Life is a Banquet
Dec. 22nd, 2006 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookHoliday packages are all sent. I got up with the sun yesterday and stumbled to the post office, somehow early enough to be the first person in line, waiting in the P.O. box lobby before the package desk cracked the gate. I read a book for 20 or so minutes, and then whoosh! Priority mail, and I'm outta there. A nice surprise.
A not-so-nice surprise was the unexpected rain I walked into leaving the post office for my fifteen-block walk home. But good luck is relative - the skies didn't open while I was trying to hump all the boxes, so I count myself lucky.
I also calorie-bombed our household yesterday by making chocolate zuccini bread, one loaf of which I hurriedly decided we need to give away, stat, to our landladies. This stuff is just plain evil. Especially smeared with a little creme fraiche. Evil.
By the way, the book I was reading in the post office was John Thorne's Simple Cooking. I hadn't looked at this book in awhile, and re-reading it reminded me, in a huge nostalgic rush, what it felt like to discover Thorne's food writing, which is just the way I like it - chatty, sensual, no-nonsense. Marion Cunnigham is another favorite of mine, and she has a similiar style. Ditto Jan and Michael Stern, and from that you can probably guess a lineup of my favorite cookbooks for American food - Square Meals, The Breakfast Book, The Supper Book. (For Chinese cookbooks, Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking is hands-down the best, but Mai Leung's The Classic Chinese Cookbook is also solid. Both have that very personal, chatty style.)
Now, here's the thing - most male food writers I've read (a small number, but a representative sample) talk about cooking as science, as if the study of cooking and the rotation of planetary spheres were all the same thing. (There are very slight peeks of this in Thorne's writing too, which is what makes me think it's a male thing, but lesser than most.) Thorne's universal principle is more about taste, and simplifying the process of getting it - soups with no stock, no-fuss cheesecakes, pasta and beans. Easy, simple, pure. Looking at this book again, I suddenly realized how and why some of the odder items in my pantry got there - I'd been inspired, obviously, by a recipe and then gotten distracted, but the ingredients linger, waiting...
The holidays do bring out the shameless foodie in me. I love winter cooking, winter baking. I suppose I'll just have to learn to love habitually taking off the extra pounds I put on in the spring.
A not-so-nice surprise was the unexpected rain I walked into leaving the post office for my fifteen-block walk home. But good luck is relative - the skies didn't open while I was trying to hump all the boxes, so I count myself lucky.
I also calorie-bombed our household yesterday by making chocolate zuccini bread, one loaf of which I hurriedly decided we need to give away, stat, to our landladies. This stuff is just plain evil. Especially smeared with a little creme fraiche. Evil.
By the way, the book I was reading in the post office was John Thorne's Simple Cooking. I hadn't looked at this book in awhile, and re-reading it reminded me, in a huge nostalgic rush, what it felt like to discover Thorne's food writing, which is just the way I like it - chatty, sensual, no-nonsense. Marion Cunnigham is another favorite of mine, and she has a similiar style. Ditto Jan and Michael Stern, and from that you can probably guess a lineup of my favorite cookbooks for American food - Square Meals, The Breakfast Book, The Supper Book. (For Chinese cookbooks, Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking is hands-down the best, but Mai Leung's The Classic Chinese Cookbook is also solid. Both have that very personal, chatty style.)
Now, here's the thing - most male food writers I've read (a small number, but a representative sample) talk about cooking as science, as if the study of cooking and the rotation of planetary spheres were all the same thing. (There are very slight peeks of this in Thorne's writing too, which is what makes me think it's a male thing, but lesser than most.) Thorne's universal principle is more about taste, and simplifying the process of getting it - soups with no stock, no-fuss cheesecakes, pasta and beans. Easy, simple, pure. Looking at this book again, I suddenly realized how and why some of the odder items in my pantry got there - I'd been inspired, obviously, by a recipe and then gotten distracted, but the ingredients linger, waiting...
The holidays do bring out the shameless foodie in me. I love winter cooking, winter baking. I suppose I'll just have to learn to love habitually taking off the extra pounds I put on in the spring.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 07:30 pm (UTC)That book and several others by them are one of my great pleasures.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 07:35 pm (UTC)I dearly love the "theme" chapters in Square Meals. The ladies' lunch and the wartime cooking. Really made me realize how much of my mother's cooking was influenced by the era they're writing about, especially the wartime frugality.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 07:41 pm (UTC)Roadfood : the coast-to-coast guide to 500 of the best barbecue joints, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, highway diners, and much, much more
Stern, Jane.
First published in 1977, the original Roadfood became an instant classic. James Beard said, "This is a book that you should carry with you, no matter where you are going in these United States. It's a treasure house of information." Now this indispensable guide is back, in an even bigger and better edition, covering 500 of the country's best local eateries from Maine to California. With more than 250 completely new listings and thorough updates of old favorites, the new Roadfood offers an extended tour of the most affordable, most enjoyable dining options along America's highways and back roads. Filled with enticing alternatives for chain-weary-travelers, Roadfood provides descriptions of and directions to (complete with regional maps) the best lobster shacks on the East Coast; the ultimate barbecue joints down South; the most indulgent steak houses in the Midwest; and dozens of top-notch diners, hotdog stands, ice-cream parlors, and uniquely regional finds in between. Each entry delves into the folkways of a restaurant's locale as well as the dining experience itself, and each is written in the Sterns' entertaining and colorful style. A cornucopia for road warriors and armchair epicures alike, Roadfood is a road map to some of the tastiest treasures in the United States. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
as is American Gourmet :
Memories flood the brain. Long-ago names pique interest. Forgotten foods spark taste sensations. What pop sociojournalists Jane and Michael Stern chronicle is how Americans jumped from meat and potatoes to the freshest of cuisines, specifically the period from 1947 to 1971--after World War II to the establishment of Alice Waters' Chez Panisse. Always entertaining, they conjure up remembrances of foodstuffs and trends past: the advent of the word gourmet, travel's influence upon eating habits, TV chefs, high-class restaurants, food as aphrodisiac, and home entertaining. Reading the documentation is fun and often educational; adding practicality to the frolic are the over 100 recipes, representing many fads that have survived the gourmet revolt, including beef tartare, pate, Caesar salad, fondues, even noodle doodle and cheese.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 07:45 pm (UTC)I really must order these now. I'd been meaning to track down Road Food, but I'm really intrigued by American Gourmet, as the whole food history thing really lights my fire. Some of my favorite nonfiction books of the last couple years have been on that topic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 11:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 07:52 pm (UTC)You should read Nigel Slater's books, particularly Real Food and Real Cooking. He is a complete hedonist/sensualist about food and his books are the diametric opposite to the "cooking as science" guys (although Alton Brown is entertaining). And even though she's overexposed (in more ways than one), everyone forgets that Nigella Lawson started out as a food writer, and her first couple of books are wonderful and shrewd in a really great way. Actually, I'm partial to British and Australian food writers in general (all totally straighforward yet vivid), and their food magazines (Olive and Delicious in particular) make their American counterparts seem both overly fussy and self-importantly trendy (Saveur) in the extreme.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 08:04 pm (UTC)I actually have a huge shelf of cookery books. I only listed a few of my favorites because I went down a list of everything I have, it'd get kind of embarrassing. I'm the kind of person who reads cookbooks for pleasure, including ye olde used copies of Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and church potlock pamphlets. My mum-in-law recently handed down to me the granny's copy of Mrs. Beeton's, and I just about fell over squeeing.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 08:04 pm (UTC)