Book Review: Climbing The Mango Trees

As I mentioned long ago, Madhur Jaffrey is the reason I first tasted Indian food. I had checked her cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking out of the library, and enchanted by her descriptions of Indian food, got up the nerve to cook rogan josht. That one dish from that book started me on the […]

Women, Memories and Food: A Trio of Book Reviews

After reading and enjoying Shoba Narayan’s Monsoon Diary: A Memoir With Recipes, I remember thinking to myself that I wished that there were more books like it out there. Of course, there are countless culinary memoirs out there, from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential to Ruth Reichel’s epic trilogy chronicling her rise as a shining star […]

The Locavore’s Bookshelf: Pasture Perfect

Jo Robinson is the driving force behind the website www.eatwild.com, a clearinghouse for information on the health benefits of pasture-based farming which includes a comprehensive, state-by-state directory of sources for pasture-raised meats, eggs and dairy products. For those who are not net saavy, she also happened to write this concise book, Pasture Perfect: The Far-Reaching […]

The Locavore’s Bookshelf: Real Food

Reading Nina Planck’s Real Food: What to Eat and Why was an exercise in both elation and frustration. On the one hand, I was thrilled to read my own intuitive (and educated) trust in whole, natural foods ably articulated by a facile writer who makes a good case that a lot of conventional nutritional wisdom […]

The Locavore’s Bookshelf: Chew On This

Eric Schlosser’s excellent book, Fast Food Nation is one of those works that is destined to become a classic work of non-fiction; the clarity of his prose and his arguments about the state of the US’s food culture, fat intake and fast food obsession ensure that anyone who reads the book -will- sit up and […]