Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I picked up a good book at the library yesterday - "The Man Who Couldn't Eat" by Jon Reiner. It was on a table of cookbooks and since he won a James Beard award, I thought it would be about food. And it is except it's about the lack of it. He has Crohn's disease. Very well written. I didn't stop until I finished it.
fitzie

Oh, no question. In fact, a historically accurate film about the Judgement at Paris was released the same year and flopped. It was boring.

How Italian Food Conquered The World should have been titled "How Italian Food Conquered America" ... or rather, "How Italian Food Conquered New York" ... or rather, Alfred. Despite the ambitious title, this is mainly a history of Italian restaurants in New York City, 1880 to 1990. Further, because the author is a magazine writer, the book is really a series of magazine-article-style 5-page chapters, completely disconnected from each other, with a fair bit of repetition. Not recommended, didn't finish it.

From Serious Eats - top ten food related books to read this summer:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/food ... ?ref=title

anyone ready any of these?

I've been reading The Story of Crisco published in 1913 by Proctor and Gamble, A Little Book for a Little Cook published in 1905 by Pillsbury, Dishes and Beverages of the Old South published in 1913 and written by Martha McCulloch-Williams. I may have mentioned these before, since they are free downloads from various places including Amazon and the Gutenberg Project. I did pop a buck ninety-nine for the more recent The Joy of Smoking and Salt Curing by Monte Burch as time filler until I can get a hard copy of Michael Ruhlman's Chartcuterie.

Since I am often very challenged for ingredients, older cookbooks that don't expect a lot of commercial off-the-shelf items can be inspiring. In fact next week I'll start my first bacon and I hope to make both lard and "lardo", the first being rendered pork fat and the second being cured pork fat, similar to bacon but without any meat streaking it nor any smoking, just air drying.

A little bit of old, a little bit of new.

JeanF,

Surprisingly, no. Although honestly, I don't WANT to read 9 out of the 10. They're all about health, economics and the environment, and while that's educational, it's not fun reading. However, White Bread sounds like the kind of thing I read; I've requested it from the library.

Tatoosh,

Some cookbooks you might want to try given your restrictions: The Little House Cookbook, the Westinghouse Cookbook (circa 1968), and any 1950's edition of Joy of Cooking.

The only one I've read is "An Extravagent Hunger" by Anne Zimmerman and I wouldn't recommend it. I've collected all of Fisher's books and nobody can write about her life like she can. The only thing I enjoyed about this book were some previously unreleased photos.

fitzie

I found it interesting that SE labelled these as "beach reads". My beach reads are Nora Roberts and anything with a torn bodice on the cover.

Two new books about Julia Child: "Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child" a picture book for kids and "Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child" a biography by Bob Spitz coming out in August.

fitzie

Reading, or actually wading through, "The American Way of Eating. Undercover at Walmart, Applebees, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table" by Tracie McMillan. Its pretty dense, not a page turner at all. It reads more like a text book with a lot of background facts. Not sure if I can recommend this, especially for summer reading. But I will finish it and cross it off the list.
Nance