She measures in "dabs" and "smidgens" and "tads" and "you know, hon, just some." She cannot be pinned down on how long to bake corn bread ("about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the mysteries of your oven"). Her notion of farm-to-table is a flatbed truck. But she can tell you the secrets to perfect mashed potatoes, corn pudding, redeye gravy, pinto beans and hambone, stewed cabbage, short ribs, chicken and dressing, biscuits and butter rolls. The irresistible stories in this audiobook are of long memory -- many of them pre-date the Civil War, handed down skillet by skillet, from one generation of Braggs to the next. In The Best Cook in the World, Rick Bragg finally preserves his heritage by telling the stories that framed his mother's cooking and education, from childhood into old age.

    Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn’t. Fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets. Award-winning food journalist and travel writer Larry Olmsted exposes this pervasive and dangerous fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting Americans.     Real Food/Fake Food brings readers into the unregulated food industry, revealing that this shocking deception extends from high-end foods like olive oil, wine, and Kobe beef to everyday staples such as coffee, honey, juice, and cheese. It’s a massive bait and switch where counterfeiting is rampant and where the consumer ultimately pays the price. But Olmsted does more than show us what foods to avoid. A bona fide gourmand, he travels to the sources of the real stuff, to help us recognize what to look for, eat, and savor: genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy, fresh-caught grouper from Florida, authentic port from Portugal. Real foods that are grown, raised, produced, and prepared with care by masters of their craft.   Part cautionary tale, part culinary crusade, Real Food/Fake Food is addictively readable, mouth-wateringly enjoyable, and utterly relevant. Larry Olmsted convinces us why real food matters.

    But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Price of Tomatoes," investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?   Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation's top restaurants.Throughout Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a who's who cast of characters in the tomato industry: the avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every eight tomatoes eaten in the United States; the ex-Marine who heads the group that dictates the size, color, and shape of every tomato shipped out of Florida; the U.S. attorney who has doggedly prosecuted human traffickers for the past decade; and the Guatemalan peasant who came north to earn money for his parents' medical bills and found himself enslaved for two years.Tomatoland reads like a suspenseful whodunit as well as an expose of today's agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

    But it doesn’t need to be so. Peter Miller makes lunch every day at his bookshop in Seattle. It may be only a salad or a sandwich, but he and his team put it together each day without a formal kitchen. It is a moment set aside, away from the computer and the clock.Lunch at the Shop is a call to lunch. On the most basic level, the book is a primer for making lunch for a few people at work, including more than 50 tried-and-tested, deliciously simple recipes. However, the essence of the book is about adopting a lifestyle that allows food to be savored every day, in a way that is easy, fresh, healthy, and a pleasure. “You may not know it yet, but you are hungry for what is bound and written on these pages. As he did for me, Peter Miller will help fill you up. I’m sure of it.” —Matthew Dillon, James Beard Award–winning chef of Sitka & Spruce, The Corson Building, and Bar Sajor

    Your success story begins with "The Whole30," Dallas and Melissa Hartwig's powerful 30-day nutritional reset.Over the last three years, their underground Whole30 program has quietly led tens of thousands of people to weight loss, improved quality of life and a healthier relationship with food—accompanied by stunning improvements in sleep, energy levels, mood and self-esteem. More significantly, devotees of their program have reported the "magical" elimination of hundreds of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions.Now, Dallas and Melissa detail the theories behind the Whole30, summarizing the science in a simple, accessible manner. It Starts With Food will show you how certain foods may be having negative effects on how you look, feel and live—in ways that you'd never associate with your diet. More importantly, they outline their life-long strategy for Eating Good Food in one clear and detailed action plan designed to help you create a healthy metabolism, heal your digestive tract, calm systemic inflammation and put an end to unhealthy cravings, habits, and relationships with food.Infused with their signature wit, tough love and common sense approach, It Starts With Food is based on the latest scientific research and real-life experience, and includes success stories, a shopping guide, a meal planning template, a 30-day meal plan with creative, delicious recipes, and much more.

    Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors' own memories of successes and catastrophes.For instance: The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night? Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others? The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini? How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party?and whom not to? John Irving's family recipe for meatballs; Balzac's love of coffee? The greatest dinner ever given at the White House? Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.? How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchenSophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. "The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"

    For home cooks who care about what they feed their families and want to stretch their dollars, Melissa is the best guide for putting delicious meals on the table. With four young girls ages six and under, and a hit show on Food Network, Melissa d'Arabian focuses on savvy budgeting, efficient shopping, and full-flavored cooking. "Ten Dollar Dinners" has 140 recipes and more than 100 creative, practical tips on great money-savers ("Clear-Your-Pantry Week"); inventive takes on old standby dinners (try her Moroccan Meatloaf); and how to get ingredients to last longer (keep your green onions in a glass of water and they will regrow several times over ). And with a coding system to help you create your own $10 menu, "Ten Dollar Dinners" celebrates spending with purpose, cooking with love, minimizing time spent in front of the stove, and savoring your homemade meal.Melissa is a pro at creating satisfying meals that adults and kids alike will enjoy, using everyday ingredients and transforming them into delicious dinners. Her Potato-Bacon Torte (which, at 50 cents a serving, was one of her winning recipes on "The Next Food Network Star") shows how basic and inexpensive supermarket ingredients can be turned into an amazingly satisfying dish. Her Roasted Vegetable Tian is a great way to take advantage of deals in the produce aisle. The Four-Step Chicken Piccata offers a plan for getting food on the table in just minutes, using almost anything in the pantry. Anyone can use this book--especially those who want to save money--and feel great about cooking sensibly for elevated, simple meals that are healthy family-pleasers.

    Just like memorizing an equation might have helped you pass an exam but not become a chemist, following a recipe without knowing its rationale can be a sub-optimal way of learning how to cook.Exhaustively tested and researched, and with a curious and engaging approach to food, Krish Ashok puts together the one book the Indian kitchen definitely needs, proving along the way that your grandmother was right all along.

    In this 5000-mile journey through the noodle shops, tempura temples, and teahouses of Japan, Matt Goulding, co-creator of the enormously popular Eat This, Not That! book series, navigates the intersection between food, history, and culture, creating one of the most ambitious and complete books ever written about Japanese culinary culture from the Western perspective.Written in the same evocative voice that drives the award-winning magazine Roads & Kingdoms, Rice, Noodle, Fish explores Japan's most intriguing culinary disciplines in seven key regions, from the kaiseki tradition of Kyoto and the sushi masters of Tokyo to the street food of Osaka and the ramen culture of Fukuoka. You won't find hotel recommendations or bus schedules; you will find a brilliant narrative that interweaves immersive food journalism with intimate portraits of the cities and the people who shape Japan's food culture.This is not your typical guidebook. Rice, Noodle, Fish is a rare blend of inspiration and information, perfect for the intrepid and armchair traveler alike. Combining literary storytelling, indispensable insider information, and world-class design and photography, the end result is the first ever guidebook for the new age of culinary tourism.

    Erica Shea and Stephen Valand show that with a little space, a few tools, and the same ingredients breweries use, you too can make delicious craft beer right on your stovetop. Greenmarket-inspired and seasonally brewed, these 52 recipes include Everyday IPA and Rose Cheeked & Blonde for spring; Grapefruit Honey Ale and S’More Beer for summer; Apple Crisp Ale and Peanut Butter Porter for fall; Chestnut Brown ale and Gingerbread Ale for winter; and even four gluten-free brews. You’ll also find tips for growing hops, suggestions for food pairings, and recipes for cooking with beer. Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Beer Making Book offers a new approach to artisanal brewing and is a must-own for beer lovers, seasonally minded cooks, and anyone who gets a kick out of saying “I made this!”

    And in this eye-opening book from an author who is both a neuroscientist and a certified integrative nutritionist, we learn what should be on our menu.Dr. Lisa Mosconi, whose research spans an extraordinary range of specialties including brain science, the microbiome, and nutritional genomics, notes that the dietary needs of the brain are substantially different from those of the other organs, yet few of us have any idea what they might be. Her innovative approach to cognitive health incorporates concepts that most doctors have yet to learn. Busting through advice based on pseudoscience, Dr. Mosconi provides recommendations for a complete food plan, while calling out noteworthy surprises, including why that paleo diet you are following may not be ideal, why avoiding gluten may be a terrible mistake, and how simply getting enough water can dramatically improve alertness.Including comprehensive lists of what to eat and what to avoid, a detailed quiz that will tell you where you are on the brain health spectrum, and 24 mouth-watering brain-boosting recipes that grow out of Dr. Mosconi's own childhood in Italy, Brain Food gives us the ultimate plan for a healthy brain. Brain Food will appeal to anyone looking to improve memory, prevent cognitive decline, eliminate brain fog, lift depression, or just sharpen their edge.

    Inspired by the flavours of Mexico but using ingredients easily found in Britain, Wahaca - Mexican Food at Home is all about cooking authentic Mexican food in your own kitchen. Mexican cooking is fresh, colourful and full of flavour, with breakfasts to get you through the day, hearty dinners, sensational puddings, and zingy cocktails. Follow Tommi on her trip through the markets, cantinas and fiestas of Mexico to discover recipes bursting with flavour you'll want to eat and share.

    In this sweeping tour through the world of tea, veteran tea traders Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss chronicle tea's influence across the globe and provide a complete reference for choosing, drinking, and enjoying this beverage.The Story of Tea begins with a journey along the tea trail, from the lush forests of China, where tea cultivation first flourished, to the Buddhist temples of Japan, to the vast tea gardens of India, and beyond. Offering an insider'­s view of all aspects of tea trade, the Heisses examine Camellia sinensis, the tea bush, and show how subtle differences in territory and production contribute to the diversity of color, flavor, and quality in brewed tea. They profile more than thirty essential tea varietals, provide an in depth guide to tasting and brewing, and survey the customs and crafts associated with tea. Sharing the latest research, they discuss tea's health benefits and developments in organic production and fair trade practices. Finally, they present ten sweet and savory recipes, including Savory Chinese Marbled Eggs and Green Tea Pot de Crâme, and resources for purchasing fine tea.Vividly illustrated throughout, The Story of Tea is an engrossing tribute to the illustrious, invigorating, and elusive leaf that has sustained and inspired people for more than two thousand years.

    After water and tea, it is the most popular drink in the world, and it is at the center of an over $450 billion industry. With the emergence of craft brewing and homebrewing, beer is experiencing a renaissance that is expanding the reach of the beer culture even further, bringing the art of brewing into homes and widening the interest in beer as an important cultural item.The Oxford Companion to Beer is the first reference work to fully investigate the history and vast scope of beer, from the agricultural makeup of various beers to the technical elements of the brewing process, local effects of brewing on regions around the world, and social and political implications of sharing a beer. Entries not only define terms such as "spent grain" and "wort," but give fascinating details about how these and other ingredients affect a beer's taste, texture, and popularity. Cultural entries on such topics as drinking songs or beer gardens offer vivid accounts of how our drinking traditions have shifted through history, and how these traditions vary in different parts of the world, from Japan to Mexico, New Zealand, and Brazil, among many other countries. The pioneers of beer-making are the subjects of biographical entries; the legacies they left behind, in the forms of the world's most popular beers and breweries, are recurrent themes throughout the book. Collectively the Companion has over 1,100 entries--written by 150 of the world's most prominent beer experts--as well as a foreword by renowned chef Tom Colicchio (star of television's Top Chef), thorough appendices, conversion tables, images throughout, and an index. Flipping through the book, readers will discover everything from why beer was first taxed to how drinkers throughout history have overcome temperance movements and how an "ale conner" determined the quality of a beer in the thirteenth century. (It involved sitting in a puddle of beer.)The Companion is comprehensive, unprecedented, and of great value to anyone who has ever had a curiosity or appetite for beer.

    Terry Wahls focused on treating her patients’ ailments with drugs or surgical procedures—until she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2000. Within three years, her back and stomach muscles had weakened to the point where she needed a tilt-recline wheelchair. Conventional medical treatments were failing her, and she feared that she would be bedridden for the rest of her life. Dr. Wahls began studying the latest research on autoimmune disease and brain biology, and decided to get her vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and essential fatty acids from the food she ate rather than pills and supplements. Dr. Wahl’s adopted the nutrient-rich paleo diet, gradually refining and integrating it into a regimen of neuromuscular stimulation. First, she walked slowly, then steadily, and then she biked eighteen miles in a single day. In November 2011, Dr. Wahls shared her remarkable recovery in a TEDx talk that immediately went viral. Now, in The Wahls Protocol, she shares the details of the protocol that allowed her to reverse many of her symptoms, get back to her life, and embark on a new mission: to share the Wahls Protocol with others suffering from the ravages of multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune conditions.