Tag: Food

Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee

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Craughwell, Thomas J. Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Heming Introduced French Cuisine to America. Quirk Books, 2012.

How I would love to step back in time and follow Thomas Jefferson around! I just find him to be such an interesting character. I definitely agree that he is the most cerebral of our founding fathers. Despite Benjamin Franklin’s eye for invention I find  that Thomas Jefferson was more downright curious. He wanted to learn all that he could about the world around him.

But, enough of that. Onto the book review: This was a disappointment. I honestly expected the subject matter to match the title of the book on several different points. For starters, the obvious one – food (specifically bringing French cuisine to America). I didn’t see enough supporting evidence to believe that it was Thomas Jefferson who actually introduced the cuisine to America. Only a small handful of recipes prove that recipes like macaroni and cheese were introduced. Then there is the subject of James Heming. James Heming might have been the one who did all the work – taking the culinary classes, practicing the recipes at Jefferson’s elaborate dinner parties, and training the next cook to take his place so that he might experience freedom, but it is on Jefferson Craughwell focuses the most. Even then the focus isn’t primarily on his bringing French cuisine to America, it was on everything else.

 

Fast Food Nation

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Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001.

When I first realized Fast Food Nation was on my Lust list I had but one burning question. I wondered if my own personal opinions about fast food establishments would be altered after reading Schlosser’s book. As a rule I don’t eat fast food, so if the answer ending up being yes, how then would my opinions be altered? Was it possible I would turn against my previous dietary sensibilities and try a Big Mac? I will readily admit I am two-faced and biased when it comes to “fast” food. Subway and Chipotles are considered “fast” establishments and yet I don’t put them in the same swamp as McD, BK or Wendy. I guess that’s because you can’t technically drive through Subway or Chipotle. You can’t order and eat without ever getting out of your car the way you can with the clown, the king and the kid.

From the very first chapter of Fast Food Nation I felt as though I had been slapped upside the head with a whole bunch of really disturbing facts about the country in which I reside. Schlosser doesn’t leave a single aspect of the fast food industry untouched or without scrutiny. To use a bad pun, he devours it all and then spits it back out. At us. From the historical humble beginnings of the hot dog cart to the corporate conglomerates of tomorrow Schlosser covers it all. It’s fascinating and yet distracting. Fast food Nation took too long to read because I kept rereading passages out loud to anyone who would listen.

Best thing I learned: Malling is a verb. To mall is to cover this great nation of ours with shopping malls. What’s that Natalie Merchant lyric about sprawling concrete? You get the point.

Wake up moments: “The whole experience if buying fast food has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is not taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a read light” (p 3). Obviously Mr Schlosser hasn’t driven in my neck of the woods. Who stops for a red light?
Another wake up moment from the same page, “A nation’s diet can be more revealing than its art or literature” (p 3).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Guilt Inducing Books” (p 112). Read in April because April is national food month.

Stuffed

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Volk, Patricia. Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family.Hampton Falls: Beeler Large Print, 2001.

I thoroughly enjoyed Stuffed. I found it to be funny and clever and culturally informative. Don’t let the title deceive you. The story does not center around a restaurant. In fact, Volk barely makes mention of the family establishment(s). Instead, Volk offers insight into memories of her family through foodstuff. A cookie. Meat. Soup. Chocolate. Each morsel of food is an opportunity to tell a small tale about a great-grandfather, her aunts, a sister. Probably the most profound chapter is the death of her father. The loss is profound, the love endless. I think the morale of the story, if any, is love your family. Warts and all.

Best lines: “I don’t know if I could live without my sister…I love her as much as I love me” (p 33). C’est vrai. Another line: “You could eat off her floors if you don’t mind the taste of Pine-Sol” (p 68). And one more, “She learned to live with the compromise of pain” (p 119). I could go on, but I won’t.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Food For Thought” (p 92).

PS~ a side note on the large print. No, I’m not going blind. I read this copy because it was the only one within reach. Oddly enough I enjoyed it being so big.

Clean Food

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Walters, Terry. Clean Food: a Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source With More than 200 Recipes For a Healthy and Sustainable You. New York: Sterling, 2009.

A friend gave me a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. Happy birthday to me! Except I have a weird relationship with B&N. On the one hand, I’m a librarian through and through. I borrow my books. Sending them back is in my blood because I really don’t have the space for keepers. Wait. Let me rephrase. I am picky about my keepers because my space is limited. There. That’s more honest. Quite simply, I do not have the luxury of holding on to every book. When I was a child my father and I belonged to a mail-away book club. Every month we would pour over the selections, pick out a few we thought we could read in 30 days and then wait anxiously for their arrival. The package would come, heavy with books, complete with a postage-paid return label as well as a crisp, new padded envelope to send everything back in. Even in high school I couldn’t keep my books. I had to pass them onto my younger sister in an effort to save the family some money. In college I returned my textbooks to pay the phone bill. You could say I’ve never been comfortable with book ownership.

But! But. But, when it comes to gift certificates to book stores I make exceptions. I make exceptions, but there are rules. I can keep books I will use over and over again (like cookbooks). I can keep books I consider educational, something I can learn from each and every time I pick it up (think reference).

The book I purchased with my gift certificate exemplifies both attributes of my exceptions: Clean Food is a cookbook and a reference book. It goes beyond vegetarian eating. Probably the best thing about Clean Food is that it will put an end to struggling to use all the produce we get from the farm share. Every year it’s the same thing – what do you do with 15lbs of bok choy? There’s only so much stir fry one can eat!

March ’11 was…

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What can I say about March? The snow is (finally, finally) beginning to melt and kisa and I are starting to think spring even though it’s still cold, cold, cold and more snow is expected for tomorrow. We made some pretty sobering decisions. No huge projects for Hilltop and no expensive vacations. We’re taking a year off from spending. It’s a good choice, I think, given all the work drama we both have been through recently. Family life is starting to even out. For awhile I wasn’t feeling the proverbial pressures, but then again I had been shutting my phone off at night! March was also a Natalie night with the best company a girl could ever have.  Here’s the list for March books:

  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ~ in honor of Book Month. I had forgotten about all the sighing and sobbing! *sigh*
  • Blind Descent by Nevada Barr ~ in honor of Barr’s birth month. I will never look at cave exploring the same way again!
  • Flint by Paul Eddy ~ in honor of Eddy’s birth month.
  • The Bold Vegetarian: 150 Innovative International Recipes by Bharti Kirchner ~ in honor of March being “noodle month.” I kid you not.
  • Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ~ in honor of Florida becoming a state. This was made into a movie…interesting.
  • God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane~ in honor of African American Writers Month.
  • Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks ~ in honor of March being family month. This was a behemoth to read – over 700 pages!
  • Raising Holy Hell by Bruce Olds ~ in honor of family month (read with Cloudsplitter because they were on the same topic).
  • Cosi fan Tutti by Michael Dibdin ~ in honor of March being Dibdin’s birth month.

Confessional: I skipped Famished Road by Ben Okri and added God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane instead. Somehow I had forgotten that I had already tried that book a few years ago. It just wasn’t my thing. However, I did write a review for LibraryThing. I just wish I had remembered that before ordering it a second time. I hate making more work for librarians! Here’s what I said for LT:
The Famished Road by Ben Okri is all about spirits. Azaro is a child in Africa struggling between two worlds: that of the spiritual and that of the Earthly. His parents on Earth are well meaning, but poverty driven, people. the basic theme of Famished Road is the definitive difference and ultimate struggle between good and evil. Azaro’s personal struggle is with spirits that can only exist if Azaro is dead. Azaro’s father struggles with abuse and power. Starting as a boxer he soon delves into the world of politics to gain power. Madam Kato is a simple bartender who begins her part of the story by wanting more profit but as a result of greed, sinks lower and lower. Along with the ever-entwining magical realism is the drifting of morality.

Other books I read in March not on the BookLust list: Miss Timmins School  for Girls: a novel by Nayana Churrimbhoy ~ an Early Review book for LibraryThing. This was great! Definitely one of my favorite reads of the month. I also started reading Clean Food by Terry Walters and Now Eat This by Rocco Dispirito (reviews coming soon).

Bold Vegetarian

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Kirchner, Bharti. The Bold Vegetarian: 150 Inspired International Recipes. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.

A cookbook chock full of information beyond ho hum vegetarian recipes. Eggplant is listed in the index but you won’t find a recipe for Eggplant Parmesan. Special recognition must be made to the word “international” in the subtitle because The Bold Vegetarian takes you on a culinary adventure around the world. Oh, the places you will go! In no particular order:

  • China
  • Spain
  • Italy
  • India (this is a given because Kirchner is a renowned author of Indian cookbooks).
  • Korea
  • France
  • Japan
  • Caribbean
  • Africa
  • Thailand
  • Greece
  • Middle East
  • Germany
  • Mexico
  • United States, and because food is subject to the literal and cultural melting pot,
  • International (in other words, who knows where it originated!)

In addition to great recipes that sound different and exciting, Kirchner adds serving suggestions to create entire menus. She offers variations to make a dish vegan instead of vegetarian. She includes anecdotes, illustrations, and trivia to spice up the pages (pun intended). There are even a few notes for the Grow It At Home gardener. All recipes are simple to follow. Cooking directions are aided by a glossary of terms (just in case someone doesn’t know how to blanch, grill or simmer) and a “pantry” list although the term pantry is misleading because I would never consider storing ghee or feta in a traditional pantry. To say these are ingredients to have on hand would be a better way to phrase it. One other small detractor – no nutritional information. In this health-aware age knowing what you eat is all the rage, especially when it comes to foreign foods made from scratch.

Meals I am most looking forward to making:

  • Curry Gyozas (p 38),
  • Chipotle Chickpeas (p 150),
  • Plum Kuchen (p 254)

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fiction for Foodies” (p 88). Even though this is a straight up cookbook Pearl mentioned it because the author, Bharti Kirchner, also wrote a fiction called Pastries: a Novel of Desserts and Discoveries (to be read later).

Nutrition for Life

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Hark, Lisa. Nutrition for Life: the no-fad, no-nonsense approach to eating well and reaching your healthy weight. London: DK Publishing, 2005.

I would have preferred this book title have one small change – instead of “reaching your healthy weight” why not “maintaining your healthy weight.” Why does it have to be all about being fat? Why can’t it be about being healthy? But, aside from that small gripe this is a great book.

Nutrition for Life is overflowing with information. Even though the emphasis is on nutrition there is a whole chapter dedicated to weight management. It is more than an “eat this and not that” book.  The attempt is to make the reader more aware of the benefits of eating better by supplying information about the medicinal value of food, the difference between store-bought and farm-fresh, and the right foods for different age groups. Nutrition for Life also includes a diet directory. Every well-known diet (including famed Scarsdale, South Beach, and grapefruit diets) is explained with a section on how it works, how you do it, whether it is healthy or not and example of a day on the diet.

I appreciated the case studies of people with examples of special dietary needs. Putting a face to different health issues helped put the importance of food into perspective. The other thing that was great about Nutrition for Life was the photography. The pictures are extremely glossy and gorgeous.

September ’10 is…

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September is the storm before the calm – literally since Earl is raging up the coast! School is back in session. A new hire is on the premises. Things are a little crazy right now. Here are how things look for books at the moment:

  • Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre ~ in honor of the Cold War starting in September
  • Between Parent and Child by Haim G. Ginott ~ in honor of National Family Month
  • Where Big Foot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide by Robert Pyle ~ in honor of Bigfoot being spotted on September 16, 2007 in Pennsylvania (yay for the Northeast Sasquatch!)
  • Wild Life by Molly Gloss ~ a companion read to Where Big Foot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide.
  • Moo by Jane Smiley ~ in honor of school being back in session

I’m also in the process of reading a few food books and an Early Review book. More on all of that later.

April ’10 Is…

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April is all about getting the garage ready for gardening. April is the confidence to pack winter clothes and get the snow tires off the car. April is leaving the heat off and taking off the sweater; driving with the windows down. The birds are getting louder and the mornings are coming earlier. I’m hoping to spend some time outside reading. Here are the books I hope to conquer:

  • Affliction by Russell Banks~ In honor of two different times: March (Banks’s birth month) and April (National Sibling Week is in April).
  • Truth and Bright Water by Thomas King ~ In honor of National Dog Month
  • Downcanyon: a Naturalist Explores the Colorado River Through the Grand Canyon by Ann Haymond Zwinger ~ in honor of Earth Day and nature writing
  • Belshazzar’s Daughter by Barbara Nadel ~ April (believe or not) is the best time to visit Turkey (weather-wise, political ramifications aside).
  • South Wind Through the Kitchen by Elizabeth David ~ April is National Food Month

If there is time:

  • Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory by John Feinstein ~ April is Youth Sports Safety Month

And of course, April is National Poetry Month so as usual I am trying to read as much poetry during this time frame as I can. I can’t go without saying Natalie Merchant is releasing “Leave Your Sleep” this month – a collection of poetry centered around children and childhood. Natalie once said it was poetry written for, about, and by children. I guess that sums it up nicely. One poem she included on her album was one I already read for the Book Lust Challenge: “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program I have an interesting (and well-timed) nonfiction: Fundamental Weight Training by David Sandler. I’m looking forward to reading it. I’m hoping it will be user-friendly and very informative.

Too Good to Keep

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I don’t care what anyone says. Summer officially started this weekend. To hell with the calendar. I’m ignoring the meteorologists, too. Summer wasn’t summer until the sun came out for more than an hour. For the first time in weeks I was able to weed the garden and the walk without dodging raindrops. I finally took up those giant prehistoric looks growths growing along side the driveway. I tackled the ground cover problem, too. Redistributing the gravel that has slid down the hill. This is Hilltop, after all. I moved rocks until my sun-bared arms ached. It felt good. I got in the pool for the second time this season and actually took a few strokes for the first time. Maybe I’ll learn to swim for real. It felt amazing. We got more of the back of the house painted. The gutter guys came. Progress is progressing.
Inspired by the weather I decided on a grill dinner. Pork marinated in lime, garlic, cilantro, and cumin. But, that wasn’t the best part of the mean meal. The salsa/salad was. Try this for yourself – play with the ingredients and measurements:

  • chickpeas
  • black beans
  • grape tomatoes
  • grilled corn
  • red onion
  • avocado
  • jalapeno
  • cilantro
  • cumin
  • chili powder
  • red pepper flakes
  • olive oil
  • champagne vinegar
  • sea salt
  • tri-colored fresh cracked pepper

Throw everything into a big bowl and let marinate for a few hours. Any ingredient can be left out or substituted for something else. Think about it – red beans instead of black, how about rice? Vidalia instead of red onion, scotch bonnet instead of jalapeno, red wine vinegar instead of champagne…these switches aren’t a stretch, but the options are limitless. Then, to really blow your mind, there is texture. Mince everything small and you have a blended salsa, puree it and you have a killer sauce for grilled chicken. Leave it super chunky and sprinkle it with tortilla chips and you have a great side salad. Add lettuce and grilled beef (sliced paper thin) and there’s a whole meal. I love meals like this.

This weekend felt like a holiday. We worked around the house and enjoyed the sun. Grilled on the deck and savored sweet cherries for dessert. Danced around the living room to Coldplay drums. Later, from our living room window we paused a movie to take in the second fireworks display of the holiday. Bedtime brought a book to bed with me. But, before long my eyes grew too heavy. Sleep came easy. A perfect ending to a perfect day to good to keep.

April 2009 was…

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I can’t believe how fast the time is flying by. Unbelievable. April flew by me on very windy wings. Thanks to a mini mental health holiday I was able to get through some pretty good books:

  • Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall ~ this was fascinating. I definitely want to read more of Morrall’s work.
  • An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David ~ witty, and global. This made me hungry for really well designed food.
  • The Punch: by John Feinstein ~ The book that got me obsessed with December 9th, 1977.
  • The Noblest Roman by David Halberstam ~ prohibition, prostitution and politics, southern style.
  • The Jameses: a Family Narrative by R.W.B. Lewis ~ I now know more about Henry James and his ancestors than I ever thought possible and I didn’t even finish the book.
  • Flashman by George Fraser MacDonald ~ the first in the Flashman series. Strange.
  • Ancestral Truths by Sara Maitland ~ really intense book!
  • The Apple That Astonished Pairs by Billy Collins ~ a book of fascinating poetry.

In honor of National Poetry month it was:

  • “Table Talk” by Wallace Stevens
  • “Tract” by William Carlos Williams
  • “I Go Back” by Sharon Olds
  • “Colette” by Edwin
  • “Church Going” and “I Remember, I Remember” by Philip Larkin
  • “Why Do So Few Blacks Study Creative Writing” by Cornelius Eady

For the Early Review program:

  • Fatal Light by Richard Currey. This had me by the heart. It’s the 20th anniversary of its publication and just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s fiction but not. If you know what I mean. I think that it’s important to note that I was supposed to get a February pick but because I moved it got lost in the shuffle (translation: I didn’t get the forwarding thing set up in time and it went back to the publisher). Fatal Light is actually a March pick.

an omelette & a glass of wine

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David, Elizabeth. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. New York: Lyons, 1984.

I think when it comes to writing about food Elizabeth David is an icon. Her books are not only widely read, but evenly more widely discussed and considered bibles in the world of gastronomy. For a woman who cooked the way she did, living all over the world, it is no surprise she is still considered one of the best food writers of all time.
David’s “career” in food writing began in 1947 with a frustration. Unable to get meals she enjoyed she vented her frustration by writing down descriptions of the food she craved, “I sat down…and started to work out an agonizing  craving for the sun and a furious revolt against that terrible, cheerless, heartless food by writing down descriptions of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking” (p 21). And so it began. 

Probably the best surprise to David’s writing is her humor laced with sarcasm. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine is comprised of essays the wrote for well-reputed publications such as Vogue and The Spectator. While the writing is knowledgeable and professional there is an air of whimsy and playfulness running throughout. Here is an example, just to get you started: “He [the waiter] has been five years with the French navy, alors vous comprenez madame je connais les vins, moi. What he doesn’t connait is that I like my Beaujolias cold, straight from my cellar” (p 42). In addition to having thoughtful, knowledgeable essays, An Onelette and a Glass of Wine is peppered (excuse the pun) with wonderful photographs and illustrations. This was a book I enjoyed savoring one essay at a time.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Food for Thought” (p 91).

If Elizabeth David was alive and I could ask her one question I would have to ask when, exactly, is mayonnaise season and how can I avoid it?

April 2009 is…

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April is the month of settling in, days getting warmer and the promise of good music. March was moving, but April is all about adjustment. In the meantime, it is also about these books:

  • Noblest Roman by David Halberstam ~ in honor of Halberstam’s April birthday
  • The Punch by John Feinstein~ in honor of National Youth Sports Safety month (weird, I know, but it more appropropriate than you think -after “the punch” the NBA changed rules about fighting and how many officials were on the court during a game).
  • The Jameses by R.W.B. Lewis ~ in honor of Henry James’ birthday this month
  • An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David ~ in honor of National Food month

One of the things that struck me as odd is that this list is almost completely comprised of nonfiction reading. I didn’t plan it that way at all. So, I have added two more fiction books just to round out the reading, if there is time:

  • Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall ~in honor of sibling month
  • Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser ~ in honor of Fraser’s birthday

I did get word of an Early Review book, but I have no idea when I’ll get it – if at all. Since moving my mail has been really sporadic. I don’t know how book rate packages will be handled, if at all.

 

It’s All Eggs

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Eggs. The word I use to sum up “half of one kind, six of another.” Eggs. Means makes no difference to me. One way or another it doesn’t matter. It’s the answer to ‘where do you want to go for dinner’ when the craving for something obvious isn’t there. Eggs. It’s my verbal shrug.

This weekend we found two houses and in my mind they are all about the eggs. In answer to which one I like more – I would definitely say they are eggs. Penny has glitz and glamour; “pimped out” as my realtor would say. Instant hot water in the kitchen. Fireplace. Deck. Pool. Surround sound. Granite. Cathedral ceilings. His and hers in everywhere. Appletree has a clean slate and lots of potential; “vanilla” as my realtor would say. White walls. Not a drop of color anywhere. Naked rooms. Empty kitchen. But, side by side Penny and Appletree are eggs. Almost same size. Almost same style. Almost same type of neighborhood. Almost the same price. Almost the same stubborn sellers. Lots of almosts. So, one is scrambled with herb cheese and chives served with crispy bacon and the other is poached with salt and pepper served in a dainty white cup with a side of dry toast. One is bring nothing but your attitude, the other is if ya got it, flaunt it – bring it all.

We went back and forth, forth and back. Trying to decide which eggs to order. Where would our appetites take us? Have we exhausted the menu and this was all that’s left? Neither of us thought so. That wasn’t the right attitude to take. These were good eggs. Worth their weight. We want to order both. See what happens.

So we shall. Try one. Then the other. See who satisfies this house-hungry appetite.

Choice Cuts

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Kurlansky, Mark. Choice Cuts: a Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History. New York: Ballantine, 2002.

I like nothing better than a good cookbook. A close second to a good cookbook is reading books written by cooks. Mark Kurlansky does one better and combined the best of food writing from soup to nuts; covering techniques, ingredients and even ethnic origins of food. Then, there’s the introduction. How can you compete when the introduction is titled, “Better than Sex” (p 1)? I mean, come on! Out of the thirty chapters  five six really grabbed my attention. More than the introduction, you ask? Mais oui! How could I not be seduced with chapter titles such as these: “Rants” (p 115), Poultry, Fowl, and Other Ill-Fated Birds (p 210), “Loving Fat” (p 303), “The Dark Side of Chocolate” (p 330), “A Good Drink” (p 361) and, “Bugs” (p 380). See, aren’t you the least bit curious about that last one?

Everything about this book is based on one simple subject – food. Kurlansky takes that subject and explores everything having to do with it. From growing, hunting, buying, and preparing to smelling, eating, and savoring it. The art of cooking, the downfall of rotting, from killing to cultivating. From Cato to Chekhov, Kurlansky finds quotes, essays and passages from a multitude of well known individuals, some with lives centered around food like M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David and some not like Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and E.M Forster. Whether focused on an ingredient like garlic or chocolate, or a technique like faking venison or baking bread, or a location like favorite restaurants or markets, Kurlansky covers it all. It’s historical and cutting edge. Technical and funny. Poetry and dissertation. Well worth the read.

Favorite passages: “A blonde seems humbly to beseech your heart while a brunette tends to ravish it” (p 39), “So don’t worry about me down here eating nothing and [makeing] an ass of myself. I have had strange eating habits since I was a boy (Ernest Hemingway)” (p 61) and, “cook-books have always intrigued and seduced me (Alice B. Toklas)” (p 182).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter, “Mark Kurlansky: Too Good To Miss” (p 146).

A side note: Before I knew what Choice Cuts was really about I assumed it had something to do with meat. After all, Kurlansky has written about solitary food items such as cod and salt, too. So, thinking this was a book about edible meats nothing disturbed me more than seeing an illustration for what I thought was a squirrel. I was close – it was a dormouse.