Adventures in Wine takes you to the wine country like no other wine book: behind the scenes, into the vineyards and cellars, with some of the world's finest wine writers. Here the emphasis is not on the wine - though it's always present - but on the richly textured tapestry that wine has woven into our world for centuries. Each story is a personal exploration of a place on earth that is fortunate enough to be called wine country. Yes, you'll visit Napa and Provence and Tuscany, but also Greece a...
"For M.F.K. Fisher, the enjoyment of food and wine were inextricably linked. As the greatest female food writer of the 20th century, her dozens of books and essays are bursting with mindful observations about eating with gusto and the distinctive pleasure that comes from nourishing yourself and others. Thus, it's not surprising that most of her expansive body of work contains many references to wine. But in this book, wine is the central character. The anthology spans her legendary writing caree...
The Physiology of Taste (Vintage Classics)
by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
A book without precedent, skirting the line between recipe-book, memoir, history and philosophy, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste is edited with an introduction by Anne Drayton in Penguin Classics. Brillat-Savarin's unique, exuberant collection of dishes, experiences, reflections, history and philosophy raised gastronomy to an art form. First published in France in 1825, this remarkable book reflected a new era in French cuisine: the advent of the restaurant, which gave t...
Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans-all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world? A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleut...
This entertaining book takes us on a fascinating exploration of the world of food. Take a journey with the dynamic father and daughter duo, geographer Gary Fuller and chef Tracy Reddekopp, as they travel around the globe to trace the enduring links of geography and food. Food and its preparation and enjoyment define the major cultural regions of the world and how these regions have changed over time. The authors believe that the peoples of the world have begun to reunite after millennia of dispe...
A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband
by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles Lecron
Food is a basic requirement of daily life, more essential and (some would say) more comforting than religion, love, or sex. The emotional and social resonances connected with food have long been explored by writers in novels and poetry, drama and biography, diaries and letters, and this anthology brings together a splendid cornucopia of comment and opinion. Attitudes to food are as various as food itself: Montaigne adored fish but disliked fruit and salad, while the German philosopher Kant love...
Following the potato from its early cultivation in 16th-century South America to its 20th-century marriage to battered fish, this social history covers developments in agriculture, class, diet, politics, economics, and technology. For two centuries after the potato's arrival in Europe it was regarded as poison fit only for pigs. Yet, the author suggests, the potato's impact on world history became as striking as that of the railway or the car. The text draws on personal diaries, chronicles, news...
Oenophiles know that Matt Kramer is one of the world's most distinguished and insightful writers on wine. Kramer has written about the subject for 32 years and his full-page column in "Wine Spectator" has appeared in every issue for the last 14 years. The time is ripe for a retrospective and here it is, covering topics from terroir to glassware to the various grapes and regions and personalities. Most of the essays are drawn from his work in "Wine Spectator" and "The New York Sun", along with ex...
'Charming, important . . . a journey of discovery' Telegraph'Compelling, vivid . . . Slow Rise will be welcomed by the new bread geeks' SpectatorOver the course of a year, Robert Penn learns how to plant, harvest, thresh and mill his own wheat, in order to bake bread for his family. In returning to this pre-industrial practice, he tells the fascinating story of our relationship with bread: from the domestication of wheat in the Fertile Crescent at the dawn of civilization, to the rise of mass-pr...
The founder of Commonweal discusses the problem of isolation and disconnection in American society and sets forth her vision of how life should be lived, drawing on her work and her own experience with a life-threatening disease.