The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School[Paperback]

Kathleen Flinn (Author)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Flinn's engaging account of her studies at famed French cooking school Le Cordon Bleu should strike a chord with anyone who has dreamed of leaving the rat race and following a passion for food. The main course, Flinn's narrative of her trials and triumphs as she moves through the three levels of cuisine, is supplemented by plentiful helpings of drama, romance and near-tragedy in her personal life. Cassandra Campbell's reading is superlative: her American accent for Flinn slides gracefully into French, French-accented English and various accents for other international students. Her voice also exactly captures Flinn's shifting emotions, from fear and paralysis when facing the "Gray Chef" and resentment of selfish classmates, to pleasure when she wins praise for a well-prepared sauce and joy when she realizes she is starting to understand French better. Foodies and memoir fans will be enchanted. Each chapter ends with a recipe (which all helpfully appear in PDF on a separate disc). Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, June 25).

Nature's Perfect Food [Paperback]

E. Melanie Dupuis (Author)

For over a century, America's nutrition authorities have heralded milk as "nature's perfect food," as "indispensable" and "the most complete food." These milk "boosters" have ranged from consumer activists, to government nutritionists, to the American Dairy Council and its ubiquitous milk moustache ads. The image of milk as wholesome and body-building has a long history, but is it accurate?

Recently, within the newest social movements around food, milk has lost favor. Vegan anti-milk rhetoric portrays the dairy industry as cruel to animals and milk as bad for humans. Recently, books with titles like, "Milk: The Deadly Poison," and "Don't Drink Your Milk" have portrayed milk as toxic and unhealthy. Controversies over genetically-engineered cows and questions about antibiotic residue have also prompted consumers to question whether the milk they drink each day is truly good for them.

In Nature's Perfect Food Melanie Dupuis illuminates these questions by telling the story of how Americans came to drink milk. We learn how cow's milk, which was associated with bacteria and disease became a staple of the American diet. Along the way we encounter 19th century evangelists who were convinced that cow's milk was the perfect food with divine properties, brewers whose tainted cow feed poisoned the milk supply, and informal wetnursing networks that were destroyed with the onset of urbanization and industrialization. Informative and entertaining, Nature's Perfect Food will be the standard work on the history of milk.

Auberge Of The Flowering Hearth [Paperback]

Roy Andries De Groot (Author)

Most of the cookbooks I admire, as well as many of the foods I love, are products of a place and of a way of life. Eating is a biological act, but it is also a cultural pursuit, and it is no surprise to me that "The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth" (1973), Roy Andries De Groot's monumental book, should be one of my favorites. De Groot (1910-1983), a masterly writer on food and wine, gives life to the world and food of a country inn high in the French Alps, beyond Grenoble, where he explores the lives and the seasons of the auberge and of the two remarkable women who own it. Nearly sightless since 1940, when he was injured during the blitz of London, De Groot brings together a highly visual account of a constantly changing montane valley and its products, exploring the natural world, the rich culinary traditions and the crisp but loving professionalism of the aubergistes. Although filled with recipes, this is not a cookbook as much as it is a book about experiencing food and the natural world — from streams and rain showers to rocks and soil to meadow herbs, wild garlic, country markets, fish of the mountain lakes, wines, cheeses, rustic kitchens, wood-burning hearths and the intense pride in terroir and tradition. It is a fine book, a remarkable array of feasts.

Review by Nach Waxman, owner of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a cookbook store in Manhattan.

(looks like plenty of used copies available on Amazon )

Kitchen Chinese: A novel about Food, Family and Finding Yourself

By Ann Mah

*Book includes guide for groups and recipes.

From Publishers Weekly

After her magazine career craters, Isabelle Lee, the narrator of Mah's super sharp debut, leaves New York to reconnect with her family roots in China. Her familiarity with the language and culture limited to kitchen Chinese, Isabelle lands a job at a magazine for the expatriate community in Beijing and finds a circle of friends. However, her relationship with her big-shot attorney sister, Claire, who's lived in China for a while, gets off to a rocky start, with the two not knowing quite what to make of each other. Isabelle's Beijing immersion, coupled with her chick lit arc, provides a refreshing and fun narrative, helped along by a fantastic heroine whose insights into modern China and the expatriate experience will intrigue readers. It's a great start for a writer with much promise. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis

by Tara Austen Weaver

Publisher Comments

Growing up in a family that kept jars of bean sprouts on its windowsill before such things were desirable or hip, Tara Austen Weaver never thought she'd stray from vegetarianism. But as an adult, she found herself in poor health, and, having tried cures

On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town

by Susan Herrma Loomis

Publisher Comments

A bestselling cookbook author and journalist tells the delicious story of her expatriate life, raising a family, renovating a convent, and savoring the culinary bounty of one of Normandy's most picturesque towns

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl.

"Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, an account of her years as restaurant critic of the New York Times, is simultaneously hilarious, refresing and poignant, altogether a five-star read in the light memoir category.

The hilarity comes from Reichl's penchant for donning elaborate disguises, the better to assure anonymity in assessing New York's most prominent eateries. These incognita excursions allow Reichl to skewer the pretensions and omissions of such well-known restaurants as Le Cirque and Tavern on the Green.

Garlic and Sapphires sets a refreshing tone due to Reichl's insistence on recognizing excellent dining in all of its venues, from humble ethnic restaurants to New York's most elegant establishments. Reichl's penchant for ferreting out little-known gems earns her the opprobrium of Bryan Miller, her predecessor as the Times's restaurant critic, and his supporters, all of whom charge Reichl with "letting down standards". But the many New Yorkers who experience life without expense account or trust fund appreciate her excursions to the wrong side of the tracks to identify dining delights.

Most important, Garlic and Sapphires provides a poignant look at what it is like to be too old, too unfashionable, or too poor to fully take part in the glories of the Big Apple. Reichl's disguises frequently place her in one or more these overlooked groups, and she provides a sensitive picture of what it is like to be marginalized-- not only by headwaiters at four-star dining establishments, but by society. One hopes that Reichl's tenure as Times restaurant critic made top restaurants more likely to treat all of their patrons with dignity and respect.

Garlic and Sapphires led me to develop the following advice for restaurant patrons:
--As Reichl notes, restaurant preferences are subjective. Go to the places you enjoy, rather than the places fashion dictates.
--Restaurants are there to serve you. If you are unhappy about food or service, speak up-- preferably to a manager, if your waiter or waitress hasn't dealt with the problem. Above all, don't be intimidated. If you need instruction on what fork to use or what wine to order, you should be able to ask without embarrassment.
--You are especially entitled to fine service and cooking in a top restaurant-- don't let the establishment off the hook. If you have arrived on time for your reservation (or called ahead to notify the restaurant if you are delayed) and behaved courteously, any lapses in food or service reflect a deficiency in the restaurant, not a deficiency in you.
--At least in the U.S., tips are discretionary. If you're not happy, reduce the tip accordingly. Feel free to advise your friends of the restaurant's shortcomings. And fortunately, you're not a critic who must return to give the establishment a fair chance. If you're not happy, you need never darken its doorstep again.

One final piece of advice-- if you enjoy books about the food world, read Garlic and Sapphires."

http://www.amazon.com/Garlic-Sapphires-Secret-Critic-Disguise/dp/0143036610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274573722&sr=1-1

https://catalog.spl.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=F2745G3772377.19672&profile=dial&source=~!horizon&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100001~!2281589~!4&ri=1&aspect=subtab14&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=garlic+and+sapphires&index=.GW&uindex=&aspect=subtab14&menu=search&ri=1

Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent
By John Reader

From The New Yorker

This enjoyably meandering history looks at the potato as a plant of paradox. It has been revered as an aphrodisiac and feared as a cause of leprosy. Populations rise dramatically wherever it is introduced, but reliance on it “ensnares more people in poverty than it lifts out.” Reader traces the evolution of the potato from poisonous Andean weed to global staple, offering adept disquisitions on whatever captures his attention: the mysterious origins of agriculture, the economic history of Peru, the domestic arrangements of the Irish. There are glimpses of the Reign of Terror, when the ornamental gardens of the Tuileries Palace were planted with potatoes, and the Great Potato Boom of 1903 and 1904, when an investment bubble grew as a result of false claims made for a potato strain known as Eldorado. This is a story of invisible systems and unintended consequences, concerned with how the New World transformed the Old. Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

http://www.amazon.com/Potato-Propitious-Esculent-John-Reader/dp/0300141092/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274545997&sr=1-3

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Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever.

From Booklist: It's not only Charles Schulz's Linus who waits every year for a Great Pumpkin to come along. All over the country, from Rhode Island to California, Ohio to Washington, legions of men (and not a few women) eagerly anticipate great pumpkins of their own—literally. Audacious, obsessive gardeners, they have dreamed and planned, watered and weeded, pruned and fertilized, coddled and agonized over a bumper crop of pumpkins, hoping to nurture one worthy of "world's largest" honors. To do that, it will have to weigh in at close to 1,500 pounds and approximate a Volkswagen Beetle in girth. Accompanying father-and-son pumpkin growers and competitors Dick and Ron Wallace throughout a roller-coaster season, Warren experiences it all, from foaming slime to marauding mice. As bank accounts dwindle and ulcers blossom, Warren's hilarious yet enlightening exposé reveals why and how these passionate, peculiar, and painstaking pumpkin growers are willing to put it all on the line for one big—one very big—payoff. Haggas, Carol

http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Giants-Passionate-Heartbreaking-Glorious/dp/1596912782/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274545817&sr=8-2-spell

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Books on Food

To better organize and communicate about our book-club books (topic: food), let's keep them listed here. I'll start off with some examples.