Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater


Frank Bruni - 2009
    Round as in stout, chubby, and hungry, always and endlessly hungry. He grew up in a big, loud Italian family in White Plains, New York, where meals were epic, outsize affairs. At those meals, he demonstrated one of his foremost qualifications for his future career: an epic, outsize appetite for food. But his relationship with eating was tricky, and his difficulties with managing it began early.When he was named the restaurant critic for the New York Times in 2004, he knew enough to be nervous. He would be performing one of the most closely watched tasks in the epicurean universe; a bumpy ride was inevitable, especially for someone whose writing beforehand had focused on politics, presidential campaigns, and the Pope.But as he tackled his new role as one of the most loved and hated tastemakers in the New York restaurant world, he also had to make sense of a decades-long love-hate affair with food, which had been his enemy as well as his friend. Now he’d have to face down this enemy at meal after indulgent meal. His Italian grandmother had often said, "Born round, you don’t die square." Would he fall back into his worst old habits? Or had he established a truce with the food on his plate?In tracing the highly unusual path Bruni traveled to become a restaurant critic, Born Round tells the captivating story of an unpredictable journalistic odyssey and provides an unflinching account of one person’s tumultuous, often painful lifelong struggle with his weight. How does a committed eater embrace food without being undone by it? Born Round will speak to every hungry hedonist who has ever had to rein in an appetite to avoid letting out a waistband, and it will delight anyone interested in matters of family, matters of the heart, and the big role food plays in both.

Back to the Kitchen: 75 Delicious, Real Recipes (& True Stories) from a Food-Obsessed Actor


Freddie Prinze Jr. - 2016
    from movies (She's All That, Scooby Doo, Star Wars Rebels) and as one half of beloved Hollywood power couple with Sarah Michelle Gellar. But to family, friends, and co-stars he's always been a terrific father and skilled home cook who prepares delicious meals for his family every night.Freddie grew up in New Mexico cooking with his mother and eating dishes with a ton of flavor and spice from his Puerto Rican heritage. His eggs come New Mexico style, served with from-scratch biscuits and green-chile gravy. His tacos are the real deal: soft tortillas, homemade salsa, filled with steak layered with quick-pickled cucumbers, or spicy fish dressed with watermelon and thai chiles. Now in this family-focused cookbook, Freddie teaches fans to cook his mainstays, the recipes that he makes on even the busiest weeknights, as well as more luxurious date night meals.With personal family photos from Freddie and Sarah's beautiful LA home and Freddie's hilarious stories about the life of an actor, husband, and father in Hollywood, Back to the Kitchen shares more than just recipes. It’s an inside look at a beloved movie and TV personality who has acted, cooked, and eaten his way around the world.

Raising the Salad Bar: Beyond Leafy Greens--Inventive Salads with Beans, Whole Grains, Pasta, Chicken, and More


Catherine Walthers - 2007
    Walthers offers up delicious twists on tired classics, including pasta salads, salad wraps, chicken salads, and more.

Batch: Over 200 Recipes, Tips and Techniques for a Well Preserved Kitchen


Joel MacCharles - 2016
    Batch packs everything you’ll ever need to know about preserving into one cohesive bible. Joel and Dana’s passion project takes a deep dive into the fundamentals of preserving and offers both simple and adventurous, and totally flavor-forward recipes.” —Chef Curtis Stone, New York Times bestselling author and chef/owner of Maude Restaurant     Joel and Dana’s journey into preserving began with an innocent lesson in making jam. Almost a decade later, WellPreserved.ca is an extraordinary resource for both beginners and experts alike. Their much-anticipated first cookbook showcases seven different preserving techniques—waterbath canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, fermenting, cellaring, salting & smoking, and infusing—and takes readers on a trip to the market in twenty-five ingredients. Within each ingredient chapter, you’ll find multiple preserving recipes using the different methods. From apples, pears, peaches and rhubarb, to asparagus, peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes, and covering a variety of meat and fish, Batch teaches you everything you need to know to get the most out of your kitchen. With their signature approachable and fun style, Joel and Dana showcase techniques for a variety of skill levels, explain how to batch your recipes to make two preserves at once, give you multiple options for preserving in ten minutes or less, and serve up mouthwatering center-of-the-plate meals that take your preserves from the pantry to the table. With personal anecdotes, creative and incredible recipes, and beautiful photography and illustrations, Batch will show you how to incorporate preserving into your life and your community.

The Little Paris Kitchen


Rachel Khoo - 2012
    Six years later, she still lives and works in Paris, cooking up a selection of classic French dishes from all over the country and giving them a fresh makeover with her own modern twists. From a Croque Madame muffin and the classic Boeuf bourguignon, to a deliciously fragrant Provencal lavender and lemon roast chicken, Rachel celebrates the culinary landscape of France as it is today and shows how simple these dishes are.The 120 recipes in the book range from easy, everyday dishes like Omelette Pipérade, to summer picnics by the Seine and afternoon 'goûter' (snacks), to meals with friends and delicious desserts including classics like Crème brulee and Tarte tatin. It's a book that celebrates the very best of French home-cooking in a modern and accessible way. Real French food is no longer something only served in fancy restaurants; Rachel will show how you can add a little French culinary touch to your everyday life at home, no matter where you are in the world, or how big your kitchen is!

The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma's Table


Rick Bragg - 2018
    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.

At Home on the Range


Margaret Yardley Potter - 1947
    Having only been peripherally aware of the volume, Gilbert dug in with some curiosity, and soon found that she had stumbled upon a book far ahead of its time. Part scholar and part crusader for a more open food conversation, Potter espoused the importance of farmer’s markets and ethnic food (Italian, Jewish, and German), derided preservatives and culinary shortcuts, and generally celebrated a devotion to epicurean adventures. Reading this practical and humorous cookbook, it’s not hard to see that Gilbert inherited her great-grandmother’s love of food and her warm, infectious prose.Proceeds from this book benefit ScholarMatch (scholarmatch.org).