We first met the host of Chopped, All-Star Academy and other shows when he invaded homes as one of the “fab five” on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in 2003. But who is this dapper, openly-gay, man in mod suits and Chuck Taylor sneakers? And what’s really happening on those Food Network sets? During an expansive conversation in his “stupid”-nice Brooklyn home, Allen talks candidly about the “filthy” things happening behind the scenes, why The New York Times should be ashamed for how it treated chef Guy Fieri, and what it was like coming out to his conservative, Christian parents. Allen was interviewed by veteran journalist Tom Roston, who also conducted the bestelling Ken Burns Kindle Singles Interview. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, Roston has also examined the sweet and salty world of food for Food Republic, tripping on Hawaiian Kava, uncovering the truth about the smell of Subway bread, and going on a fast-food fish filet binge that he still hasn’t recovered from. Cover design by Adil Dara.

     There was a time when food was our medicine, and the farmer our physician. But now industrialization has converted farms into factories, replaced produce for processed foods, and meat comes with just as many warnings as the drugs we are prescribed.  If we continue to embrace the Standard American Diet (SAD diet) and current health care system, this may be the first generation of parents to outlive their children.   The science and medical community are split 50/50 as to why we are so sick. One side is dogmatically attached to the theory that germs cause disease, so sickness is inevitable and can only be treated not cured. The other perspective is that we have a genetic predisposition to disease and that science & technology provide the solution. However, neither of these philosophies actually address the real cause of disease. Vegucation Over Medication bridges the gap by helping us understand the impact of nutrition on our health. Dr. Bobby Price provides actionable advice on how to prevent and even reverse many chronic diseases. The book dispels in shocking detail many of the myths and lies we’ve adopted as truths, such as the use of medications as our primary form of prevention. Dr. Price’s holistic approach to understanding the healing nature of our foods and bodies will empower you to cleanse, nourish, and RECLAIM YOUR HEALTH.   In this book you will learn: • Hidden dangers in foods and medicines • How to minimize or eliminate medications • The connection between disease and nutrition • The secrets of long-term natural weight loss • The real scoop on protein • Powerful natural alternatives to help restore the body • Guide to incorporating a plant-based lifestyle • Tasty plant-based alternatives to your favorite foods • How a plant-based diet improves energy, digestion, and sleep • How to reverse Type 2 Diabetes • Keys to normalizing blood pressure and cholesterol levels

    In From the Cauldron Born, you are invited not only to read the story but to live it. You are invited to resonate with the magic of the witch mother Cerridwen and her cauldron of inspiration. You are invited to become Taliesin, the prophetic spirit with the radiant brow. You are invited to awaken to a lucidity of spirit born from the archetypes of sacred myth.Join Kristoffer Hughes on a yearlong journey of rituals based on one of Wales's most profound legends. With deeply transformative exercises and lyrical wisdom, you will experience beauty and knowledge, imagination and creation as never before.Praise: If you are captivated by the exploration of Welsh and Celtic myth, Kristoffer Hughes's in-depth, scholarly work belongs on your bookshelf.--Ellen Dugan, author of Seasons of WitcheryIn this book, Kris Hughes takes up his Druid's staff and guides us through the winding paths of the tale of Taliesin with insight, learning, and inspiration so that we too may drink the magical brew in the cauldron of Cerridwen and emerge transformed.--Anna Franklin, author of The Sacred Circle Tarot

    The Heathen tradition revealed here describes the entire structure of Asatru and shows how its ancient themes, ideas, and practices are relevant to modern spiritual seekers.Clear and easy to understand yet thorough and comprehensive, A Practical Heathen's Guide to Asatru will add depth to the Asatru experience for those who have practiced this faith for years while remaining accessible to beginners. It reveals Heathen perspectives on the nature of time, creation, spirits, worship, ethics, and hospitality. It shares practical techniques with meditation, prayer, runes, charms, and life rituals covering birth/naming, entry into adulthood, weddings, divorces, funerals, and more. An in-depth glossary, index, and bibliography help make this the must-read book for everyone interested in Asatru.

    Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it. Throughout the history of civilization, humans have embraced it in every form imaginable—as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, emblem of resurrection, all-purpose medicine, handy research tool, inspiration for bravery, epitome of evil, and, of course, as the star of the world's most famous joke.In Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, science writer Andrew Lawler takes us on an adventure from prehistory to the modern era with a fascinating account of the partnership between human and chicken (the most successful of all cross-species relationships). Beginning with the recent discovery in Montana that the chicken's unlikely ancestor is T. rex, this book builds on Lawler's popular Smithsonian cover article, "How the Chicken Conquered the World" to track the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to postwar America, where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity's single most important source of protein.In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about our most important animal partne—and, by extension, all domesticated animals, and even nature itself.Lawler's narrative reveals the secrets behind the chicken's transformation from a shy jungle bird into an animal of astonishing versatility, capable of serving our species' changing needs. For no other siren has called humans to rise, shine, and prosper quite like the rooster's cry: "cock-a-doodle-doo!"

    Author and burger expert George Motz covers traditional grilling techniques as well as how to smoke, steam, poach, and deep-fry burgers based on signature recipes from around the country. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific regional burger, from the tortilla burger of New Mexico to the classic New York–style pub burger, and from the fried onion burger of Oklahoma to Hawaii’s Loco Moco. Motz provides expert instruction, tantalizing recipes, and vibrant color photography to help you create unique variations on America’s favorite dish in your own home. Recipes feature regional burgers from: California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.

    Bourdieu's subject is the study of culture, and his objective is most ambitious: to provide an answer to the problems raised by Kant's Critique of Judgment by showing why no judgment of taste is innocent."A complex, rich, intelligent book. It will provide the historian of the future with priceless materials and it will bring an essential contribution to sociological theory."— Fernand Braudel "One of the more distinguished contributions to social theory and research in recent years . . . There is in this book an account of culture, and a methodology of its study, rich in implication for a diversity of fields of social research. The work in some ways redefines the whole scope of cultural studies."— Anthony Giddens, Partisan Review"A book of extraordinary intelligence." — Irving Louis Horowitz, Commonweal“Bourdieu’s analysis transcends the usual analysis of conspicuous consumption in two ways: by showing that specific judgments and choices matter less than an esthetic outlook in general and by showing, moreover, that the acquisition of an esthetic outlook not only advertises upper-class prestige but helps to keep the lower orders in line. In other words, the esthetic world view serves as an instrument of domination. It serves the interests not merely of status but of power. It does this, according to Bourdieu, by emphasizing individuality, rivalry, and ‘distinction’ and by devaluing the well-being of society as a whole.”— Christopher Lasch, Vogue

    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.

    In Designing the New Kitchen Garden, Jennifer Bartley shows how the traditional features of the classic kitchen garden, or potager, can be adapted to contemporary needs and conditions. Throughout, the book is informed by Bartley’s conviction that the nurturing, preparing, and eating of home-grown vegetables greatly enhances our connection to the natural world. Copiously illustrated with photographs and with the author's delightful watercolors, Designing the New Kitchen Garden is the perfect blend of inspiration and practical guidance.

    But in every age and in every place drunkenness is a little bit different. It can be religious, it can be sexual, it can be the duty of kings or the relief of peasants. It can be an offering to the ancestors, or a way of marking the end of a day's work. It can send you to sleep, or send you into battle.A Short History of Drunkenness traces humankind's love affair with booze from our primate ancestors through to Prohibition, answering every possible question along the way: What did people drink? How much? Who did the drinking? Of the many possible reasons, why? On the way, learn about the Neolithic Shamans, who drank to communicate with the spirit world (no pun intended), marvel at how Greeks got giddy and Romans got rat-arsed, and find out how bars in the Wild West were never quite like in the movies.This is a history of the world at its inebriated best.

    A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

    A lifelong angler and forager who became a hunter late in life, Hank Shaw has chronicled his passion for hunting and gathering in his widely read blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, which has developed an avid following among outdoor people and foodies alike. Hank is dedicated to finding a place on the table for the myriad overlooked and underutilized wild foods that are there for the taking—if you know how to get them.   In Hunt, Gather, Cook, he shares his experiences both in the field and the kitchen, as well as hisextensive knowledge of North America’s edible flora and fauna. With the fresh, clever prose that brings so many readers to his blog, Hank provides a user-friendly, food-oriented introduction to tracking down everything from sassafras to striped bass to snowshoe hares. He then provides innovative ways to prepare wild foods that go far beyond typical campfire cuisine: homemade root beer, cured wild boar loin, boneless tempura shad, Sardinian hare stew—even pasta made with handmade acorn flour.   For anyone ready to take a more active role in determining what they feed themselves and their families, Hunt, Gather, Cook offers an entertaining and delicious introduction to harvesting the bounty of wild foods to be found in every part of the country.

    Inspired beyond measure, Sortun opened her own restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the award-winning Oleana, where she creates her own interpretations of dishes incorporating the incredible array of delicious spices and herbs used in eastern regions of the Mediterranean.In this gorgeously photographed book, Sortun shows readers how to use this philosophy of spice to create wonderful dishes in their own homes. She reveals how the artful use of spices and herbs rather than fat and cream is key to the full, rich flavors of Mediterranean cuisine -- and the way it leaves you feeling satisfied afterward. The book is organized by spice, detailing the ways certain spices complement one another and how they flavor other foods and creating in home cooks a kind of sense-memory that allows for a more intuitive use of spice in their own dishes. The more than one hundred tantalizing spice categories and recipes include:Beef Shish Kabobs with Sumac Onions and Parsley Butter Chickpea and Potato Terrine Stuffed with Pine Nuts, Spinach, Onion, and Tahini Crispy Lemon Chicken with Za’atar Golden Gazpacho with Condiments Fried Haloumi Cheese with Pear and Spiced DatesAbsolutely alive with spices and herbs, Ana Sortun’s recipes will intrigue and inspire readers everywhere.

    From the mists of Japanese prehistory, through the medieval ages, up to today, the bestiary of Japanese folklore contains a wide range of monsters. There are women with extra mouths in the backs of their heads, water goblins whose favorite food is human anus, elephant-dragons which feed solely on bad dreams, dead baby zombies, talking foxes, fire-breathing chickens, animated blobs of rotten flesh that run about the streets at night... "The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons" is a massive illustrated bestiary choc full of yokai. It features over one hundred traditional Japanese monsters, each one beautifully illustrated in full color by yokai artist Matthew Meyer. Each yokai is described in detail, including origins, habitat, diet, and legend, based on translations from centuries-old Japanese texts. Read this book, and the next time you watch an anime or a Godzilla movie, you'll be able to recognize their folkloric ancestors dating back centuries. You'll find out about all of the strange mythical animals you can see at temples and shrines, on beer can labels, and even on Japanese money. Meet the predecessors to Pokemon, Power Rangers, scary J-horror girls, and all of the strange creatures that pop up in Japanese video games. "Night Parade" will turn anyone with a passing interest in Japanese folklore into a full-blown yokai expert!

    People spend years training dogs to find them underground. They plant forests of oaks and wait a decade for truffles to appear. They pay $3,000 a pound to possess them. They turn into quivering puddles in their presence. Why?Truffle Hound is the fascinating account of Rowan's quest to find out, a journey that would lead him from Italy to Istria, Hungary, Spain, England, and North America. Both an entertaining odyssey and a manifesto, Truffle Hound demystifies truffles-and then remystifies them, freeing them from their gilded cage and returning them to their roots as a sacred offering from the forest. It helps people understand why they respond so strongly to that crazy smell, shows them there's more to truffles than they ever imagined, and gives them all the tools they need to take their own truffle love to the next level. Deeply informed, unabashedly passionate, rakishly readable, Truffle Hound will spark America's next great culinary passion.