Category — Books

Where has January gone? I can’t believe it’s already the last day of the month, which means it’s already time for me to write about another book as part of The Kitchen Reader group! This month Sarah of Simply Cooked chose Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Restaurant Reviews, Articles, Memoir, Fiction, and More… by Dianne Jacob.

I have two confessions to make: first, I haven’t completely finished reading the book yet, but I am still going to share my impressions and thoughts with you.

Second, I only paid attention to the first part of the title when I requested and then picked up the book from the library, and when I picked it up to start reading it I still thought it was going to be the memoirs of a food writer, not an instruction manual for aspiring food writers.

Despite my disappointment at discovering it was, in fact, a guidebook, I have found the book interesting and very accessible—it truly would be a helpful read for anyone at any phase of becoming a food writer. Although I am not finding it extremely useful to me right now because I’ve been so sporadic with my own writing and am not willing to put the time into trying out the writing exercises or checking out all of the other resources and examples the author points to, I could see how owning this book and having it on my shelf as a resource would be a good idea. I think it would make a great gift for anyone you know who aspires to write for food magazines, is or wants to become a food blogger, or is working on putting together a cookbook.

It would probably be even more helpful if you got them the newest edition (2010), rather than the 2005 edition I unknowingly got from the library! I actually didn’t realize until I read Jill’s post about the book that I was reading an old version, although I had noticed (as she did) that the content felt a little bit outdated and I was surprised not to see a specific section about food blogging (one does exist in the latest edition). Oops!

Despite reading the old edition, and finding out that it does not contain a story as I had hoped, I’m still enjoying this book enough to recommend it. I hope that as I get further along (and maybe even splurge and pick up the newest edition for my very own) that I will pick up some valuable pointers that I can implement to improve my own writing here on this blog!

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As I posted on Facebook and Twitter this evening, tonight I cooked a wholesome dinner for the second night in a row, and I feel as if I have woken up from a long winter’s nap!

I didn’t exactly resort to fast food or frozen TV dinners in December, but I definitely haven’t been cooking wholesome meals and trying out new recipes the way I enjoy. I wouldn’t trade my time spent making traditional holiday treats or visiting friends and family for anything, but I am glad to settle back in to a more healthy routine now that the new year is here.

Last night I made winter squash stew, a.k.a. butternut squash soup, and man, was it delicious! It had been a long time since I made that recipe and I already can’t wait to make it again.

Tonight I tried a recipe from Quinoa 365 by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming. I’ve mentioned this book before, when I made my chocolate birthday cake, but that was before I actually owned the book.

I got it for Christmas (thanks, Mom!) and so now I not only own it, but I have at least 10 pages flagged already with recipes I intend to try in the next 2-3 weeks. Tonight’s dinner was Thai Cashew Chicken and Broccoli on Quinoa. As far as a quinoa recipe goes, it wasn’t too innovative—basically it was an Asian dish served on quinoa instead of rice—but it was delicious, easy to make, and got me excited about quinoa (and cooking in general) again!

Since I don’t have the publisher’s permission, I won’t share the recipe here, but I encourage you to get this book, whether from a bookstore or from the library, and try it out. My only note was that I’d like to try the recipe with cashew butter instead of peanut butter—it doesn’t use much, only 3 Tbsp, but since the cashews were just sprinkled on top, the chicken had more of a peanut-y flavor than a cashew one, although it was certainly yummy so I can’t complain!

One other note about this recipe: it calls for oyster sauce, which I have never used before. According to Wikipedia, oyster sauce describes a number of different sauces, all made by cooking oysters. Sadly on my first attempt to find it in a regular grocery store, all I found was oyster-flavored sauce, which was really just fish sauce, and was loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, so I decided to pass on that. Luckily I found real oyster sauce (sans the corn syrup!) at Whole Foods, and since the recipe only called for 2 Tbsp, I have plenty left for trying this recipe or some variation again.

I think next time I might swap in shrimp for chicken, and I definitely plan to try it with long slices of zucchini instead of broccoli for a friend who is not a broccoli fan. Luckily my husband, who is also not a broccoli fan, happily ate it up in this dish!

I have a feeling this is the first of many blog posts I will be writing about my experiences with this cookbook. I’m sorry not to be able to share the exact recipes, but check out the authors’ Quinoa 365 website for a few freebies they have posted there, and if you get the book, be sure to let me know which recipes you try and enjoy! I’m all revved up and ready to try a lot of new healthy recipes to get our year off to a great start!

What has you jazzed about the new year? Are you feeling inspired and motivated? Leave me a comment and share!

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It’s time for this month’s Kitchen Reader book review! This month the selection was made by Stacy of Little Blue Hen. She chose Heat (An Amateur’s Adventure as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany), so I got it from the library and spent the past week reading it.

For anyone who knows me well, that will seem like a really long time to spend on one book, especially when it was a holiday week when air travel was involved. Unfortunately, though, that is how long it took me to make it through.

Overall I can say I enjoyed the book, but it wasn’t as much fun as I expected. The premise is very cool: Bill Buford, a writer and former editor of The New Yorker, basically put his real life on hold to spend many months literally slaving away in the kitchen of Babbo, one of Mario Batali’s famous restaurants in New York, as well as traipsing through Italy on multiple trips, spending months at a time learning from various restaurant owners and a butcher. This is his memoir about the experience, and I thought it would be enthralling to learn about the goings-on behind-the-scenes in a New York restaurant and to find out what he learned in Italy, but the pace was a little slow, and I have to admit, the sections that take place in Italy were my least favorite!

I did enjoy getting a glimpse into the (crazy) personality of the famous chef Mario Batali, and finding out more about how a restaurant works. It had never really occurred to me before that my slice of lasagna was not assembled and cooked right when I ordered it (although logically, of course, I understand it’s not…I’ve made lasagna and it takes a while!) so to read about the author’s experience working his way up from prep work during the day to plating pasta during the evening service was interesting and entertaining. I think I had hoped to glean a little bit of cooking wisdom or practical information I might use, since I adore Italian food, but mostly what stuck with me was the intense nature of working in the kitchen at a restaurant, and the quirky and eccentric personalities that seem necessary to survive in it!

I would recommend this book, but it might be one you put down and pick back up here and there, reading a section at a time, or even skip around and try to just hit the parts that take place in New York, if you are like me and find that to be the most enjoyable.

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This was my first month participating with the group on The Kitchen Reader, and the book for the month was Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater by Matthew Amster-Burton.

The entire premise of this book amused and interested me from the start. Not having children yet myself, I have often wondered, as the author did when he found out his wife was pregnant, if having children would mean a major change in what foods we would eat at my house, and if I will someday be begging my children to try something other than hot dogs and pizza. I am determined to have adventurous food-loving children who will be introduced to all sorts of wonderful, healthy foods, and will therefore frequently request things I had never heard of as a child, like hummus, kale, or sushi, but am daunted by all of the picky-eating children I have encountered or heard stories about, and wonder what reality has in store.

In addition to the topic, the tone of this book is what really makes it fun—it reads like, well, a blog! It’s like talking to and hearing stories from some guy you know who happens to love food and started out as clueless as the next person about what to feed a child. He also includes recipes of varying complexities and flavors—bonus!

As Matthew says in the introduction, there are a lot of books out there about feeding children, but few that are “stories about real parents and real kids learning about food together—making discoveries, making mistakes, making cookies.” So he wrote one! And I, for one, am glad he did. I just hope that when it’s my turn to have this experience, I will find that he was right: “If you love to eat, a new baby presents an opportunity to have more fun with food than ever before in your life.” Granted, the next sentence is “And, yes, more frustration,” but hey, at least after reading this book I am a bit more prepared!

I heartily recommend this book for a good laugh and a fun perspective on feeding children, but don’t just take my word for it! Check out what the other members of The Kitchen Reader thought, or better yet, visit the Hungry Monkey website and download the first three chapters and see for yourself.

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