Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. George Zaidan reveals what will kill you, what won't, and why--explained with high-octane hilarity, hysterical hijinks, and other things that don't begin with the letter H. INGREDIENTS offers the perspective of a chemist on the stuff we eat, drink, inhale, and smear on ourselves. Apart from the burning question of whether you should eat that Cheeto, Zaidan explores a range of topics. Here's a helpful guide:Stuff in this book: - How bad is processed food? How sure are we?- Is sunscreen safe? Should you use it?- Is coffee good or bad for you?- What's your disease horoscope?- What is that public pool smell made of?- What happens when you overdose on fentanyl in the sun?- What do cassava plants and Soviet spies have in common?- When will you die?Stuff in other books: - Your carbon footprint- Food sustainability- GMOs- CEO pay- Science funding- Politics- Football- Baseball- Any kind of ball reallyZaidan, an MIT-trained chemist who cohosted CNBC's hit Make Me a Millionaire Inventor and wrote and voiced several TED-Ed viral videos, makes chemistry more fun than Hogwarts as he reveals exactly what science can (and can't) tell us about the packaged ingredients sold to us every day. Sugar, spinach, formaldehyde, cyanide, the ingredients of life and death, and how we know if something is good or bad for us--as well as the genius of aphids and their butts--are all discussed in exquisite detail at breakneck speed.

    It's time to unlock the pantry and break free from the shackles of ready-made, industrial food. It's time to cook supper."The Lost Art of Real Cooking" heralds a new old-fashioned approach to food-laborious and inconvenient, yet extraordinarily rewarding and worth bragging about. From jam, yogurt, and fresh pasta to salami, smoked meat, and strudel, Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger arm you with the knowledge and skills that let you connect on a deeper level with what goes into your body.Ken and Rosanna celebrate the patience it takes to make your own sauerkraut and pickles. They divulge the mysteries of capturing wild sourdoughs and culturing butter, the beauty of rendering lard, making cheese, and brewing beer, all without the fancy toys that take away from the adventure of truly "experiencing" your food.These foods were once made by the family, in the home, rather than a factory. And they can still be made in the smallest kitchens without expensive equipment, capturing flavors that speak of place and personality. What you won't find here is a collection of rigid rules for the perfect meal. Ken and Rosanna offer a wealth of recipes, history, and techniques that start with the basics and evolve into dishes that are entirely your own.

    The Gourmands’ Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of “the glorious thirty,” paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and, ultimately, to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American readers. In doing so, this group biography also tells the story of an era when America adored all things French. The group is comprised of the war correspondent A. J. Liebling; Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s life partner, who reinvented herself at seventy as a cookbook author; M.F.K. Fisher, a sensualist and fabulist storyteller; Julia Child, a television celebrity and cookbook author; Alexis Lichine, an ambitious wine merchant; and Richard Olney, a reclusive artist who reluctantly evolved into a brilliant writer on French food and wine.Together, these writer-adventurers initiated an American cultural dialogue on food that has continued to this day. Justin Spring’s The Gourmands’ Way is the first book ever to look at them as a group and to specifically chronicle their Paris experiences.

    Out of this ancient heritage from lands that include Greece, Bosnia, Turkey, Israel, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, she mines a rich source of culinary traditions.Mendelson then takes us on a journey through the lands that traditionally only consumed milk fresh from the cow—what she calls the Northwestern Cow Belt (northern Europe, Great Britain, North America). She shows us how milk reached such prominence in our diet in the nineteenth century that it led to the current practice of overbreeding cows and overprocessing dairy products. Her lucid explanation of the chemical intricacies of milk and the simple home experiments she encourages us to try are a revelation of how pure milk products should really taste.The delightfully wide-ranging recipes that follow are grouped according to the main dairy ingredient: fresh milk and cream, yogurt, cultured milk and cream, butter and true buttermilk, fresh cheeses. We learn how to make luscious Clotted Cream, magical Lemon Curd, that beautiful quasi-cheese Mascarpone, as well as homemade yogurt, sour cream, true buttermilk, and homemade butter. She gives us comfort foods such as Milk Toast and Cream of Tomato Soup alongside Panir and Chhenna from India. Here, too, are old favorites like Herring with Sour Cream Sauce, Beef Stroganoff, a New Englandish Clam Chowder, and the elegant Russian Easter dessert, Paskha. And there are drinks for every season, from Turkish Ayran and Indian Lassis to Batidos (Latin American milkshakes) and an authentic hot chocolate. This illuminating book will be an essential part of any food lover’s collection and is bound to win converts determined to restore the purity of flavor to our First Food.

    With three hilarious books over the next two decades--American Fried; Alice, Let's Eat; and Third Helpings--he established himself as, in Craig Claiborne's phrase, "the Walt Whitman of American eats." Trillin's three comic masterpieces are now available in what Trillin calls The Tummy Trilogy.

    As Curator of Books at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, Haber has access to more than 16,000 cookbooks from which she has drawn inspiring and often surprising cooking stories from the 1840s to the present: a Confederate Jewish woman's ancestral chicken soup which helped improve institutional food overall; the well-groomed, upright "Harvey Girl" waitresses who helped civilize America's western frontier; and the Graham Cracker, which was created by a fanatic Seventh-Day Adventist trying to curb sexual appetites. With recipes throughout, Haber's fascinating survey adds a delicious new dimension to America's cultural heritage.

    This work brings the Philippine Islands to life through the stories behind the dishes and their traditional cooking techniques.

    Written by a food-loving immigrant from Tuscany, this memoir-cum-cookbook articulates the Italian American vision of the good life: a backyard garden, a well-cooked meal shared with family and friends, and a passion for ingredients and cooking that nourish the body and the soul.

    "No rock critic-living or dead, American or otherwise-has ever written about pop music with the evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield." So said Chuck Klosterman about Love is a Mix Tape, Sheffield's paean to a lost love via its soundtrack. Now, in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Sheffield shares the soundtrack to his eighties adolescence. When he turned 13 in 1980, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music and himself, and in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran we get a glimpse into his transformation from pasty, geeky "hermit boy" into a young man with his first girlfriend, his first apartment, and a sense of the world. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies; the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads; and, like any all-American boy, this one was searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. It's all here: Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Members Only jackets. Girls, every last one of whom seems to be madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran. Sheffield's coming-of-age story is one that we all know, with a playlist that any child of the eighties or anyone who just loves music will sing along with. These songs-and Sheffield's writing-will remind readers of that first kiss, that first car, and the moments that shaped their lives.

    Be they vanilla, lemon, ginger, chocolate, cinnamon, boozy, Bundt, layered, marbled, even checkerboard--they are etched in our psyche. Cakes relate to our lives, heritage, and hometowns. And as we look at the evolution of cakes in America, we see the evolution of our history: cakes changed with waves of immigrants landing on ourshores, with the availability (and scarcity) of ingredients, with cultural trends and with political developments. In her new book American Cake, Anne Byrn (creator of the New York Times bestselling series The Cake Mix Doctor) will explore this delicious evolution and teach us cake-making techniques from across the centuries, all modernized for today’s home cooks.Anne wonders (and answers for us) why devil’s food cake is not red in color, how the Southern delicacy known as Japanese Fruit Cake could be so-named when there appears to be nothing Japanese about the recipe, and how Depression-era cooks managed to bake cakes without eggs, milk, and butter. Who invented the flourless chocolate cake, the St. Louis gooey butter cake, the Tunnel of Fudge cake? Were these now-legendary recipes mishaps thanks to a lapse of memory, frugality, or being too lazy to run to the store for more flour?Join Anne for this delicious coast-to-coast journey and savor our nation's history of cake baking. From the dark, moist gingerbread and blueberry cakes of New England and the elegant English-style pound cake of Virginia to the hard-scrabble apple stack cake home to Appalachia and the slow-drawl, Deep South Lady Baltimore Cake, you will learn the stories behind your favorite cakes and how to bake them.

    Even when they work long days. Even when their kids' schedules pull them in eighteen different directions. They are not superhuman. They are not from another planet.With simple strategies and common sense, Jenny figured out how to break down dinner—the food, the timing, the anxiety, from prep to cleanup—so that her family could enjoy good food, time to unwind, and simply be together.Using the same straight-up, inspiring voice that readers of her award-winning blog, Dinner: A Love Story, have come to count on, Jenny never judges and never preaches. Every meal she dishes up is a real meal, one that has been cooked and eaten and enjoyed at least a half dozen times by someone in Jenny's house. With inspiration and game plans for any home cook at any level, Dinner: A Love Story is as much for the novice who doesn't know where to start as it is for the gourmand who doesn't know how to start over when she finds herself feeding an intractable toddler or for the person who never thought about home-cooked meals until he or she became a parent. This book is, in fact, for anyone interested in learning how to make a meal to be shared with someone they love, and about how so many good, happy things happen when we do.

    Features: Over 900 new recipes -- 1,200 in all-reflect current eating habits and lifestyles; 500 new photographs -- over 700 in all-including 60 percent more of finished food than the last edition; Dozens of new recipes offer ethnic flavours, fresh ingredients, or vegetarian appeal; Many recipes feature make-ahead directions or quick-to-the-table meals; New chapter provides recipes for crockery cookers; Efficient, easy-to-read format, with recipes categorised into 21 chapters, each thoroughly indexed for easy reference; Expanded chapter on cooking basics includes advice on food safety, menu planning, table setting, and make-ahead cooking, plus a thorough glossary on ingredients and techniques; Appliance-friendly recipes help cooks save time and creatively use new kitchen tools; Nutrition information with each recipe, plus diabetic exchanges; Contemporary food photography attracts browsers and helps cooks discover new recipes to make; Icons identify low-fat, no-fat, fast, and best-loved recipes; Every recipe tested and perfected by the Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen; Revised and updated cooking charts, ingredient photos, emergency substitutions, and equivalents; Respected, reliable kitchen reference with hundreds of cooking terms, tips, and techniques.

    Until she stumbled on an alternate universe where taste reigned supreme, a world in which people could, after a single sip of wine, identify the grape it was made from, in what year, and where it was produced down to the exact location, within acres. Where she tasted wine, these people detected not only complex flavor profiles, but entire histories and geographies. Astounded by their fanatical dedication and seemingly superhuman sensory powers, Bosker abandoned her screen-centric life and set out to discover what drove their obsession, and whether she, too, could become a cork dork.Thus begins a year and a half long adventure that takes the reader inside elite tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, a California winery that manipulates the flavor of its bottles with ingredients like Mega Purple, and even a neuroscientist's fMRI machine as Bosker attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what's the big deal about wine? Funny, counter intuitive, and compulsively readable, Cork Dork illuminates not only the complex web of wine production and consumption, but how tasting better can change our brains and help us live better.

    Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roofin the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a "wilder" side of Tuscany--and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany's mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention tolife in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden.Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons thathave become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, andof the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began. With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life."

    With the abundance of supermarket selections of prepackaged greens, you can create a restaurant-style salad―along with a fabulous dressing―in your own kitchen.Before bagged blends, a salad with four different types of lettuces was unheard of. Now there are more than fifty different combinations of lettuces, packaged in just the right size, from which to choose. Think beyond iceberg and romaine. The more than one hundred salads and dressings in Simply Salads are colorful, gourmet, and surprisingly simple to prepare. Whether you're looking for the perfect complement to a main dish or you want a salad that can stand as an entrée, you'll find the perfect salad, including such winners as: Asian Salad with Ginger Dressing and Wasabi Peas (page 4) Jalapeño Chicken Salad with Avocado Dressing (page 40) Crawfish Salad with Spicy Cajun Remoulade (page 106) Cheese Tortellini Salad with Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette (page 172) Memphis Mustard Cole Slaw (page 223)