French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters


Karen Le Billon - 2012
    But she didn't expect to be lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack, or to be forbidden from packing her older daughter a school lunch. Karen is intrigued by the fact that French children happily eat everything—from beets to broccoli, from salad to spinach—while French obesity rates are a fraction of what they are in North America.Karen soon begins to see the wisdom in the "food rules" that the French use to foster healthy eating habits and good manners in babies and children. Some of the rules call into question both our eating habits and our parenting styles. Other rules evoke commonsense habits that we used to share but have somehow forgotten. Taken together, the rules suggest that we need to dramatically rethink the way we feed children, at home and at school.Combining personal anecdotes with practical tips and appetizing recipes—including Zucchini and Spinach Puree and Bouillabaisse (Fish Soup) for Babies—French Kids Eat Everything is a humorous, provocative look at families, food, and children that is filled with inspiration and advice that every parent can use.

My Life in France


Julia Child - 2006
    Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.

Hallelujah! the Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes


Maya Angelou - 2004
    Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and connection. Now in "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, " Angelou shares memories pithy and poignant-and the recipes that helped to make them both indelible and irreplaceable. Angelou tells us about the time she was expelled from school for being afraid to speak-and her mother baked a delicious maple cake to brighten her spirits. She gives us her recipe for short ribs along with a story about a job she had as a cook at a Creole restaurant (never mind that she didn't know how to cook and had no idea what Creole food might entail). There was the time in London when she attended a wretched dinner party full of wretched people; but all wasn't lost-she did experience her initial taste of a savory onion tart. She recounts her very first night in her new home in Sonoma, California, when she invited M. F. K. Fisher over for cassoulet, and the evening Deca Mitford roasted a chicken when she was beyond tipsy-and created Chicken Drunkard Style. And then there was the hearty brunch Angelou made for a homesick Southerner, a meal that earned her both a job offer and a prophetic compliment: "If you can write half as good as you can cook, you are going to be famous." Maya Angelou is renowned in her wide and generous circle of friends as a marvelous chef. Her kitchen is a social center. From fried meat pies, chicken livers, and beef Wellington to caramel cake, bread pudding, and chocolate eclairs, the one hundred-plus recipes included here are all tried and true, and come from Angelou's heart and her home. "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table "is a stunning collaboration between the two things Angelou loves best: writing and cooking.

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us


Michael Moss - 2013
    They ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt a day, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from salt shakers. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $1 trillion in annual sales. In Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how this happened. Featuring examples from some of the most recognizable (and profitable) companies and brands of the last half century--including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Nestlé, Oreos, Cargill, Capri Sun, and many more--Moss’s explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous, often eye-opening research. He goes inside the labs where food scientists use cutting-edge technology to calculate the "bliss point" of sugary beverages or enhance the "mouth feel" of fat by manipulating its chemical structure. He unearths marketing techniques taken straight from tobacco company playbooks to redirect concerns about the health risks of products. He talks to concerned executives who explain that they could never produce truly healthy alternatives to their products even if serious regulation became a reality. Simply put: the industry itself would cease to exist without salt, sugar, and fat.

My Kitchen Wars


Betty Fussell - 1999
    Her weapons—the batterie de cuisine of grills and squeezers and knives—evoke a lifetime’s need to make dinner, love, and war. By prying open the past with these implements, Betty Fussell gives voice to a generation of women whose stories were shaped and yet simultaneously silenced by an era of domestic strife and global conflict, from World War II to Vietnam. My Kitchen Wars also is a love story, recounting Fussell’s liberation from the tyrannical Puritanism of her family by a veteran of the “Good War,” a young writer named Paul Fussell. But she soon finds herself captive again, constrained by the roles of faculty wife and mother. Still, she cannot stop hungering for both a life of the mind and carnal pleasures. Her inner war to unite body and mind brings down the marriage in a denouement as brutal as the whack of a cleaver. Yet Fussell, however bruised, emerges to cook another dinner and to tell her tale in this fierce and funny memoir. My Kitchen Wars was adapted into a one-woman play performed in Hollywood and New York.

A Meal Observed


Andrew Todhunter - 2004
    As Todhunter describes it, Taillevent’s highly orchestrated kitchen is “less an atelier than a gun deck on a ship of war, a place of shouts and fire.”On the other side of the kitchen’s double doors, in the warm light of the nineteenth-century dining room, the American couple surrenders to the sensual pleasure of a beautifully wrought and meticulously served dinner—from the amuse-bouche (a warm cheese puff to “amuse the mouth”) and the crème de cresson soup, with its sunken treasure of lobster tomalley, to the crowning glory of the fantaisie. In the spirit of A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals, Todhunter layers mouthwatering descriptions of French dishes and their preparation with reflections on his American childhood (when food, like sex and money, was not to be discussed at the table), dips into culinary history and philosophy, and entertains with asides on everything from olive oil and chestnuts to the science of viniculture and the chemistry of chocolate. Between courses, Todhunter brings us back to the sanctum of the kitchen itself, where he has probing conversations with chef de cuisine Philippe Legendre and pastry chef Gilles Bajolle, both major figures in the French culinary pantheon, and their assistants. Through these great chefs and their impeccably trained brigade we gain a unique glimpse into the heart of French cuisine and the love of fine food. Is cooking more an art, a craft, or a science? Are great chefs born or made? Why are there so few women chefs in France? What is the greatest danger for a chef at the top of his game? How is a new dish developed? What is the future of haute cuisine in France and in the world at large? When we cook for others, for love or for money, what do we give of ourselves?As richly satisfying as the five-hour meal it describes, A Meal Observed is a delightful paean to the French and French cuisine, and to the universal love of the table. Bon appétit!

American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads


Pascale Le Draoulec - 2002
    But in today's treadmill, take-out world -- our fast-food nation -- does pie still have a place?As she traveled across the United States in an old Volvo named Betty, Pascale Le Draoulec discovered how merely mentioning homemade pie to strangers made faces soften, shoulders relax, and memories come wafting back. Rambling from town to town with Le Draoulec, you'll meet the famous, and sometimes infamous, pie makers who share their stories and recipes, and find out how a quest for pie can lead to something else entirely.

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence


Amy Sedaris - 2006
    Take a cue from entertaining expert Amy Sedaris and host an unforgettable fete that will have your guests raving. No matter the style or size of the gathering-from the straightforward to the bizarre-I Like You provides jackpot recipes and solid advice laced with Amy's blisteringly funny take on entertaining, plus four-color photos and enlightening sidebars on everything it takes to pull off a party with extraordinary flair. You don't even need to be a host or hostess to benefit-Amy offers tips for guests, too!  (Number one: don't be fifteen minutes early.) Readers will discover unique dishes to serve alcoholics (Broiled Frozen Chicken Wings with Applesauce), the secret to a successful children's party (a half-hour time limit, games included), plus a whole appendix chock-full of arts and crafts ideas (from a mini-pantyhose plant-hanger to a do-it-yourself calf stretcher), and much, much more!

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food


Dan Barber - 2014
    Instead, Barber proposes Americans should move to the 'third plate,' a cuisine rooted in seasonal productivity, natural livestock rhythms, whole-grains, and small portions of free-range meat.

The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: The Coming of Age of American Restaurants


Patric Kuh - 2001
    Kuh takes readers inside this high-stakes business, sharing little-known anecdotes, describing legendary cooks and bright new star chefs, and relating his own reminiscences. Populated by a host of food personalities, including Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, and James Beard, Kuh's social and cultural history of America's great restaurants reveals the dramatic transformations in U.S. cuisine. "If you believe we are what we eat, this is the book that tells you who we are." (The San Diego Union-Tribune) ßAUTHORBIO: Patric Kuh is a Paris-trained chef who has worked in preeminent restaurants in France, New York, and California. He has written a novel, as well as numerous articles for Gourmet, Esquire, Salon.com, and Los Angeles magazine.

Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Cooks, and Good Food


Jeff Potter - 2007
    Author and cooking geek Jeff Potter helps you apply curiosity, inspiration, and invention to the food you prepare. Why do we bake some things at 350°F / 175°C and others at 375°F / 190°C? Why is medium-rare steak so popular? And just how quickly does a pizza cook if you “overclock” an oven to 1,000°F / 540°C? This expanded new edition provides in-depth answers, and lets you experiment with several labs and more than 100 recipes— from the sweet (a patent-violating chocolate chip cookie) to the savory (pulled pork under pressure).When you step into the kitchen, you’re unwittingly turned into a physicist and a chemist. This excellent and intriguing resource is for inquisitive people who want to increase their knowledge and ability to cook.• Discover what type of cook you are and learn how to think about flavor• Understand how protein denaturation, Maillard reactions, caramelization, and otherreactions impact the foods we cook• Gain firsthand insights from interviews with researchers, food scientists, knife experts, chefs, and writers—including science enthusiast Adam Savage, chef Jaques Pépin, and chemist Hervé This

Backstage with Julia: My Years with Julia Child


Nancy Verde Barr - 2007
    Brimming with anecdotes, memorabilia, and snapshots, Backstage with Julia conveys Julia’s generosity, her boundless energy, and her love of food and life. This loving memoir celebrates the adventurous, unassuming essence of the chef who seasoned American palates and heightened our appreciation of food.

Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste


Ayun Halliday - 2006
    Halliday started out a repressed picky eater without so much as a single fast-food-loving sibling to save her from the gourmet ambitions of a mother whose recipe for Far East Celery once received favorable mention in the Indianapolis Star. Her palate has since expanded to the degree that she'll fork down anything from chili-smothered insects that pass for an exotic destination's local delicacies to a peanut found wedged between the cushions of a theater seat. From summer camp's unlimited Pop-Tarts to the post-coital breakfasts of a well-traveled actress-waitress and the frustrating payback of cooking for some finicky offspring of the author's own, Dirty Sugar Cookies is an omnivorous, hilarious chronicle of culinary awakening.

Food and the City: New York's Professional Chefs, Restaurateurs, Line Cooks, Street Vendors, and Purveyors Talk About What They Do and Why They Do It


Ina Yalof - 2016
    Dominique Ansel declares what great good fortune led him to make the first Cronut. Lenny Berk explains why Woody Allen’s mother would allow only him to slice her lox at Zabar’s. Ghaya Oliveira, who came to New York as a young Tunisian stockbroker, opens up about her hardscrabble yet swift trajectory from dishwasher to executive pastry chef at Daniel. Restaurateur Eddie Schoenfeld describes his journey from Nice Jewish Boy from Brooklyn to New York’s Indisputable Chinese Food Maven.              From old-schoolers such as David Fox, third-generation owner of Fox’s U-bet syrup, and the outspoken Upper West Side butcher “Schatzie” to new-kids-on-the-block including Patrick Collins, sous chef at The Dutch and Brooklyn artisan Lauren Clark of Sucre Mort Pralines, Food and the City is a fascinating oral history with an unforgettable gallery of New Yorkers who embody the heart and soul of a culinary metropolis.

Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen


David Sax - 2009
    As a journalist and lifelong deli lover, he watched in dismay as one beloved deli after another closed its doors, only to be reopened as some bland chain restaurant laying claim to the cuisine it just paved over. Was it still possible to save the deli? He writes about the food itself?how it?s made, who makes it best, and where to go for particular dishes?and, ultimately, what he finds is hope: deli newly and lovingly made in places like Boulder, Colorado, longstanding deli traditions thriving in Montreal, and the resurrection of iconic institutions like New York's 2nd Avenue Deli. No cultural history of food has ever tasted so good.