Book picks similar to
Pickles: A Global History by Jan Davison
food
history
non-fiction
cookbook-food-alc
Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses
Robb Walsh - 2002
They love to make it. They love to eat it. And they love to argue about it-igniting as many feuds as fires from Houston to El Paso. Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook delivers both a practical cookbook and a guided tour of Texas barbecue lore, giving readers straightforward advice right from the pit masters themselves. Their time-honored tips, along with 85 closely guarded recipes, reveal a lip-smacking feast of smoked meats, savory side dishes, and an awesome array of mops, sauces, and rubs. Their opinions are outspoken, their stories outlandish and hilarious. Fascinating archival photography looks back over more than 100 years of barbecue history, from the first turn of the century squirrel roasts to candid shots of Lyndon Johnson chowing down on a plate of ribs. A list of the best barbecue joints and a month-by-month rundown of the most influential statewide cook-offs round out this glorious celebration of barbecue found deep in the heart of Texas.
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants
Ann Hui - 2019
This discovery set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how her own family had somehow wound up in Canada.Chop Suey Nation weaves together Hui’s own family history with those dozens of Chinese restaurant owners from coast to coast. Along her trip, she meets a Chinese-restaurant owner/small-town mayor, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a Thunder Bay curling rink, and the woman who runs a restaurant alone on the very remote Fogo Island. Hui also explores the fascinating history behind “chop suey” cuisine, detailing the invention of classics like “ginger beef” and “Newfoundland chow mein,” and other uniquely Canadian fare like the “Chinese pierogi” of Alberta.Hui, who grew up in authenticity-obsessed Vancouver, starts out her journey with a dim view of “fake" small-town Chinese food. But along the way she comes to understand the values that drive these restaurants — perseverance, entrepreneurialism and deep love for family. Using her own family’s story as a touchstone, she reveals the importance of these restaurants to this country’s history and makes the case for why chop suey cuisine is quintessentially Canadian.
Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice
Marjorie Shaffer - 2013
Vivid and entertaining, it describes the part pepper played in bringing in the Europeans, and later the Americans, to Asia and details the fascinating encounters they had there.
Semi-Homemade: Cooking Made Light
Sandra Lee - 2006
For less than the cost of a dinner out, this new cookbook from Food Network star and best-selling author Sandra Lee will inspire you to re-think the way you cook. Her unique Semi-Homemade(r) cooking formula combines 70 percent ready-made and 30 percent fresh ingredients for fast, delicious results. Learn how to make the most of heart-healthy foods and smart ingredients like lean turkey, salmon, whole grain couscous, vitamin-packed sweet potatoes, and other "power foods." Includes more than 140 quick, easy and healthful recipes, plus gorgeous color photos of every recipe.
Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York
Robin Shulman - 2012
It’s a money and real estate city, with less naked earth and industry than high-rise glass and concrete. Yet in this intimate, visceral, and beautifully written book, Robin Shulman introduces the people of New York City - both past and present - who do grow vegetables, butcher meat, fish local waters, cut and refine sugar, keep bees for honey, brew beer, and make wine. In the most heavily built urban environment in the country, she shows an organic city full of intrepid and eccentric people who want to make things grow. What’s more, Shulman artfully places today’s urban food production in the context of hundreds of years of history, and traces how we got to where we are. In these pages meet Willie Morgan, a Harlem man who first grew his own vegetables in a vacant lot as a front for his gambling racket. And David Selig, a beekeeper in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn who found his bees making a mysteriously red honey. Get to know Yolene Joseph, who fishes crabs out of the waters off Coney Island to make curried stews for her family. Meet the creators of the sickly sweet Manischewitz wine, whose brand grew out of Prohibition; and Jacob Ruppert, who owned a beer empire on the Upper East Side, as well as the New York Yankees. Eat the City is about how the ability of cities to feed people has changed over time. Yet it is also, in a sense, the story of the things we long for in cities today: closer human connections, a tangible link to more basic processes, a way to shape more rounded lives, a sense of something pure. Of course, hundreds of years ago, most food and drink consumed by New Yorkers was grown and produced within what are now the five boroughs. Yet people rarely realize that long after New York became a dense urban agglomeration, innovators, traditionalists, migrants and immigrants continued to insist on producing their own food. This book shows the perils and benefits—and the ironies and humor—when city people involve themselves in making what they eat. Food, of course, is about hunger. We eat what we miss and what we want to become, the foods of our childhoods and the symbols of the lives we hope to lead. With wit and insight, Eat the City shows how in places like New York, people have always found ways to use their collective hunger to build their own kind of city. ROBIN SHULMAN is a writer and reporter whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, the Guardian, and many other publications. She lives in New York City.
Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey
Reid Mitenbuler - 2015
Whiskey has profoundly influenced America’s political, economic, and cultural destiny, just as those same factors have inspired the evolution and unique flavor of the whiskey itself. Taking readers behind the curtain of an enchanting—and sometimes exasperating—industry, the work of writer Reid Mitenbuler crackles with attitude and commentary about taste, choice, and history. Few products better embody the United States, or American business, than bourbon. A tale of innovation, success, downfall, and resurrection, Bourbon Empire is an exploration of the spirit in all its unique forms, creating an indelible portrait of both bourbon and the people who make it.
Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance
Patricia Rain - 2004
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.
Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History
Sidney W. Mintz - 1985
Traces the history of sugar production and consumption, examines its relationship with slavery, class ambitions, and industrialization, and describes sugar's impact on modern diet and eating habits.
100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today
Stephen Le - 2016
In One Hundred Million Years of Food biological anthropologist Stephen Le explains how cuisines of different cultures are a result of centuries of evolution, finely tuned to our biology and surroundings. Today many cultures have strayed from their ancestral diets, relying instead on mass-produced food often made with chemicals that may be contributing to a rise in so-called "Western diseases," such as cancer, heart disease, and obesity.Travelling around the world to places as far-flung as Vietnam, Kenya, India, and the US, Stephen Le introduces us to people who are growing, cooking, and eating food using both traditional and modern methods, striving for a sustainable, healthy diet. In clear, compelling arguments based on scientific research, Le contends that our ancestral diets provide the best first line of defense in protecting our health and providing a balanced diet. Fast-food diets, as well as strict regimens like paleo or vegan, in effect highjack our biology and ignore the complex nature of our bodies. In One Hundred Million Years of Food Le takes us on a guided tour of evolution, demonstrating how our diets are the result of millions of years of history, and how we can return to a sustainable, healthier way of eating.
Homemade Bread Recipes: The Top Easy and Delicious Homemade Bread Recipes!
Kim DeWalt - 2013
Making your own bread is easier, healthier, and cheaper than buying from a store! Start making your own bread TODAY with these delicious and EASY homemade bread recipes! From your conventional breads, to your non-conventional specialty recipes, this homemade bread recipes book HAS IT ALL! Best of all, all these recipes have EASY TO FOLLOW steps so ANYONE can make delicious bread in no time at all! Try a few of these homemade bread recipes and I guarantee you'll never want to buy bread from the store again!
Just My Type: A Book about Fonts
Simon Garfield - 2010
Whether you’re enraged by Ikea’s Verdanagate, want to know what the Beach Boys have in common with easy Jet or why it’s okay to like Comic Sans, Just My Type will have the answer. Learn why using upper case got a New Zealand health worker sacked. Refer to Prince in the Tafkap years as a Dingbat (that works on many levels). Spot where movies get their time periods wrong and don’t be duped by fake posters on eBay. Simon Garfield meets the people behind the typefaces and along the way learns why some fonts – like men – are from Mars and some are from Venus. From type on the high street and album covers, to the print in our homes and offices, Garfield is the font of all types of knowledge.
The Gourmands' Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
Justin Spring - 2017
The Gourmands’ Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of “the glorious thirty,” paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and, ultimately, to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American readers. In doing so, this group biography also tells the story of an era when America adored all things French. The group is comprised of the war correspondent A. J. Liebling; Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s life partner, who reinvented herself at seventy as a cookbook author; M.F.K. Fisher, a sensualist and fabulist storyteller; Julia Child, a television celebrity and cookbook author; Alexis Lichine, an ambitious wine merchant; and Richard Olney, a reclusive artist who reluctantly evolved into a brilliant writer on French food and wine.Together, these writer-adventurers initiated an American cultural dialogue on food that has continued to this day. Justin Spring’s The Gourmands’ Way is the first book ever to look at them as a group and to specifically chronicle their Paris experiences.
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
Bob Spitz - 2012
It’s even rarer when that someone is a middle-aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station. And yet, that’s exactly what Julia Child did. The warble-voiced doyenne of television cookery became an iconic cult figure and joyous rule-breaker as she touched off the food revolution that has gripped America for more than fifty years. Now, in Bob Spitz’s definitive, wonderfully affectionate biography, the Julia we know and love comes vividly — and surprisingly — to life. In Dearie, Spitz employs the same skill he brought to his best-selling, critically acclaimed book The Beatles, providing a clear-eyed portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential Americans of our time — a woman known to all, yet known by only a few.At its heart, Dearie is a story about a woman’s search for her own unique expression. Julia Child was a directionless, gawky young woman who ran off halfway around the world to join a spy agency during World War II. She eventually settled in Paris, where she learned to cook and collaborated on the writing of what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book that changed the food culture of America. She was already fifty when The French Chef went on the air — at a time in our history when women weren’t making those leaps. Julia became the first educational TV star, virtually launching PBS as we know it today; her marriage to Paul Child formed a decades-long love story that was romantic, touching, and quite extraordinary. A fearless, ambitious, supremely confident woman, Julia took on all the pretensions that embellished tony French cuisine and fricasseed them to a fare-thee-well, paving the way for everything that has happened since in American cooking, from TV dinners and Big Macs to sea urchin foam and the Food Channel. Julia Child’s story, however, is more than the tale of a talented woman and her sumptuous craft. It is also a saga of America’s coming of age and growing sophistication, from the Depression Era to the turbulent sixties and the excesses of the eighties to the greening of the American kitchen. Julia had an effect on and was equally affected by the baby boom, the sexual revolution, and the start of the women’s liberation movement. On the centenary of her birth, Julia finally gets the biography she richly deserves. An in-depth, intimate narrative, full of fresh information and insights, Dearie is an entertaining, all-out adventure story of one of our most fascinating and beloved figures.From the Hardcover edition.
Extreme Fat Smash Diet: With More Than 75 Recipes
Ian K. Smith - 2007
Ian Smith's Extreme Fat Smash Diet is safe, fast and ultra-effective--taking his proven weight loss system to its hard core. No gimmicks, no denying yourself entire categories of food (like carbs), no nonsense. Instead, Extreme Fat Smash Diet delivers quick, permanent results. On Extreme, you'll set yourself up for:--losing up to 12 pounds the first 3 weeks--learning your dieting profile: are you an alpha, beta or gamma?--choosing one of three cycles of dieting for three different weight loss goals: 5 pounds, 10 pounds, and 15 pounds and up--real-world exercise ideas--fresh recipes for quick, tasty meals--a schedule that allows both meals and snacks--Dr. Ian's tips and strategies to keep you on track--a maintenance plan that's designed to stickIf your dieting goal is time-sensitive, Extreme Fat Smash will work for you!
In Pursuit of Flavor
Edna Lewis - 1988
When asked who has influenced them most, chefs from New York to Little Washington to Charleston cite Ms. Lewis and her classic collection of recipes, In Pursuit of Flavor, first published in 1988. Edna Lewis learned to cook by watching her mother prepare food in their kitchen in a small farming community in Virginia. Because she was raised at a time when the vegetables came from the garden, fruit from the orchard, pickles, relishes, chutney, and jellies from quick canning, and meat from the smokehouse, Edna Lewis knows how food should taste. Every recipe included in her cookbook, both old friends and new discoveries, reflects her memory of and continuing search for good flavor.