Entries tagged with 'books'
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Do Not Eat! is a collection of eating-themed illustrations of monsters both cute and strange created by Andrew Bell, such as this sad sausage and angry Hamburger Helper. The carrot skeleton unfortunately didn't make it to the book on time, but it would've fit in too. See more of Bell's illustrations at Creatures In My Head. [via Notcot]...
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Michael Ruhlman spotlights four food lit keepers on shelves right now. Here are our notes on his notes. The Pedant in the Kitchen (Julian Barnes): Sometimes whiney kitchen passages, but Barnes is on fire when writing about other writers writing about food. Service Included (Phoebe Damrosch): A Per Se waitress who's not as snarky as you'd think, especially for someone who didn't tell the staff she was scribing notes behind their backs. Too much of the story, though, revolves around her saucy relationship with Andre, a Per Se sommelier. The two eventually move in together. (Sau-cy!) An Edge in the Kitchen: How to Buy Them, Keep Them Razor Sharp and Use Them Like a Pro (Chad Ward): It's an...
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The above illustration comes from a 1944 pamphlet by Otto F. Fleiss titled White Art in the Meat Food Business: A Practical Handbook for Butcher, Pork Stores, Restaurants, Hotels and Delicatessens on How to Make Lasting and Transferable White Art Decorations out of Bacon Fat Back for Window Displays, Ornaments on Meat Food Cold Buffets and for Exhibits and Advertising Purposes. Enrich yourself with Personal Knowledge. [via Boing Boing]...
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The New Yorker drops a lengthy and sobering piece this week that looks at the depressing state of the world's food-supply system as detailed in four "second-wave" food-politics books. Where "first wave" books (such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation) leave off at the ill effects of junk food, the new crop of books looks at how "the entire system of Western food production is in need of radical change."...
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I love cornbread. When I'm out for lunch or dinner somewhere and it on the menu or—better yet—on the plate as an unexpected side, my meal's pretty much made. My only problem then is, do I greedily eat it right away or wait till I'm done with everything else so as to hold on to the anticipation of the thick, crumbly, savory golden square? I've tried to make it at home, but it never comes out as good as the versions made professionally. And, I've got a small confession to make, too: All the super from-scratch versions I've made at home have never lived up to that damn light-blue-and-white Jiffy box mix. Why is that? What am I doing wrong?...
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Those of you interested in the book biz may have read about a new venture that aims to rejigger how authors are paid, creating a system that may ultimately benefit both authors and publishers. Authors typically get advances, or money up front from the publisher. Often times, that's all the money an author sees from a book. That's because a book has to "earn out" the advance before an author can start sharing in the royalties. So if a writer gets, say, a $60,000 advance and the sale of each book counts toward, oh, $3 of that $60,000, the book has to sell 20,000 copies before the publisher recoups the advance and starts paying out royalties. Sadly, a lot of...
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This week's Cook the Book featured cookbook is The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. Murphy's desserts are well known among New Yorkers, but even if you don't live in the Big Apple, you may have caught her on the Food Network, where she won the "Edible Ornaments" challenge toward the end of last year. Win 'The Sweet Melissa Baking Book' We'll be excerpting a recipe a day this week as part of our ongoing Cook the Book feature. The first of those will be up shortly, but for now it's time to let you in on how you can enter to win a copy of this book. Simply tell us your favorite dessert in the Comments section below....
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Occasionally on weekends, we give away a food-related book. This week, we've got a few copies of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles to give away. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee's obsessive look into all things having to do with Chinese food—from packaging to labor to human trafficking to, of course, the origin of the wise little cookie that comes at the end of a meal at most Chinese restaurants in the U.S. It's an entertaining read, full of great tidbits that will stick with you and bubble to the top of your brain each time you feast on Chinese food. (For a more in-depth take on it, you can check out what I wrote...
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I never gave much thought to Chinese food before moving away from the Midwest. Hot and sour soup, chop suey, sweet, sweet General Tso's chicken—all followed by a fortune cookie—well, isn't that just what folks ate in China? After landing on the East Coast, I was shocked to discover my beloved crab rangoon missing from the menus of Chinese restaurants here. "You do know those aren't authentically Chinese, don't you?" my girlfriend said after I had complained about the subject once too often. "Come on: cream cheese? Deep-fried in wonton skins? That's clearly American Chinese food." After the scales had fallen from my eyes, I wondered what else on the menus of typical U.S. Chinese restaurants was invented for American...
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The featured tome in this week's Cook the Book is one I've been looking forward to trying out since we got it in the office a few weeks ago. Panini Express: 70 Delicious Recipes Hot Off the Press, by Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman gave me an excuse to do something I've been thinking about for a while now—buy a panini press for the office and get to town making sandwiches for lunch. So for today and the rest of the week, we'll be excerpting one recipe from the book daily and bringing it to you as an overview of the book. Among the 70 sandwich recipes are some familiar panini and some unexpected ones. And they range from vegetarian...
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