Part culinary history, part cultural commentary, Vanilla tells the remarkable story of the world's most popular flavor and scent. The Spanish considered vanilla the ultimate aphrodisiac, the Totonac Indians called it the fruit of the gods, and the Aztecs taxed the Mayans in vanilla beans, using the beans as currency. Today, vanilla is in our coffee, our perfume, tea, home products, body lotion, and just about anything imaginable. Patricia Rain explores the incredibly diverse effect of vanilla on the worlds of food, medicine, psychology, and even politics. She intertwines the fields of cultural anthropology, botany, folklore, and economics, tracing the marvelous path of vanilla throughout world history. Vanilla shows how the impact and marketing of this ubiquitous little bean over the last eight hundred years saved the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Tahiti, put Madagascar on the map, drove the success of the great Parisian perfume houses and Europe's confection industry, and spurred trade routes across the Indian Ocean. Rain examines the rich history of vanilla with exacting detail and discusses its current role in our lives and the modern retail world, where the "vanilla boom" has caused the prices of many common consumer items to skyrocket. Filled with fascinating insights, quirky characters, trivia, and even recipes, this beautifully written book is perfect for vanilla lovers, history buffs, and anyone interested in a real-life captivating story.

    But what if our foods were doing more harm than good, and fad diets made matters worse? Deadly Harvest examines how the foods we eat today have little in common with those of our ancestors, and why this fact is important to our health. It also offers a proven program to enhance health and improve longevity.Using the latest scientific research and studies of primitive lifestyles, the author first explains the diet that our ancestors followed—one in harmony with the human species. He then describes how our present diets affect our health, leading to disorders such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Most important, he details measures we can take to improve our diet, our health, and our quality of life.

    A simple beverage, served either hot or iced, tea has fascinated and driven us, calmed and awoken us, for well over two thousand years.The most extensive and well presented tea history available, Tea: The Drink that Changed the World tells of the rich legends and history surrounding the spread of tea throughout Asia and the West, as well as its rise to the status of necessity in kitchens around the world. From the tea houses of China's Tang Dynasty (618-907), to fourteenth century tea ceremonies in Korea's Buddhist temples' to the tea plantations in Sri Lanka today, this book explores and illuminates tea and its intricate, compelling history.Topics in Tea: The Drink that Changed the World include:From Shrub to Cup: and Overview.History and Legend of tea.Tea in Ancient China and Korea.Tea in Ancient Japan.The Japanese Tea Ceremony.Tea in the Ming Dynasty.Tea Spreads Throughout the World.The British in India, China and Ceylon.Tea in England and the United States.Tea Today and Tomorrow.Whether you prefer green tea, back tea, white tea, oolong tea, chai, Japanese tea, Chinese tea, Sri Lankan tea, American tea or British tea, you will certainly enjoy reading this history of tea and expanding your knowledge of the world's most celebrated beverage.

    Using Ireland, England, France, and the United States as examples, Larry Zuckerman shows how daily life from the 1770s until World War I would have been unrecognizable-perhaps impossible-without the potato, which functioned as fast food, famine insurance, fuel and labor saver, budget stretcher, and bank loan, as well as delicacy. Drawing on personal diaries, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and other primary sources, this is popular social history at its liveliest and most illuminating.

    Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life the woman behind the label, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, in this utterly intoxicating book that is as much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered and fascinating woman.

    *Includes Cagney's own quotes about his life and career. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. *Includes a table of contents. "You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them...I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can." – James Cagney A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, one of the Top 10 was James Cagney, an actor whose acting and dancing talents spawned a stage and film career that spanned over 5 decades and once compelled Orson Welles to call him "maybe the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera." Indeed, his portrayal of “The Man Who Owns Broadway”, George M. Cohan, earned him an Academy Award in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, and as famed director Milos Forman once put it, "I think he's some kind of genius. His instinct, it's just unbelievable. I could just stay at home. One of the qualities of a brilliant actor is that things look better on the screen than the set. Jimmy has that quality." Ultimately, it was portraying tough guys and gangsters in the 1930s that turned Cagney into a massive Hollywood star, and they were the kind of roles he was literally born to play after growing up rough in Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. In movies like The Public Enemy (which included the infamous “grapefruit scene”) and White Heat, Cagney convincingly played criminals that brought Warner to the forefront of Hollywood and the gangster genre. Cagney also helped pave the way for younger actors in the genre, like Humphrey Bogart, and he was so good that he found himself in danger of being typecast. While Cagney is no longer remembered as fondly or as well as Bogart, he was also crucial in helping establish the system in which actors worked as independent workers free from the constraints of studios. Refusing to be pushed around, Cagney was constantly involved in contract squabbles with Warner, and he often came out on top, bucking the conventional system that saw studios treat their stars as indentured servants who had to make several films a year. American Legends: The Life of James Cagney examines the life and career of one of Hollywood’s most iconic actors. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Cagney like never before, in no time at all.

    This entertaining guide is presented in an easy-to-understand format, covering topics on everything from the winemaking process, wine vocabulary, and red wine versus white wine, to tasting and selecting wines for any occasion. With a helpful glossary and brief topic-by-topic chapters, this accessible, snobbery-free guide is the perfect companion for purchasing wines and navigating your way skillfully at parties, dinners, wine tastings, wine shops, and more. Learn how to:Understand the origins of wine and the process of making it Know and speak the language of wine with terms like tannins, oaks, residual sugar, dry, medium- and full-bodied, and more Properly taste and drink wines   Choose wines to complement foods Save money by making choices that suit your palate

    Divided into three sections, Mindset, Fitness and Nutrition, this book will teach you how to make positive changes to your life and empower yourself, with each chapter featuring numerous tips from Dame Kelly. Change your mindset to reach emotional wellbeing with easy-to-follow mindfulness exercises, keep your body strong with running, strength and flexibility exercises, and learn which foods best nourish your body with 5 ways to improve the way you eat. Drawing on her own experience, Dame Kelly guides you through how to harness your mind and reap the benefits of good food and exercise.

    Eccentric owners, strange treasures, obscure facts—it's all here. Whip up a Triple Chocolate Scone while you read about the mechanical elephants at Waddeston Manor, savor an Apple & Cinnamon Scone while you absorb the dramatic love life of Henry Cecil of Hanbury Hall, or marvel at a Ightham Mote's Grade 1 listed dog kennel while you savor a Cheese, Spring Onion and Bacon Scone. 50 of the best scones in history and 50 of the best places to read about—you’ll never need to leave the kitchen again. Includes dual measures.

    It was pretty obvious that people found something on the internet for free and put it on Amazon to sell, but for only 99 cents I figured there wasn't much to lose so I bought one. Turned out to be totally useless. There was no table of contents and there were two or three blank pages between each recipe. That meant a lot of clicking on the Kindle just to see what's there. I didn't bother trying to click through all the recipes - I was afraid I'd wear out my little clicker. Instead, I went to google and immediately found what people were downloading, a .pdf file with 470 recipes in alphabetical order. Hence "Artichoke Chicken and Olives" was next to "Artichoke and Cheese Dip" but if you want to browse all the chicken recipes you're out of luck. So I converted this .pdf file to something I could work with and proceeded to reorganize the recipes into categories and build a table of contents. Now if you've got a chicken sitting in your fridge screaming at you to do something before it gets too old you can go to the "Chicken and Turkey" section of the table of contents and scan through the titles or click on the first one and start glancing at the recipes until you find something that strikes your fancy. I also standardized the recipe formats and abbreviations and included a little information about converting the U.S. measurements for those of you that have advanced on to the metric system and now only use teaspoons for stirring your tea. Some of these recipes mention brand name products. If those products aren't available where you are you're just going to have to call me bad names and either wing it or try another recipe. There are plenty of recipes that only call for natural and/or fresh ingredients though. Revised: 30 August 2011

    The recipes cover yeast cookery of all kinds, and the many lovely, old-fashioned spiced breads, buns, pancakes and muffins, among others, are all described with her typical elegance and unrivalled knowledge.

    For years I stumbled around in a daze drinking stale, bitter coffee and grumbling “beans… beans…”. Thank Goodness I finally woke up to the world of coffee. By Immersing myself in the coffee world via reading every book I could find, visiting trade fairs, every high-end cafe I could find, and barista competitions, I realized that, while there is a huge amount of information out there free on the Internet and in artisan coffee shops, there was no single resource that connects all the dots and spells it all out for confused novice coffee drinkers.Until now.Fact: Making a great cup of coffee requires focus and commitment. This means that to make a billion dollar for-profit coffee franchise, you MUST find ways to cut corners and short change your customers.Fact: There are some GREAT coffee shops out there that care about coffee and customers and are worth every penny they charge, but they can be hard to identify, making it easy to just settle for familiar chain coffee.Fact: Making very good coffee is NOT THAT HARD. With a minimal investment in time and education you can make the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had in your life in the comfort of your own home. This book shows exactly why billion dollar for-profit coffee chains are inherently unable to produce coffee of the quality you can make in the kitchen.The Coffeeist Manifesto is half self-defense manual and half how-to instructional. By the end of it, any coffee beginner will have a foundational understanding of the coffee industry and know how to identify the good coffee shops from the bad ones. But most importantly, you’ll know how to beat them at their own game by making coffee at home that blows the cafes out of the water.Complete Table of Contents:PrefaceHow to Read This BookPart I -Coffee TheoryCoffeeists of the World, Unite!HistoryBarista's DilemmaCoffee MythsFour Keys to Killer CoffeeHome RoastingPart II - Brew MethodsCold BrewCoffee PotPress PotAeropressPour OverVacuum PotPart III - EspressoMoka PotMyPressi TwistEspresso VariationsPart IV - The Truth About Coffee ShopsCoffee Shop AppreciationThe RulesDecoding the MenuPart V - Going Beyond the BasicsThe Politics of CoffeeFrom Coffeeist to AficionadoAppendix - Green Coffee Extract

    In the Middle Ages, yeast was called ‘godisgoode’ because no one had any idea what fermentation was. Malting barley, too, has for centuries seemed genuinely wondrous: it’s only in the last 200 years that science has identified and understood how man and yeast work together to gently (or not so gently) persuade this humble grain to give up its sugary stash for fermentation into beer.From the birth of brewing (and civilization) in the Middle East, through an exploration of water’s unmurky depths and the surreal madness of drink-sodden hop-blessings in the Czech Republic, to the stunning recreation of the first ever modern beer – Miracle Brew is an extraordinary journey through the nature and science of brewing.Along the way, we’ll meet and drink with a cast of characters who reveal the magic of beer and celebrate the joy of drinking it. And, almost without noticing, we’ll learn the naked truth about the world’s greatest beverage.

    Throughout, Jenna offers helpful tips—for example, how to keep salad greens fresh and at the ready, easy substitutions, and suggested supermarket brands—as well as easy ideas for dressing up or rounding out your meal.

    It takes the core information about tea but presents it in a highly original and entertaining way. It uses infographics and illustrations to convey facts and figures as well as other informative content.With five parts, the book starts off with a celebration of tea-drinking around the world: from drinking masala chai in tea shacks in India or from a samovar in Russia, to the dramatic pouring of Moroccan mint tea and the brewing of a salty butter tea in Tibet.Part two is an illustrated timeline that takes you through the history of tea in a humorous and engaging way.Part three - From Plant to Pot - explains in a simple but informative way the origins of different teas, where they come from and how they are processed. Take a visual journey, with the tea leaf, and see what happens during the processing business as well as learning about the different types of tea and what each needs to bring out its very best in terms of taste. It's here, too, that we meet the people behind the tea estates that teapigs deal with.Part four explains everything you ever wanted to know about drinking tea. Should you slurp or sip your tea? Follow in the steps of a tea taster and learn how to taste like a pro. Is a cup or a bowl best for drinking tea? The book takes a look at all kinds of drinking vessels from across the globe. To dunk or not to dunk - that is the question? Teapigs subscribers give their top 10 biscuits to dip in a cup of tea, does your favourite biscuit feature?And how can tea influence your mood? The fun but informative mood-o-meter shows you how to pick the right tea to cheer you up or calm you down. Plus, discover a whole tea chest of health-related benefits.The last part of the book is packed with 30 or so recipes, offering inspiration for using tea in cooking or partnering recipes with the best teas.