The Chinese Cookbook Project VII: Not a Cookbook, But…

A minority of the books I am gathering in my Chinese cookbook collection are not actually cookbooks, but touch on some aspect of Chinese food culture. I have historical treatises, translations of old Chinese works on the subject, books about learning to read Chinese characters that involve food, and pictorial reference works on ingredients and […]

Gastronomica and Julia

Being such a culinary nerd, I have read and subscribed to a lot of cooking magazines over the years. In point of fact, I have several large file boxes filled with back issues of Fine Cooking, Cook’s Illustrated, Chile Pepper, Eating Well, Culinary Trends, Food & Wine, and Bon Appetit sitting around in the spare […]

The Locavore’s Bookshelf III: Coming Home To Eat

Gary Paul Nabhan writes in the poetic phrases of a prophet, his words ringing with eloquent truth as he weaves myriad different threads of fact, memory, experience, statistic and dream into a complex narrative that is filled with the wild and domesticated flavors of the Sonoran desert. Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics […]

The Locavore’s Bookshelf II: Eat Here

I wonder if anyone could possibly read Brian Halweil’s Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket and fail to be inspired to do something, anything, in order to help create a grassroots local food movement in their own hometown. He sure got me fired up, in large part because while the book is […]

The Locavore’s Bookshelf: This Organic Life

Joan Dye Gussow’s book, This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader is one of those that readers either love or hate. If you want an organized instruction manual on how to grow all of your own food, you will hate it. If you like amusing memoirs which are also packed with useful information on […]