Book picks similar to
Conversations with M. F. K. Fisher by M.F.K. Fisher


type_women-authors_curated-choices
food-culture
food-writing
memoirs

The Ghost Orchard


Helen Humphreys - 2017
    Delving deep into the storied past of the apple in North America, Humphreys explores the intricate link between agriculture, settlement, and human relationships. With her signature insight and exquisite prose, she brings light to such varied topics as how the apple first came across the Atlantic Ocean with a relatively unknown Quaker woman long before the more famed “Johnny Appleseed”; how bountiful Indigenous orchards were targeted to be taken over or eradicated by white settlers and their armies; how the once-17,000 varietals of apple cultivated were catalogued by watercolour artists from the United States’ Department of Pomology;  how apples wove into the life and poetry of Robert Frost; and how Humphreys’ own curiosity was piqued by the Winter Pear Pearmain, believed to be the world’s best tasting apple, which she found growing beside an abandoned cottage not far from her home.In telling this hidden history, Humphreys writes movingly about the experience of her research, something she undertook as one of her closest friends was dying. The result is a book that is both personal and universal, combining engaging storytelling, historical detail, and deep emotional insight.

The Story of Brutus: My Life with Brutus the Bear and the Grizzlies of North America


Casey Anderson - 2010
    Little Brutus was destined to remain in captivity or, more likely, even euthanized due to overpopulation at the preserve. Anderson, already an expert in animal rescue and rehabilitation, just could not let that happen to Brutus, who looked like a "fuzzy Twinkie." From the beginning it was clear something special existed between the two. And so, Anderson built the Montana grizzly encounter in Bozeman, Montana, especially for Brutus, so that he, and others like him, could grow up "being a bear." And so the love story began.When together, Anderson and Brutus will wrestle, swim, play, and continue to act as advocates for grizzly protection and education, be it through documentaries like Expedition Grizzly, appearances on Oprah or Good Morning America, or in this inspiring book, which promises to be an intimate look into Anderson's relationship with Brutus and a call to action to protect these glorious animals and the natural world they live in.The Story of Brutus proves that love and friendship knows no bounds and that every care must be taken to protect one of nature's noblest creatures.

Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices


Chitrita Banerji - 2007
    In Eating India, award-winning food writer and Bengali food expert Chitrita Banerji takes readers on a marvelous odyssey through a national cuisine formed by generations of arrivals, assimilations, and conquests. With each wave of newcomers-ancient Aryan tribes, Persians, Middle Eastern Jews, Mongols, Arabs, Europeans-have come new innovations in cooking, and new ways to apply India's rich native spices, poppy seeds, saffron, and mustard to the vegetables, milks, grains, legumes, and fishes that are staples of the Indian kitchen. In this book, Calcutta native and longtime U.S. resident Banerji describes, in lush and mouthwatering prose, her travels through a land blessed with marvelous culinary variety and particularity.REVIEWS:"Skillfully moving backward and forward in time, Banerji, a culinary historian based in the U.S. whose previous books have explored the cookery of her native Bengal (Life and Food in Bengal), regards India with the intimacy of a native, the curiosity of an outsider and the broad vantage of an expatriate. In the course of her culinary tours across the subcontinent, she poses compelling questions about the nature of authenticity in a time of great flux, the mutability of tradition and the place of food in secular life and religious culture. For answers, she looks not only to the past but to the present as it unfolds in roadside shacks, sweet shops or a temple canteen, describing how outside influences such as colonialism and immigration have shaped India's regional cuisines. Early in this engaging work, Banerji recounts how whenever she invites Americans to her home for an elaborate meal, rather than sampling each dish in sequence-the better to appreciate its subtle flavors-her guests heap together meat, rice and

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes


Shauna Niequist - 2013
    Written by well-loved writer and blogger, Shauna Niequist, this mix of Girl Meets God and the Food Network is a funny, honest, and vulnerable spiritual memoir. Bread & Wine is a celebration of food shared and life around the table, and it reminds us of the joy we find in connection and relationship. It's about the ways that God teaches and nourishes us as we nourish the people around us. It's about hunger, both physical and otherwise, and the connections between the two. Recipes are included for the dishes you can almost taste as you read about them. From Butternut Squash Risotto to Apple Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream and Salted Caramel Sauce, you will be able to recreate the comforting and satisfying meals that come to life in Bread & Wine.

This Book is About Travel


Andrew Hyde - 2012
    If you have already been out in the big world and you enjoy the considerate observations that often come from travel, this book is for you. If you just can't get away, but hearing about someone else's adventures can take you there, this book is for you." -Lindsay LaShell2 years on the road. 1 backpack. 15 countries. Banned from one. Stories about Nepal, Colombia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, Kenya, Qatar, UAE, Panama and more. This book is about the days, people, stories, ethics and philosophy that bridged the trip. What is modern travel? Why are you not on the road?

Wrong Family: For Every Secret, There Is A Family


Charisse Dahlke Peeler - 2018
    In order to break the dysfunctional cycle, Charisse needs to overcome the chaos caused by generations of family secrets, extreme poverty, fanatical religion and sexual abuse all of which leaves her ill equipped to make her own adult decisions. Can she overcome a legacy of lies?

The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education


Peter Coyote - 2015
    For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin – represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status-seeking world of wealth and power. The Rainman’s Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons from a man who literally held the power of life and death over others, to government service and international success on stage and screen.Expanding his frame beyond the wild ride through the 1960’s counterculture that occupied so much of his lauded debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him—a violent, intimidating father, a be-bop Bass player who teaches him that life can be improvised, a Mafia consiglieri, who demonstrates to him that men can be bought and manipulated, an ex game-warden who initates him into the laws of nature, a gay dancer in Martha Graham’s company who introduces him to Mexico and marijuanas, beat poet Gary Snyder, who introduces him to Zen practice, and finally famed fashion designer Nino Cerruti who made the high-stakes world of haute monde Europe available to him.What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission---acknowledgement from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love and Power’s correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Rainman’s Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works.

Cooking and Screaming: Finding My Own Recipe for Recovery


Adrienne Kane - 2009
    Stirring left-handed, I did not want to leave the warmth of the kitchen. I felt good. And for a moment I forgot about the life that I was living. Being in the kitchen, the sights and smells, the smear of crimson tomato sauce on my borrowed apron, felt like a bit of home, a place that felt so far away."Adrienne Kane always loved food. Waiting by the oven for the sweet, crisp cookies she baked with her mother to emerge. Learning to create a simple yet delicious frittata with her best friend. Fueling long hours of work on her senior thesis with a satisfying tagliatelle.But just two weeks before her college graduation, Adrienne suffered a hemorrhagic stroke that left her paralyzed on the entire right side of her body. Once a dancer and aspiring teacher, she was now dependent on her loved ones, embarrassed by her disability, and facing an identity crisis. The next several years were a blur of doctors, therapists, rehabilitation, and frustration.Until she got back in the kitchen.It started with a stir. A stir and a taste. A little more salt. Maybe a side of crisp, sautéed potatoes. She learned to wield a chef's knife with her left hand, and to brace vegetables with her right. As she slowly stumbled from her quiet resting place at the kitchen table to where her mother stood by the stove, food became not only her sustenance and her solace, it became Adrienne's calling.She tested new recipes and created her own, crafting beautiful, delectable feasts for the people who had nurtured her -- her mother and father, who himself had survived a stroke several years earlier; the friends who encouraged her to write a cookbook; and, of course, the boyfriend-turned-husband who stood beside her all the way. Eventually, through determination, hard work, and a healthy portion of courage, she turned her culinary love into a career as a caterer, food writer, photographer, and recipe developer.Filled with simple, tempting recipes and complex, hard-won lessons, Cooking and Screaming is Adrienne's moving and heartfelt story of food, loss, work, and joy...and finding her identity through the most unlikely combination of ingredients.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine


Benjamin Wallace - 2008
    Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries.

Feeding Frenzy


Stuart Stevens - 1997
    Having exhausted nearly every posh Manhattan restaurant, former model Rat suggests they take their buffed bodies to new gastronomic heights via a tour of Europe's Michelin three-star restaurants. Rat's boyfriend will underwrite the trip--but only if they do the twenty-nine restaurants on their list in twenty-nine days. What follows is nothing less than gustatory madness, a wacky dash in a cherry-red 1965 Mustang across England, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and France through Europe's greatest food temples. Filled with hilarious misadventures, priceless exchanges with star chefs, wild excess, breathtaking scenery, and sensual depictions of once-in-a-lifetime meals, Feeding Frenzy will delight travelers and epicures alike.

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.