainable Life by Grace O

My first thought on seeing this cover was: why is there a woman drinking water from a leaf? Are these recipes for our dystopian future where there's no running water? Because I don't live in a place with that many trees.

Turns out they ARE for our dystopian future. It's the first post-apocalyptic cookbook. Kidding! Or am I? Guess you'll just have to read the book to find out. Or read the other reviews where no one else mentions it.

Anywhosie, FoodTrients is a cookbook that claims to provide recipes that "promote longevity, prevent the diseases of aging, and increase energy and vitality." Basically, if we were living in The Hunger Games, this is the kind of food the people in the Capitol would be eating. And naturally many of the ingredients are exotic or unusual, because let's face it, if the book told you the ingredients in Doritos were preserving your skin, there wouldn't be much reason to buy the book. Or much of anything besides Doritos.

What are some these ingredients? I'm happy you asked. There's a table of them in the back of the book that's honestly the best part of this entire cookbook. But Grace O highlights some more unfamiliar (to me, anyway) foods: bitter melon, moringa, hemp milk, soursop, and chia seeds. I have never heard of most of these ingredients or seen them in my grocery store. I'm just happy when they have kale.

Honestly, this cookbook falls into a category I like to call "food porn." The pictures are nice to look at, but the chances that I'm ever going to make any of these recipes is pretty minimal. Not only do you have the unfamiliar ingredients with no suggestions as to substitutions (though I usually just Google that myself, it's nice when a cookbook author acknowledges not every food in the world is readily available to every person in America), there's also not much info on how to pick them out, clean them, handle them, etc.

Just as the instructions are sparse, so is the science. I'm not sure I trust any of Grace O's claims as to the benefits of these ingredients or meals--she offers nothing in the way of supporting evidence or citation, and the lack of specificity makes the whole thing feel more like wishful thinking or guestimating. Does Grace O have a degree in any health sciences-related field? It's not mentioned in her bio that she does. She has cooked for royalty, though (see what I mean? Capitol food). I'm not entirely sure where she's getting her information about the healthfulness of these ingredients or exactly how much one has to eat of them to make an appreciable impact. Yeah, red wine's healthy (note: red wine is not listed as one of the "FoodTrients"), but only in certain quantities.

I will say the best part of the book was the "Starter" section. Actually, this was the only section where there were recipes I wanted to try. I made the Quinoa Tabbouleh on Pita:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup quinoa
• 1/2 tbs kosher salt dissolved in 1 cup water
  
• 2 cups finely chopped parsley
• 1/2 cup diced tomatoes
• 3 tbs chopped scallions
• 4 tbs olive oil
  
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• sea salt and pepper to taste
• pinch of sumac
• 3 whole-wheat pitas
  

Directions

• Combine the quinoa and water in saucepan and cook, covered, at medium-high heat for 20 minutes [I followed the package directions]. Allow to cool.
• Toss quinoa with parsley, tomatoes, scallions, 3 tbs olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sumac [I didn't have any sumac so I used some herbs de Provence].
• To make pita rounds, heat oven to 400 degs Fahrenheit, brush with olive oil, and bake for 10 minutes in foil.

I'd never cooked with quinoa before, so this was a bit of an adventure (one thing I learned: buy the pre-rinsed quinoa next time). The recipe itself was okay. I liked how the quinoa was a little crunchy, but the lemon juice was overwhelming. You definitely need something in there to give it flavor, though, or it would be horribly bland. For the most part I thought it was a lot of work for a snack, but if you have some quinoa leftover from another meal this would be a good way to use it up. The recipe is VERY basic, and I noticed that's pretty typical of the dishes in FoodTrients (whole wheat garlic noodles, for example). As one might expect, the recipes focus on ingredients and for the most part have simple cooking techniques.

Overall, however, not many of the recipes in this book sparked a desire in me to make them. Some of the mains looked downright unappetizing, and there were a lot of dishes that I personally wouldn't be able to eat because of my own health issues. I also find the idea of spending the time, money, and energy to import ingredients from far-flung continents for the sole purpose of making me healthier very death-of-the-Roman-Empire, but that's probably just me. If you're interested in working with ingredients such as the ones I mentioned, however, then you'll probably want to check this book out.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me this cookbook to review!

Weekend Cooking: TEA--History, Terroirs, Varieties

You might not know this, but I LOVE tea. There is probably more space in my cabinets devoted to tea and its various implements than any other single food or beverage in my kitchen. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw Tea: History, Terroirs, Varieties at my library.

I've read a few books about tea before (yes, I'm that much of geek), but none that covered so much ground--both literally and metaphorically--or had so many high-quality illustrations. This is really a gorgeously photographed book.

That being said, I've also never read a book about tea that was this boring.

Here is just a sampling of the type of writing that will greet you upon opening this book:

"Picking tea leaves is a simple yet critical activity that involves detaching the young shoots from the plants."

Could you repeat that, please? I don't know what the word crit-i-cal means.

"Flavor is the combination of olfacto-gustatory sensations derived from consuming a food."

But what is the sound of one mind screaming? Riddle me that, Zen word master.

I would describe the style of writing in this book as "government pamphlet," but I'm pretty sure I've read a few government publications that were more entertaining to read than Tea is. It is so pedantic and dry that I'm amazed a human being even wrote it. I think I honestly would rather watch grass grow than spend hours of my life reading this book.


Image courtesy of Slow Food Australia

To be fair, there are some interesting parts that introduced new factoids to me. For example, I didn't know that oxidation effects the hue of the tea. I also really liked reading the sections on how different countries drink tea, particularly the gong fu cha tea ceremony practiced in Taiwan. This type of tea ceremony isn't well-known to people in America (certainly not in comparison to Japan's chanoyu ceremony), but if you need a visual of it you can watch "The Blind Banker" episode of Sherlock Holmes--the tea ceremony Soo Lin Yao performs is Taiwanese.

Other than those few sections, though, for the most part this is a book written by and for people in the tea industry who want to know about distribution, prices, quality, and when and where to buy. It's beyond the scope of interest of even a devoted tea drinker, like myself; and even if it wasn't, do you really want to subject yourself to 200+ pages of that writing style? I know I don't.

Unless you're planning on opening a tea company, I'd recommend going with another book.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking: Less Is More

Sometimes the less work and ingredients you put into something, the better it is.

For example, I like to make croutons out of stale bread because I hate throwing out bread. My dad loves them. All I do is cube the bread, drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put them in a 325 degree oven until they're crunchy.

Then one day I decided to mix it up a bit and add cheese, thyme, and garlic. I followed this recipe from Rachael Ray:

Image courtesy of Gimme Some Oven

Ingredients:

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 3 cups cubed sourdough bread
• 1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
• ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme (or 1 1/2 t. dried)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Heat garlic and oil over low heat and melt butter into the oil.
3. Place the bread in a large bowl and toss with garlic oil and butter.
4. Season with pepper, Parmesan and thyme.
5. Spread croutons evenly on baking sheet and bake until crisp and golden. (15 - 25 minutes).

Double the ingredients, double the fun! How can anyone go wrong with cheese and garlic, right? Instead of tasting better, though, the croutons tasted really cheesy--and not in a good way, more in an American-Idol-is-making-me-hate-this-song kind of way.

Another instance where I've found this to be true is with risotto. Usually I make Alton Brown's asparagus and mushroom risotto, because the man's a genius. Here's the recipe:

Image courtesy of AMISTA Vineyards

Ingredients

• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups Arborio rice
• 5 ounces wild mushrooms, cooked and coarsely chopped, approximately 3/4 cup
• 7 ounces asparagus, cooked and cut into 1-inch pieces, approximately 1 1/2 cups
• 2 ounces grated Parmesan, approximately 1/2 cup
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Directions

1. In an electric kettle or medium saucepan with a lid, combine chicken broth and white wine and heat just to simmering. Keep warm.
2. In a large 3 to 4-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onions and a pinch of salt and sweat until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until the grains are translucent around the edges. Be careful not to allow the grains or the onions to brown.
3. Reduce the heat to low. Add enough of the wine and chicken stock just to cover the top of the rice. Stir or move the pan often, until the liquid is completely absorbed into rice. Once absorbed, add another amount of liquid just to cover the rice and continue stirring or moving as before. There should be just enough liquid left to repeat 1 more time. It should take approximately 35 to 40 minutes for all of the liquid to be absorbed. After the last addition of liquid has been mostly absorbed, add the mushrooms and asparagus and stir until risotto is creamy and asparagus is heated through. Remove from the heat and stir in the Parmesan, lemon zest, and nutmeg. Taste and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

But last week I wasn't in the mood to mess with asparagus and all that, so I decided to just follow the directions on the back of the Arborio rice bag, which was basically this recipe halved and without the nutmeg, lemon zest, asparagus, and mushrooms.

Let me tell you, it was AMAZING! I've never made a dish of risotto so awesome. It tasted so light and fresh and bright. You don't need lemon zest when you don't add all those other ingredients to weigh down the taste.

This got me thinking, how many other recipes are out there that would taste great if only we added less ingredients to them? Have you ever come across a dish where less is more?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking: A Classic Cocktail

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that cocktails began with prohibition... well, I might have fifty cents. Still, that's a lot (of times, not money).

The myth is that cocktails were invented during prohibition to hide the taste of crappy bathtub gin. In fact, I think that may be a direct quote from The Supersizers Go, which I count on to be 100% historically accurate. Although cocktails (defined as any mixture of alcohol, bitters, sugar, and water) are indelibly associated now with the 1920s and prohibition, in fact they date back to the 18th century, and the first cocktail party took place in 1917 in St. Louis.

Prohibition did have a strong effect on cocktails, but mostly in the type of alcohol used to produce them. Instead of whiskey, the preferred spirit became gin, which didn't require aging. There was a lot of bad alcohol floating around, but of course the quality of alcohol you got depended on who you knew and how much money you had.

I was reminded of all this the other day when I ran across a mention of cocktails in Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Man in Lower Ten, first published in 1906. One of the characters has invented his own cocktail, which he calls a Bernard Shaw: "a foundation of brandy and soda, with a little of everything else in sight to give it a snap." Other cocktails that date back to the 19th century are Old Fashioneds (bitters muddled with sugar, alcohol added with a citrus twist), Punches, Sours (e.g., sidecar, margarita), Slings, Cobblers (wine, sugar, and fruit), Shrubs (vinegar-based cocktails), Toddies, and Flips (using raw eggs).

In the spirit of experimentation, I decided to make my own Bernard Shaw. I'm not sure what "everything else" in the recipe refers to, but I'm going to guess it's ALL OTHER ALCOHOL. This could be bad.


A mix of brandy, club soda, vermouth, whiskey, and white wine

Ooof. This drink was a little hard to take, I'm not going to lie. Not only did it taste really foul, but the alcohol content was cray cray and it started giving me a headache after the first sip. Remind me not to mix drinks I find in novels from now on, okay?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking: Cheese Please!

According to Chuck Hughes from Chuck's Day Off, there is a renaissance of artisan cheese making happening in America right now, and I really have to agree with him. In the '80s it seemed like there were only three kinds of cheese: Velveeta, Kraft, and Philadelphia. Admittedly I was pretty young in the '80s, so my recollection might not be that great, but nowadays you can get so many different specialty cheeses in the grocery store. That definitely wasn't around when I was a kid.

When I was living in Oklahoma, there was a fromagerie--aka cheese shop--in the town I lived in, and I started to become obsessed with all trying all the different types of cheeses that were available. Then, while watching The Big Cheese one night, I started to wonder if there was a way to make cheese in a home kitchen. Although I doubted it (I figured you needed raw milk and specialized equipment I definitely wasn't going to buy), I put the question out on twitter. I probably could have googled it, but sometimes I just like to ask questions on twitter to see what will happen. Sandy from You've Gotta Read This said she'd just gotten a book called Artisan Cheese Making at Home that looked like something I'd be interested in.



My library had it. Yay! This book has absolutely fabulous, delicious-looking photographs that make me crave cheese like a crazy person, and recipes for everything from marscapone cheese to Stilton; as well as yogurt, butter, and recipes for dishes to make with your home-made cheeses. It's also very informative about the types of cheeses you can make and starts out with the easier stuff (ricotta, butter, yogurt, etc.).

That being said, I had the same problem with this book that I did with many of the bread-making books I looked at last year: even though the recipes are scaled-back for home kitchens, they still require a lot of special equipment and ingredients. In other words, it's written by a chef (Mary Karlin, in this case) who is writing what are "simple recipes" from the perspective of a chef, which is still way more time, money, and work than the average person wants to put into it.



Just for example, Karlin's recipes are in what she calls "small batches" of ONE OR TWO POUNDS of cheese. Do you know how long it would take my family to eat a whole pound of cheese, assuming they would even agree to eat it? That is not a practical-sized batch for the average household. Another pet peeve of mine: her butter recipe requires a food processor, which 1. isn't listed in the required equipment chapter, probably because she just assumes EVERYONE must have a food processor; and 2. is something I don't have. Even Karlin's simplest recipes require ingredients I've never heard of. Take the ingredients for her ricotta recipe, one of the first in the book:

1 gallon pasteurized or raw whole cow's milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon citric acid powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt

What the heck is citric acid powder? How many people just have that sitting in their cupboard? The recipe also calls for sterilized equipment, nonreactive-strainers, -bowls, and -pots, and butter muslin instead of cheese cloth. Cuz that's totally necessary.

Fortunately, Sandy also gave me a link to a simpler ricotta recipe she found in Food & Wine magazine by Helm Sinskey; otherwise I never would have attempted to make cheese. By comparison, this recipe uses easily-found ingredients and the batch is 1/2 the size of Karlin's:

Ingredients:
    1.    2 quarts whole milk, preferably organic
    2.    1 cup heavy cream, preferably organic
    3.    3 tablespoons white vinegar
    4.    1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions:
    1.    In a medium pot, warm the milk and cream over moderately high heat until the surface becomes foamy and steamy and an instant-read thermometer inserted in the milk registers 185°; don't let the milk boil [note: at high altitudes, milk will boil at this point. wah-wah]. Remove the pot from the heat. Add the vinegar and stir gently for 30 seconds; the mixture will curdle almost immediately. Add the salt and stir for 30 seconds longer. Cover the pot with a clean towel and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours.

    2.    Line a large colander with several layers of cheesecloth, allowing several inches of overhang. Set the colander in a large bowl. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the curds to the colander. Carefully gather the corners of the cheesecloth and close with a rubber band. Let the ricotta stand for 30 minutes, gently pressing and squeezing the cheesecloth occasionally to drain off the whey. Transfer the ricotta to a bowl and use at once, or cover and refrigerate.

Make Ahead The fresh ricotta can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

Notice that this recipe also uses less salt and more cream than Karlin's. I followed this recipe (halving it), and it turned out fabulous! Very fluffy and creamy. It takes about three hours to make, but only thirty or so minutes of that requires your attention. Here are some pictures:

Making the cheese:



Of course, once I'd made the ricotta, I had to figure out what to do with it. Here are some of my recipe attempts:



I decided to make this after Memory from Stella Matutina said she liked ricotta with honey. This has honey and pepper sprinkled over it. It was okay, but a little bland, and not very filling.



I got this recipe from Real Simple. It's ricotta, butter, lemon zest, parsley, tarragon, and chives. I added a ton of herbs and pepper, but it was still very bland--okay, but definitely missing something.



This bruschetta was pretty good. I squeezed out the tomato's juices into the bread, then chopped the tomatoes, which made them easier to eat. The basil and prosciutto added a lot of flavor.



This is a pretty similar recipe to the bruschetta, but adapted for pizza. This was by far the best of the snacks I made. The only thing I would change is to add more tomato paste.

I also wanted to try making a dessert with the ricotta, and chose this recipe from Noshtopia for ricotta chocolate pudding. I had my doubts about turning cheese into a chocolate pudding, but it was really good!


So that was my cheese-making experience. It went pretty well (I count any cooking experiment that doesn't end with me in the ER a success at this point), and I am definitely encouraged to try to make different cheeses and butter. However, I don't think I'll be trying the recipes in Artisan Cheese Making at Home any time soon. They probably do taste better than the very basic cheese and butter recipes I've found so far, but I'm looking for easy at this point. It's a great resource if you're an experienced cook ready to put a lot of time, patience, energy, and money into making cheeses; but I think for the average person it's more like a book of food porn than something for practical use.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking Review: THE FOUNDING FOODIES by Dave DeWitt

I was SO excited about Founding Foodies when I first saw it. I heart cultural history of any sort, whether it addresses dance, art, cooking, literature, film--you name it. Not to mention that one of my favorite things to eat is mac & cheese, and one of my favorite things to think about while making it is that Thomas Jefferson served the first dish of macaroni and cheese. How cool is that? In a way it ties me and Thomas Jefferson together. As a result, I've always been curious about Jefferson and his pals, and how their legacy can be found in food as well as politics. Since many of the men involved in the American Revolution were tavern owners and farmers, it stands to reason they knew their food.

Founding Foodies purports to tell us about the beginnings of "America's diverse food culture," as well as give us original Founding Father recipes like George Washington's beer and Martha Washington's fruitcake. How fun is that?! Unfortunately, the answer is not very fun at all, because this book fails on practically every level imaginable.

My high expectations of Founding Foodies started to plummet in the introduction. Perhaps it's just my years of being in school, but I expect the introduction of a non-fiction book to summarize the topic, lay out the central argument or point of the book, and provide a brief run-down of how that point is going to be made. What was in Dave DeWitt's intro? First, he talks about why he likes Jefferson (he went to the University of Virginia), and then he spends the rest of the introduction defining the terms "foodie" and "founding father." This was worrisome because both of these terms are generally understood by the North American public; so either we as readers are being talked down to, or DeWitt does not know what the fridge he is talking about.

Things, shockingly, did not improve from there. The first chapter doesn't start with the Founding Fathers at all, but with Sir Walter Raleigh, and it takes PAGES before food is even mentioned. The timeline jumps all over the place, from 1492 to 1850, and there is no central argument or point to be had anywhere in this book. Take the chapter on Thomas Jefferson, for example (I was sure DeWitt would at least manage a solid on this one, since he was such a self-professed Jeffersonian), which goes something like this: Thomas Jefferson, man of the world and lover of different cultures, founding foodie extraordinaire. Let's talk about him! Wait, let's talk about his slaves. He fed them! What a guy! Wait, let's talk about tomatoes. Now let's talk about ice cream, but let's discuss muffins while we're talking about that. Now let's talk about Jefferson's garden. What was his favorite vegetable? The debate rages. And why didn't we talk about tomatoes in this section? I don't know! UHG.

Even if there had been a point DeWitt was trying to make, the book is way too generalized to make it. Hey, did you know they served food at the White House? And people ate corn? It's true. They ate corn. I did like that DeWitt included a lot of information about what the slaves ate, but like much of the information in The Founding Foodies, it lacked a whole lot of context.

Furthermore, I really don't think DeWitt has any clue to what someone who would pick up a book like this would be looking for. Just as an example, at no point does he address the famous macaroni and cheese dish. If I've heard about it, it's got to be well-known; and it's one of America's favorite meals to this day. Yet there's NOTHING. ABOUT IT. ANYWHERE, other than a small note in the recipe section that Jefferson did serve a pasta dish with Parmesan cheese. No recipe, no date, no discussion. Does DeWitt know anything about his audience? Anything at all?



Frustrated, I flipped to the bibliography (there isn't a conclusion, which is probably for the best), and realized that was what I should have done in the first place, because many of DeWitt's sources are Wikipedia pages. HE LITERALLY CITES WIKIPEDIA AS A MAJOR SOURCE IN HIS BOOK! Not just a few times, but regularly. In the intro to the bibliography, DeWitt tries to excuse himself by saying he fact-checked Wikipedia to make sure it was correct. Oh, really?! You fact-checked Wikipedia? Why didn't you just use the sources you found while making sure Wikipedia was accurate then, hmmmmm?

To make it matters even worse, the writing style is stupefyingly boring. If I wasn't going to be put off by the total lack of logical organization and saddest excuse for research I have ever come across in a published book, the writing would do it. It's like reading the narration to a History Channel special, and I do not mean that in a good way.

So just to summarize: this author wrote a book that he basically researched using Google. And now we know why it sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about: HE DOESN'T.

There are some books that make me wonder how on earth people get published, and this is one of them. Even the index is a piece of crap, that's how bad this book is. You can do better. Might I suggest Wikipedia?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking Review: WHAT I EAT by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio

Several months ago, when I reviewed What the World Eats by Menzel and D'Aluisio, Amanda Gignac suggested I try out What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by the same authors. Although it contains similar content--photographs of what people eat from around the world--Amanda was totally right when she said that What I Eat is a lot better than What the World Eats. It has better photographs, essays, and doesn't have as many generalizations or preachy moments.

In What the World Eats, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio photographed families from around the world with a week's worth of food, focusing on how much each family spent. Although it was an interesting idea, the format invited large generalizations. By comparison, What I Eat focuses on individuals and what they eat during the course of one day. This is much better, because it connects food more specifically to a person's lifestyle rather than their nationality. A trucker, for example, logically gets most of his/her food from gas stations and fast food restaurants and needs something that can be eaten one-handed; a German biermeister is obviously going to drink a lot of beer!



The book is organized by how many calories each person eats in a day. I really had no idea what the average calorie intake for an individual was before I started reading this book, but it seems like most people eat between 2200 and 3000 calories per day. Below 2000 calories is mostly athletes who need to be light (my aunt, a competitive rower, once told me she limited herself to 1200 calories a day during racing season--now I know just how low that is!), extreme dieters, workaholics who don't have time to eat, or people living in poverty. Even the fashion model Menzel and D'Aluisio photographed, Mariel Booth, eats 2400 calories a day. One might think that at the other end of the spectrum--people who eat 4000 calories or more per day--there would also be athletes who need energy. But actually, this group is almost entirely made up of men who work outdoors, particularly cold outdoors--with the notable exception of an English housewife who binge eats at 12,000+ calories.

If there's one thing I've learned from this book, though, it's that how many calories you eat doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with how much you weigh, despite what we hear on television. Viahondjera Musutua from Namibia eats about 1500 calories a day and weighs 160 pounds, while João Agustinho Cardoso from Brazil eats more than three times as much--5200 calories a day--yet weighs twenty pounds less! How many calories a dish has and how much food you're actually getting through it also seems to vary wildly: even though extreme dieters Rick Bumgardener and Mackenzie Wolfson eat less than 2000 calories a day, there seems to be a lot more food in their calories than there is in Chinese student Chen Zhen's 2600.



Part of the reason, as explained in Bijal P. Trivedi's excellent essay "The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Calorie," is that all calories are not created equal. When calories were "discovered" by Wilbur Olin Atwater in the 19th century, he was basically looking for a way to measure the amount of energy a person can get from food. But each calorie is made up of different values and behaves differently depending on what you do to it (processing, cooking, etc.), so what exactly goes into a "calorie" and how it will affect your body can be extremely variable.

There are several good essays in this book, which helps to mitigate the preachy tone I didn't like in What the World the Eats and elevates What I Eat to a more serious study of how humans relate to food. Trivedi's essay and Michael Pollan's "The End of Cooking," where he talks about the irony of America's obsession with foodie television and the fact that less and less people are cooking for themselves, were my two personal favorites.

Overall I found this to be a book worth tracking down and think it should definitely be of interest to anyone who likes reading about food. It would also be a great resource if you're planning a trip to any of these countries and want to find out what a typical meal might be.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking Review: FED UP WITH LUNCH by Sarah Wu

You know those people who tweet about what they had for lunch? Well, Sarah Wu made a whole blog about it and then turned it into a book! Blogging "undercover" as the anonymous Mrs. Q, the elementary school teacher mobile blogged pictures of her and students' lunches every day for a year, along with descriptions of what the food was, how it tasted and looked. What did Wu learn from her Supersize Me-like experiment?

I had never visited (or even heard about) Wu's blog, Fed Up with Lunch, until this book came out; but in the interest of learning more about the author and where she's coming from, I looked over her lunch posts. I can definitely see why Fed Up with Lunch is so popular--the blog is really fun and interesting. Most of the attraction lies in Wu's photographs, which aren't professional by any means, but offer a fascinating glimpse into another world. Because most of the food is prepackaged or an appetizing shade of brown-ish, you have no idea what it is until she tells you. The writing itself is really lively and vibrant, but also short--probably about 100-300 words per post. It's said food is a window onto a culture--if that's the case, then the culture of the Illinois school system is like something out of the Jetsons. Their lunches are really bizarre and look like they came out of a space port.

Don't expect any of that from this book, though. This is a memoir of how and why Wu started the blog and her experiences with it, including meeting Jamie Oliver (she had the good fortune to start her blog just as Oliver was airing Food Revolution), being interviewed for Good Morning America, and so on. The pictures of food, which are the heart of Wu's blog, are reduced to 1-inch-square images so small you can't tell what you're looking at, and Wu actually doesn't describe the food she ate that much at all (with the notable and horrifying exception of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich).

Wu states in her book that she felt like a journalist, and I can see that on her blog, but it doesn't translate to this book. If this book is journalism, it's of the fluff variety. She says up-front she's not a food expert, which is fine, but it also shows in that the book reads more like the ruminations of a mom on how we need to watch kids' nutrition, etc. etc. While that's certainly true, as a call to action it's not terribly effective.

There was one really good chapter in the book based on Wu's experiences in the food industry. She worked for Kraft for several years (something she only bothers to mention in chapter seven?), and talks about how food corporations need to show an increase in sales to keep their stock prices up, even though food consumption naturally remains steady. That was really interesting and explained a lot about how food is produced in America.

If you watched Oliver's Food Revolution, you're probably aware that communities' reaction to changing their school food system tends to be met with anything ranging from apathy to antagonism. This book certainly doesn't do any better job than Oliver's TV show at changing that attitude--I have to admit, I'm kind of stuck on apathy at this point. If anything, I'm less inclined to care than I was before, and Wu's really preaching to the choir when it comes to me! While feeding kids freshly-made gourmet meals in cafeterias sounds nice in the abstract, in the concrete I have to wonder if, first of all, kids will actually eat this food; and second of all, who's going to pay for it? Wu didn't persuasively address either question in this book.

If anything, this memoir is an argument for parents to take a more active role in learning about food and cooking freshly prepared meals in their own home. If a revolution begins at home, then Wu did so with her own life, and I think Fed Up with Lunch may influence other parents to do the same.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking: WHAT THE WORLD EATS by Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel

If there's a book just asking to be made into the PBS version of No Reservations, it's this one. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio go around the world and take photos of families with a typical week's worth of food, comparing diets, prices, and a bit about the food culture of the country.

Any foodie worth their salt is interested in what other cultures consider staple foods, so this book is really fascinating, just as I expected it to be when I read Natasha's review of it at 1330v. I was surprised at what parts I found most interesting, however. The variation in what a family spends on food in a single week, for example, can be really mind-boggling. One family in Bhutan feeds 13 people with a little over $5 USD a week; a family of four in France, meanwhile, spends close to $420 USD a week on food! Of course, the French shopping trip included things like wine, cheese, croissants, sausage, and other things I personally wouldn't want to do without. Big spenders on food also have a lot more variety in what they eat. And if there's one thing I've learned from this book, it's that meat is a big expense. Nearly a fourth of the French family's budget was spent on meat, while the Bhutan family only ever ate eggs and a small amount of dried fish for protein. In fact, almost all of the big-budget weekly meals devoted the majority of their money to meat.

I also loved the addition of the family members' favorite foods, just because something like that is always so personal and random. People tend to go either really broad ("everything") or really specific ("spaghetti carbonara"). Unfortunately, we don't get that information for every family, so that was a bit disappointing. The recipes were another odd addition, as the probability of me making something with ingredients I've even heard of, let alone can find, is pretty small.

On an ideological level, I had some issues. This book can get very preachy and the authors definitely have a point of view, one in which McDonald's and processed food is evol. No, I don't eat at McD's; and yes, I am one of those people that's all about fresh and seasonal food, but that's partly because my family is German and I was raised that way.

There's a reason processing and preservatives exist--because eating McDonald's is better than starving. Since the start of civilization, the fight against starvation has been one that requires a way to preserve food for a long time, and nowadays we're pretty good at it. Maybe it's not as healthy as eating everything fresh, but unless we're all going back to being hunter-gatherers (and I can tell you right now I'm not), that's reality. The authors rightly point out that there's a cruelly ironic dichotomy between the fight against obesity in the US and the fight against the hunger that exists in other parts of the world; but they seem more concerned with the former when one would think the latter is more important.

There's also a colonial tone of romanticizing the "primitive life" of non-Western cultures here, an "Oh, look how we're destroying the simple lives and eating habits of these people with our wickedly advanced grocery stores and fast food restaurants" message that I found to be annoying. And if Menzel and D'Aluisio think that this book doesn't invite generalizations (as they say in the introduction), they're deluding themselves; it's titled WHAT THE WORLD EATS, not What a Select Group of People Eats. Overall, though, I think this book is worth at least paging through if you're interested in food and culture. It contains a lot of good information, and the photographs are very interesting (Menzel and D'Aluisio should consider designing supermarket window displays). Plus this book inspired me to compose my own mini-photographic essay! Here is what I eat in a day:

Name: Tasha (31)
Favorite food: Miso soup

Breakfast:

I'm not a big breakfast person and usually just have coffee with cream and peanut butter toast.

Lunch:

Not a big lunch person, either. Today it was chicken enchiladas with what I have to say were some pretty sub-standard tortillas and Spanish rice.

Snacks!

I ate three chocolate chip cookies. Munch munch munch.

Dinner:

Dinner's my big meal. This chicken piccata with noodles and asparagus tips looks really unappetizing, but it tasted all right. I literally ate everything on this plate.

After dinner:

I usually have some wine late at night. Also another snack, but tonight I wasn't that hungry.

Total cost: No idea, that would require way too much math. I do think we spend between $150-200 a week on food for four people, though.

To find out more about Menzel and D'Aluisio's current project, check out this lecture Menzel gave at EG4:




Mini-survey time! About how much does your household spend on food every week? What's your favorite food?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.