Category: books

Words on a Plate

As an editor and a writer, I spend a lot of time reading the works of other published writers, working under the theory that only if you are exposed to great writing can you begin to emulate it. By noticing the tricks and tools that accomplished writers use, another writer can, without copying a particular style, learn to make their own work even more evocative, descriptive and informative. Which means I read a lot of food writing, ranging from poor and amateurish and bland, to pieces that are inspiring, professional and heartfelt. Food and the act of eating being somewhat sensual subject matter, finding a writer who can scatter words onto a page and create a passage as breathtaking as a night sky full of stars is a rare thing indeed.

And finding out that the same writer no longer writes for a living can cause one to do a double-take and then doubt their own abilities even more.

Such is the case with Eating My Words: How Marilyn Monroe is Like a Grilled Artichoke and Other Observations on Food
 by Eve Johnson.

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Cooking the Books

Despite being what would inevitably fit into the classic definition of a “foodie”, I don’t buy a lot of cookbooks. As is obvious from this blog, I don’t post a lot of recipes, and while I do love to cook and try new things in the kitchen, I tend not to be a big cookbook collector. Part of this is due to limited space on my kitchen shelves, and part is due to being one of those obsessive Virgo types who chuck anything they haven’t used in a year.

Since most cookbooks never actually get used, but instead fill in as a kind of porn for many readers who look at the pictures and dream of cooking the recipes but never actually get around to it, I’ve found it beneficial to both my bank account and the part of my brain that stresses about clutter to just not buy many of the darn things. You can find most recipes somewhere on the web these days anyway, and aside from the food porn readers, cookbooks are one of those analog inventions that it would be logical to assume will disappear within the decade.

So I’m completely confused by the fact that I came back from the CNE last weekend with six new cookbooks. Okay, to be fair, they were 3/$10 at one of those discount vendor set-ups with piles of remaindered CDS, DVDs and books. Truthfully I don’t really need any of them, but they each have their charms and uses, and at $3 and change each, I can probably find a spot for them.

There’s often obvious reasons books end up in the remaindered pile, though, and it wasn’t until got them home that I figured out why.

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The Land of Chocolate

Today I will write the post about the GD chocolate book!!!

In fact, there’s no need for cursing. The chocolate book, aka. Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light by Mort Rosenblum was a magnificent read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Which is why I felt it was so important to review it here, and why it’s remained on my desk for the past 3 months as I never seem to have the time to get around to writing a post about it. The downside to this is that I’ve forgotten much of the content of the book, with my single complaint about the publication being that there is no index of places Rosenblum visited or people he talked to or companies he profiled for me to use as a reference, either to find specific passages or simply to jog my memory.

What’s important to note is that Rosenblum lives in Paris, so much of his research is centred on European chocolatiers in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, as well as much national posturing over who has the best stuff.

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Tee-Totaler

A Social History of Tea
Jane Pettigrew
The National Trust

Every afternoon at 3pm, I have a cup of tea. It doesn’t matter the weather or the season, if it’s hot I’ll have it iced, but every afternoon, barring some great calamity, I take a break from my day to have a cup of tea and something sweet.

Tea is one of those things that we sort of take for granted; less popular than coffee, it’s still typical in many homes, particularly in Eastern Canada where I’m from originally. There, harsh orange pekoe tea can sit and stew for hours, with a couple more bags and a top up of water the only acknowledgement that the pot might need dumping or cleaning.

Jane Pettigrew is one of the UK’s tea experts, having run a tea shop for many years and written a number of other books on the subject .

A Social History of Tea traces the importance of tea to Britain from the seventeenth century onward, exploring its arrival in England, its origins and the politics surrounding the commodity. Pettigrew looks at how tea became popular, first with the upper classes, then with the middle classes and the poor.

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Farmers Feed Cities – A Review of Apples to Oysters

applesoystersApples To Oysters
Margaret Webb
Viking Canada

Farmers feed cities. Deep down we know this to be true, but for most people the disconnect is so strong, we never think of the folks whose lives centre around growing the food we eat. But farming is not an easy job, and it takes a particular kind of person to dedicate themselves to the task, especially in a format of sustainable agriculture that concerns itself not just with making a profit but making the land and sea better than they were to start with.

In Apples to Oysters, author Margaret Webb spent two years travelling across Canada to learn about those farmers, visiting 11 farms from coast to coast to coast – one in each province and the Yukon, all family-run. In each case, she’s selected farmers who use sustainable methods, who have a respect and admiration for the natural resources they work with.

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No Grain, No Pain

egfgcoversmallEveryday Grain-Free Gourmet: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
Jodi Bager and Jenny Lass
Whitecap, 2008

Imagine a world where bread hurts. I don’t mean getting whacked in the head with a baguette, but where eating bread or rice or a gooey cinnamon roll causes real illness and pain.

For people suffering from celiac disease, items made with not just gluten-heavy wheat, but all grains and carbohydrates, can be a ticket to the hospital.

Everyday Grain-Free Gourmet is the second recipe book in a series by Jodi Bager and Jenny Lass, and offers a cookbook alternative for people suffering not just from celiac disease, but a whole variety of digestive disorders such as colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease and more. This selection of recipes is based on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which was used in the early 20th century by people with celiac disease. It was replaced mid-century by a gluten-free diet, but many people suffering from digestive disorders found the gluten-free diet did not work especially well, and a return to the SCD was more effective on their symptoms. As both Bager and Lass suffer from digestive disorders, it’s safe to say that their combined experience lends them suitable expertise to create such a book.

 

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The Real Food Revival

Three years is such a short time in the grand scheme of things, but in the publishing world, it can be an eternity. Books come and books go, and a lot of great books don’t get the publicity they deserve. Which is likely why I was able to find Real Food Revival by Sherri Brooks Vinton and Ann Clark Espuelas at one of those deep-discount remaindered stores back before Christmas.

With a sub-title of “aisle by aisle, morsel by morsel”, Vinton’s search for real food in the supermarket aisles predates not just Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, but also Marion Nestle’s What to Eat. Taking on everything from baked goods to bottled water, Vinton gives a common-sense approach to finding, and demanding real food.

Neither Vinton or Espuelas are experts; they don’t have the nutritional background of Nestle or the science background of Pollan, yet they do their research and present a well-documented case for each of their claims. This makes the book refreshingly free of jargon and chemistry, something that can make for a dry read at best in similar works, and can be downright off-putting in some cases.

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Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.

I was ready to dislike Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto before I even picked it up.

While I mostly enjoyed his previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I felt that he did an awfully complicated song and dance in the steakhouse chapter to try and justify eating meat. Then I read a quote from In Defense of Food by another blogger which said “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food”, which riled me up excessively.

My own grandmother was all about baking fresh bread, canning tomatoes and picking blueberries, but she was also of a generation that fully embraced the new convenience foods. Not to mention that until 1973, she had never lived in a house with indoor plumbing – with four sons to feed, and then a handful of grandkids, can you blame her for throwing store-bought cupcakes and frozen pizza at us? The woman had to boil her dishwater on a kerosene stove!

Turns out Pollan’s quote is actually about GREAT-Grandmothers, which makes a heck of a lot more sense. Well, unless you factor in the lack of indoor plumbing (those great grannies would likely have been all over the Twinkies too!).

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The Miracle Worker

Some random thoughts about Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life…

  • I think it should be a rule that books about food should be written by fiction writers as opposed to scientists or even journalists. Kingsolver is just better at describing everything, and she has the skill to make it all interesting, as opposed to dry and clinical. In terms of inspiring people to eat locally, or grow a garden, it needs to be about more than food miles or vitamins. Kingsolver makes it a spiritual quest, and I think there needs to be more emphasis on that.
  • However… lady sure can get preachy, which, after you’ve read a dozen or more books all espousing the eat local philosophy, sure can get annoying.
  • OMG – y’all discussed eating locally while on vacation in Montreal, but drove back to the US via Niagara Falls with nary a peep about Niagara wine? For shame!!!
  • Inspirations – to bake bread at least a couple of times a week (although not with a bread machine as Kingsolver’s husband does), learn to make my own cheese, and stock my freezer and pantry with the summer’s bounty to last throughout the winter. Join a CSA if I can figure out how to get to one to do my required work time given that I don’t drive.

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To Hell With It – Pass the Cheese

I’m a terrible girlfriend. That is, I am never really comfortable hanging out exclusively with a group of women. I like to cook and I like fashion, but mostly I don’t get women things. I hate when my female friends talk about their partners behind their backs, and I’m never exactly sure what I’m supposed to say when other women start talking about their weight.

Sure, I have a critical Virgoan eye, and I notice physical changes, but – and I don’t want this to sound heartless – I don’t really care. A loss or addition of 5 pounds or 50 pounds isn’t going to make me change my opinion of someone. As someone who has been fat since puberty, I know better than to judge another person by some arbitrary number on a scale. Which is why I so dearly wish other people would stop judging themselves that way.

These thoughts are prevalent in my head at the moment for a couple of reasons. First, because I’ve just finished reading Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss – and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. When I put that book down the next thing I read was a series of three essays in the most recent Utne Reader, all on the topic of fat politics and fat acceptance. Combine that with the recent discussion with a friend about her need to lose 35 pounds, despite a plethora of other health and life concerns that make that task very difficult, and I’ve got fat on the brain.

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