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Books: CookBooks: Food and Wine Magazine
Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Foodby Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson List Price: $16.00 Available from Amazon $10.40 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page From School Library Journal Grade 7 Up An important addition to most libraries. Useful for health classes and nutrition units, it will also be an eye-opener for general readers who regularly indulge at the Golden Arches. An adaptation of Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (Houghton, 2001), Chew on This covers the history of the fast-food industry and delves into the agribusiness and animal husbandry methods that support it. From the 37-day life of the pre-McNugget chicken to the appallingly inhumane conditions of slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants, the author lays out the gruesome details behind the tasty burgers and sandwiches. Equally disturbing is his revelation of the way that the fast-food giants have studied childhood behavior and geared their commercials and free toy inclusions to hook the youngest consumers. The text is written in a lively, lay-out-the-facts manner. Occasional photographs add bits of visual interest, but the emphasis here is on the truth about soda pop and obesity, fries and lies. Schlosser is a crusader writing with an obviously strong purpose. While at times veering toward the inflammatory edge, he backs up and documents all of his points, ensuring that his insights will incite. Those seeking a book to balance this one should consider Tracy Brown Collins's Fast Food (Gale, 2004), a collection of 10 essays representing varied opinions about different aspects of this industry. Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* Gr. 6-9. Including passages from Schlosser's best-selling adult book Fast Food Nation (2001) and other writings, the authors dish up a somewhat-less-stomach-churning look at the fast-food industry's growth, practices, and effects on public health. Folding in original interviews, recent statistics, and published research, along with such spicy taglines as "The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross," they trace the hamburger's early years and the evolution of the McDonald's Corporation's revolutionary Speedee Service System. They follow with vivid tours through feedlots, abattoirs, and a chicken-processing plant to explore how fast food has achieved spectacular international success, particularly among an increasingly obese youth market, then round off with glimpses of Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard initiative and other alternatives less likely to lead to gastric bypass surgery. Readers may not lose their appetites for McFood from this compelling study, but they will definitely come away less eager to get a McJob and more aware of the diet's attendant McMedical problems. Extensive endnotes, occasional photos. John Peters Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Lossby Natalia Rose List Price: $24.95 Available from Amazon $16.47 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description A top nutritionist provides her simple, proven five-level diet plan to safely make the transition to eating raw foods, and to detoxify and achieve- a perfect body no matter how you eat now. About The Author Well-known for her highly effective, personalized diets, certified clinical nutritionist Natalia Rose works with some of the world's most body-conscious men and women, including models, actors, and media personalities. She is the nutrition director for The FrÉdÉric Fekkai Spa. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children. |
The Fat Flush Foods : The World's Best Foods, Seasonings, and Supplements to Flush the Fat From Every Bodyby Ann Louise Gittleman List Price: $10.95 Available from Amazon $8.43 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description The Fat Flush Foods: The World's Best Foods, Seasonings, and Supplements to Flush the Fat From Every Body Everything you need to know about the top fifty Fat Flushing foods The New York Times bestselling The Fat Flush Plan is helping millions lose weight, cleanse their bodies, and lead healthier lives by eating foods that flush away fat while building vitality and strength. Now The Fat Flush Foods highlights the "super" foods, herbs, spices, and supplements that help you speed up fat loss and reap maximum health benefits. The Fat Flush Foods features: The Top 50 Super Foods that burn fat, boost your metabolism, and detoxify your body while controlling cholesterol and blood sugar levels The best thermogenic culinary herbs and spices-including ginger, cayenne, mustards, anise, fennel, and cinnamon The latest research on the antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties of these foods Tips that make fat flushing easy, economical, and delicious Back Cover Copy Everything you need to know about the top fifty Fat Flushing foods The New York Times bestselling The Fat Flush Plan is helping millions lose weight, cleanse their bodies, and lead healthier lives by eating foods that flush away fat while building vitality and strength. Now The Fat Flush Foods highlights the "super" foods, herbs, spices, and supplements that help you speed up fat loss and reap maximum health benefits. The Fat Flush Foods features:
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Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseballby Molly O'Neill List Price: $25.00 Available from Amazon $16.50 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Former columnist for the New York Times and author of The New York Cookbook, O'Neill de-emphasizes the cooking element here in favor of cozy family gatherings around baseball games. Her memoir begins even before the courtship of her parents, minor leaguer "Chick" O'Neill and six-foot, convent-educated "Bootsie" Gwinn, in Columbus, Ohio, in 1945, and extends to younger brother Paul O'Neill's retirement as right-fielder for the Yankees in 2001. O'Neill meanders lovingly through years growing up as the eldest to five brothers who channeled their adolescent hormones into Little League. O'Neill records her first forays into cooking inspired by an Ohio Power and Electric Co. demonstration given for her Brownie troop; her brothers worshipped her for making dishes from Spam and processed cheese. In college, she secured jobs as a cook and took over the kitchen at Ciro's in Boston by 1979. Her cooking segued into writing, first for the Globe, then New York Newsday. By the time she became a restaurant critic for the Times in the early 1990s, younger brother Paul had been traded to the Yankees, bringing the whole unwieldy family to feast in New York. O'Neill charts a long-winded, pleasantly nostalgic trip. B&w photos. (May) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Former New York Yankee outfielder Paul O'Neill's big sister is definitely a writer: this reads like shards of family stories, each one burnished to a deep shine of memory and longing. It's not a family bio, exactly; although she writes of her parents and five younger brothers, each looms large and fades. She writes about being female and tall in her childhood home in Ohio; about what made her parents who they were; about each of the boys, especially golden-haired baby Paulie. She writes, with offhand elegance and bone-deep humor, about the food of the Midwest, her mother's food, and the food she learned to cook later, in Provincetown and in Paris. Although it starts rather dreamily and slowly, the book's final chapters, chronicling more recent times--with her as the food writer for the New York Times and Paul as the baseball warrior for the New York Yankees--are like listening to a friend you want to know better reminisce about her incredibly engaging and engaged life. Anyone interested in any of the words of the subtitle will find much to enjoy. GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matterby Peter Singer and Jim Mason List Price: $25.95 Available from Amazon $16.35 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Ethicist Singer and co-author Mason (Animal Factories) document corporate deception, widespread waste and desensitization to inhumane practices in this consideration of ethical eating. The authors examine three families' grocery-buying habits and the motivations behind those choices. One woman says she's "absorbed in my life and my familyand I don't think very much about the welfare of the meat I'm eating," while a wealthier husband and wife mull the virtues of "triple certified" coffee, buying local and avoiding chocolate harvested by child slave labor, though "no one seems to be pondering that as they eat." In investigating food production conditions, the authors' first-hand experiences alternate between horror and comedy, from slaughterhouses to artificial turkey-insemination ("the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work"). This sometimes-graphic exposé is not myopic: profitability and animal welfare are given equal consideration, though the reader finishes the book agreeing with the authors' conclusion that "America's food industry seeks to keep Americans in the dark about the ethical components of their food choices." A no-holds-barred treatise on ethical consumption, this is an important read for those concerned with the long, frightening trip between farm and plate. Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Less concerned with what people choose to eat per se, Singer and Mason make a case for how people's everyday food choices affect others' lives. They describe in vivid detail how applying industrial processing principles to animal husbandry has led to cheap foods whose cost savings occur at the expense of animals raised for profit and for product. Using Wal-Mart as an example, they lay out how huge retailers wield enormous power over prices and compel those far up the chain of food production and distribution to make unhelpful decisions. They hold up for admiration a Kansas family that has turned vegan so as not to participate in this particular destructive cycle of animal and human exploitation. They also thoughtfully and critically examine the ethical pros and cons of eating meat in any form. Urban dwellers far removed from the source of the foods they eat will find Singer and Mason's descriptions of food production more disturbing and violent than the quiet, attractive, plastic-wrapped displays in the local supermarket's pristine meat case. Mark Knoblauch Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
The Best American Essays 2005 (The Best American Series )by Susan Orlean and Robert Atwan List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $10.78 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Author and New Yorker staff writer Orlean (The Orchid Thief) says in her introduction that the best essays are not mere records of a subject but are, rather, extraordinary accounts that "reflect the thinking and emotions of the writer." While many (perhaps too many) of the 25 essays here come from the New Yorker, small magazines are represented, and the writing is anything but conventional. Each work pulls the reader deep into the author's world; each is a remarkable first-person account of a life. Only one, Mark Greif's sharp rant "Against Exercise," deviates from this form. Food is a recurring theme. E.J. Levy remembers his mother by way of the romantic Julia Child meals she prepared while he was growing up. David Foster Wallace details everything the reader could possibly want to know about the lobster. Other topics vary from Cathleen Schine's moving discussion of attempting to save her dangerous and self-destructive dog to David Sedaris's humorous tribute to his boyfriend, "Old Faithful." Whatever the topic, this popular series continues to delight and surprise, and per Orlean's definition of an excellent essay, provides a singular glimpse into the authors' lives. (Oct. 5) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Booklist The attractions of this distinguished annual collection are many. There's the ah-ha pleasure of recognizing the guest editor as an exemplary essayist, the quick scan to ascertain how many contributors' names are familiar and how many are new, and the pep-rally aspect of embracing a literary form cherished by many for its intimacy, versatility, and provocation yet still viewed by others as a lesser endeavor than fiction or poetry. In marking the twentieth anniversary of the Best American Essays series, Atwan remembers that in the early days he felt the need to "boost the spirit of essayists," whereas now he can confidently assert that essays are on much firmer ground. Certainly Orlean had no trouble selecting 25 superlative essays that "take a small notion and find the universe inside it." Her choices include Jonathan Franzen on Peanuts; Mark Grief's welcome critique, "Against Exercise"; poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser on the repercussions of a murder; and Sam Pickering and Cathleen Schine pondering dogs. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. |
Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefsby Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman List Price: $24.95 Available from Amazon $15.72 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Food is fast becoming entertainment, so it's only natural that it should follow in the footsteps of sports and show business and offer up a collection of bloopers. Literary agent Witherspoon and food writer Friedman corralled 40 gastronomic heavyweights to share their versions of dinners gone wrong. The highlight is, unsurprisingly, the piece by chef and bestselling author Anthony Bourdain. His "New Year's Meltdown" is a case study in what happens when you don't plan (Bourdain admits, "Nobody likes a 'learning experience'—translating as it does to 'a total [a**-f******]'—but I learned"). Mario Batali's "The Last Straw," though not relating a culinary catastrophe per se, is runnerup: Batali was in culinary school when he clashed with a chef; in a spectacular crescendo, the chef hurled a pan of risotto at the young student, but revenge was sweet. But for every fantastic screwup, there's a dud. The translated pieces (such as the one by Spanish titan Ferrán Adrià) fail to captivate, and others, like Jimmy Bradley's tale about how he got drunk on the job to spite his boss, are neither entertaining nor instructive. Still, this collection happily reminds us that even big shots have off days. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product Review Russ Parsons Los Angeles Times : "As in every other profession, chefs love their war stories. Finally someone had the good sense to collect some of the best in "Don't Try This at Home"If you liked "Kitchen Confidential" for its frank behind-the-scenes glimpses of kitchen life (rather than the profanity and the heroin), you'll love this book." Library Journal : "A fantastic collection of personal stories that depict these great chefs as real people. Readers are certain to learn valuable culinary lessons from chefs' mistakes and their various and creatively solved dilemmas. This book is sure to be enjoyed by culinary fans across the board." |
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchenby Harold McGee List Price: $40.00 Available from Amazon $25.20 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Product Review A classic tome of gastronomic science and lore, On Food and Cooking delivers an erudite discussion of table ingredients and their interactions with our bodies. Following the historical, literary, scientific and practical treatment of foodstuffs from dairy to meat to vegetables, McGee explains the nature of digestion and hunger before tackling basic ingredient components, cooking methods and utensils. He explains what happens when food spoils, why eggs are so nutritious and how alcohol makes us drunk. As fascinating as it is comprehensive, this is as practical, interesting and necessary for the cook as for the scholar. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Before antioxidants, extra-virgin olive oil and supermarket sushi commanded public obsession, the first edition of this book swept readers and cooks into the everyday magic of the kitchen: it became an overnight classic. Now, 20 years later, McGee has taken his slightly outdated volume and turned it into a stunning masterpiece that combines science, linguistics, history, poetry and, of course, gastronomy. He dances from the spicy flavor of Hawaiian seaweed to the scientific method of creating no-stir peanut butter, quoting Chinese poet Shu Xi and biblical proverbs along the way. McGee's conversational style—rich with exclamation points and everyday examples—allows him to explain complex chemical reactions, like caramelization, without dumbing them down. His book will also be hailed as groundbreaking in its breakdown of taste and flavor. Though several cookbooks have begun to answer the questions of why certain foods go well together, McGee draws on recent agricultural research, neuroscience Reviews and chemical publications to chart the different flavor chemicals in herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables. Odd synergies appear, like the creation of fruity esters in dry-cured ham—the same that occur naturally in melons! McGee also corrects the European bias of the first edition, moving beyond the Mediterranean to discuss the foods of Asia and Mexico. Almost every single page of this edition has been rewritten, but the book retains the same light touch as the original. McGee has successfully revised the bible of food science—and produced a fascinating, charming text. Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
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