Book Review: Monsoon Diary

Some prose is like poetry in its rhythym; words pattering like raindrops against a rooftop, liquid syllables dripping honey on the tongue and in the heart. Images arise from phrases, teasing the reader with haunting reminiscences so visceral that they might as well be their own. A gifted writer can deftly unfold sentences and engulf […]

Book Review: Curry

I started reading Lizzie Collingham’s book, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, last week, and finished it within a few days. It is a fascinating little book, filled with historical details and thought-provoking ideas, the most revolutionary of which is that curry, as a dish, has gone beyond its origin in India, and has […]

Barbara’s Cookbook Gift Guide

This post really isn’t self-serving. It is simply a response to reading the holiday cookbook gift guides in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. In perusing the professionals’ lists, I saw quite a bit of overlap, particularly between the Times and the Post–to the point that I wonder whether […]

Best Food Writing Anthologies And Blogs

So, of course, I had noticed these anthologies of the Best Food Writing of whatever year, edited by Holly Hugues, when they first appeared annually starting in 2000. But I hadn’t really read any of them until this May when I picked up the fifth anniversary edition, Best Food Writing 2004 while I was in […]

Book Review: Fashionable Food

I have never been one to mind fashion. When the preppy look was in at school, I was oblivious, and wore the wrong shoes, the wrong sweaters and the wrong jeans. I never wore a shirt with an alligator, and duck shoes (which I always thought were well-named as they made everyone look like they […]

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