Nineteen & The Nom Nom Shelf

This is the day (March 11) my beloved book blog "Blob" turns 19. We can't go out for drinks for another couple of years, but food figures prominently into our plans. As an appetizer, I'd like to take readers on a tour of my Nom Nom Shelf (pictured above) which is all my books about food.

From left to right:

The Betty Crocker Cookbook. 1978. Belonging to my mother, this is the first cookbook in which I ever took an interest. When I asked if I could keep it, she shrugged and said sure. Very much loved and duct-taped.

Favorite Foods From Das Edelweiss Restaurant. This is the last cookbook my mother ever bought. Das Edelweiss was a popular German restaurant in Warsaw, Missouri.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks Dinnertime - Ree Drummond. It's a lovely cookbook with beautifully photographed step-by-step recipes, but I tried the Panzanella recipe and it fell flat for me, so I haven't ventured into Pioneer Womanworld again.

Granny Pottymouth's Fast As F*ck Cookbook - Peggy Glenn. I learned to cook after I became an adult, so cooking and swearing have always been a team in my kitchen. My very favorite recipe in this book is "Chicken and Sweet Potatoes Get Married on a Ranch". An odd combination, but so easy and so delicious. 

The Wurst of Lucky Peach: A treasury of encased meat. - Chris Ying and the editors of Lucky Peach. How the sausage gets made all over the world. A fun read.

Fresh Off The Boat - Eddie Huang. I kept putting this book on the memoir and biography shelf, but it only felt right in with the other Nom Noms. Chalk it up to Eddie Huang's exuberance when he's writing about food.

The Tummy Trilogy - Calvin Trillin. Includes American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat and Third Helpings. I haven't read this yet, and I don't know why. As I understand it, Trillin was visiting diners, drive-ins and dives about 40 years before Guy Fieri. I've paged through The Tummy Trilogy and the writing looks luscious in all senses of the word.

Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner. This book also refused to live on the memoir and biography shelf. Zauner's evocative writing about shopping for and preparing and eating Korean food stirred up so many memories for me. I was nearly eating the pages.

Blood, Bones & Butter - Gabrielle Hamilton. I absolutely love chef origin stories; I don't know why I haven't devoured this book yet.

The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South - John T. Edge. I haven't read this book yet, either, but I'm sure I'm going to relish every word.

How to Cook a Wolf - M.F.K. Fisher. ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK. I wrote an ardent review of it back when Blob was still in diapers. 

Let's Eat Korean Food - Betsy O'Brien. A helpful guide about the development of Korean cuisine, how to dine without thoroughly disgracing yourself, and a deep dive into dishes for special days and province by province.

Taste - Stanley Tucci. A delectable memoir served up with wit and a significant dash of irony. I paired this book with a viewing of Tucci's film Big Night. Sometimes you can't tell the difference between your heart and your stomach. With Stanley Tucci, you don't have to.

Tender at the Bone - Ruth Reichl. This is the first memoir I ever read that centered around food, and I've been hooked ever since. Favorite bit: masking a wild party just seconds before parents walk in with the innocent smells of breakfast.

The Best American Food Writing 2018 - Ruth Reichl, editor. My favorite food essays from this anthology were about a journalist who made a trip to the Pioneer Woman's stompin' grounds, Pawhuska, Oklahoma and the NBA's secret sandwich addiction (it was peanut butter and jelly).

Generation Chef - Karen Stabiner. I haven't read this yet.

A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray - William C. Davis. The first half of the book is a scholarly examination of how important food was to soldiers during the American Civil War. Many units lacked personnel who had any idea of how to prepare food at all, which led to some wild improvisation. In the POW camps, where starvation reigned, creativity was taken to a whole new sometimes grisly level. The second half of the book is actual recipes from these years.

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home - Jessica Fechtor. I haven't read this yet.

Buttermilk Graffiti - Edward Lee. This book was so smart and thoughtful and intriguing. Edward Lee traveled to several cities around the United States where disparate communities lived near each other and investigated how their cuisines influenced each other. Interspersed with recipes. A feast for the mind.

American Cheese - Joe Berkowitz. I had so much fun reading this book! Berkowitz meets and falls in love with artisan cheese, and follows it everywhere. On a much smaller scale, I fell down my own cheesy rabbit hole, and this blog reflected that for several entries.  Highly recommended. 

Best Food Writing 2003 - Holly Hughes, editor. So many good essays, but my very favorite was "Cajun Pig Party".

Spam: A Biography - Carolyn Wyman. I'm not really a fan of it, but I enjoy reading about Spam. I love the layout of Wyman's book; it looks the way fanzines used to look. My favorite part was about the yearly Spam sculpting contests in Seattle. Sadly, these are a thing of the past.

Books on top:

Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain. One of my favorites across all genres. Audacious and hilarious. I really miss Anthony Bourdain.

The Joy of Cooking - Irma S. Rombauer. This is a facsimile of the first edition from 1931. The recipes, nearly a century old, seem antiquated, but they are short and easy to read. It would be fun if someone decided to take on the project of cooking all these dishes.

Not shown:

The Best American Food Writing 2021 - Gabrielle Hamilton, editor. I haven't read this collection yet.

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto - Joan Reardon, editor. Haven't read yet; looking forward to dipping in.

That tour of the Nom Nom shelf made me hungry. It's time to eat, then read. In that order.

Happy Birthday, Blob!

EDITED TO ADD: I found another food book hiding in my collection. It was tucked away in a nondescript section of nonfiction. I will put it with the other Nom Noms. I'm gonna need a bigger shelf.

Eating To Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them - Dan Saladino. Nonfiction. I got this book for my birthday, and haven't read it yet. Many books ask what the hell are we eating? Saladino turns the question on its head: What the hell are we NOT eating anymore? And why? The chapters are divided into food types (Wild, Cereal, Vegetable) followed with the featured foods and their locations. Saladino profiles the individuals around the world who are striving to bring the endangered foods back. He also discusses how the disappearance of these foods mean not only goodbye to tastes, smells, and methods of preparation, but also a red flag in regards to the health of the planet. I know I'm going to enjoy and learn while I'm reading this book.

Late September, 2021: Hold The Phone

 What I'm scratching my head about:

I recently overheard The Spawn tell someone that he was 6 months ahead on his blog posts. What the hell?! Here I am, always running behind on my posts like someone with a broken-off heel chasing the last bus. And he has SIX MONTHS of bloggy freshness and goodness in the can??? That's half a year!!!

So yeah, I know eavesdropping is a bad habit, but The Spawn knows my flaws as well as anyone, so I asked him:

Me: [skipping the niceties] How the hell did you get six months ahead with your blog?

Spawn: [startled] What? I'm not six months ahead.

Me: [feeling uncomfortable, wondering if I'm going to have to give up eavesdropping because my hearing has gone bad] Oh, I thought you said --

Spawn: I'm two months ahead.

Me: Oh! Two! Again, how the hell...?!

What I read:

September is nearly finished, and it looks like it's going to be just three books completed this month: 

The Andy Warhol Diaries - Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett, ed.

Who Was Frida Kahlo? - Sarah Fabiny

The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver

Two of the books (The Lacuna and The Andy Warhol Diaries) were pretty chunky, to explain my low book count for this month. I also blame my newfound ardent fangirling of The Office and some new involved reading projects. If I'm being absolutely forthcoming, I should also cite my time on the phone as a reason. However, I did hit my dinger on Goodreads! I pledged to read 60 books in 2021, and The Lacuna put me at 62. 

What I'm reading:

Warhol - Blake Gopnik. I'm starting to worry because I haven't picked this biography up in almost a week. Every page is so very dense with information. Andy is still in art school in Pittsburgh! I can't go on/I'll go on.

American Cheese - Joe Berkowitz. Enjoying it immensely, but slow going. This is because some tasty information will strike my fancy and I'll stop reading and start down as many rabbit holes (Hello, Phone!) as there are holes in aged Swiss. My latest detour was to Erika Kubick's mouthwatering blog Cheese Sex Death It was there that I discovered her nationwide list of places to buy cheese, and guess what??? There is a place practically in my backyard, a mere 20 miles away in Sweet Springs. It's called, appropriately enough, The Cheese Store. Time to go a-fromage-ing. Lastly, here is a list of cheeses I've eaten this week: Sharp Cheddar, Baby Swiss, and Blue Cheese. 

The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s - Andy Greene. I absolutely love how this book about my new favorite show is put together. There's a short introduction at the beginning of each chapter, then it goes into interviews with writers, directors, and actors reminiscing about the show. It starts right from the very beginning, the utterly true beginning with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant going back to when the UK Office was merely a glimmer of a brainchild. The documentary style of presentation is perfect since the show is a "mockumentary". Do I still have to put that in quotes, or is it a part of the language by now?

What I DNFed:

An audiobook, and I really don't want to admit to it, because it's by a distinguished literary presence who recently died. I've read several of the author's other books and admired them, but this one didn't click for me at all. To make matters worse, the author was the narrator and their voice was raspy. Sentences would fade towards the end. I didn't even make it to the end of the first CD. It's back in the library now.

What I'd like to read:

Cheese Sex Death - Erika Kubick. Hope there's loads of pictures.

Nightbitch: A Novel - Rachel Yoder. I can't resist a title like that.

Blind Man's Bluff - James Tate Hill. Memoir.

Cack-Handed - Gina Yashere. Memoir. 

What I need:

Another audiobook!

Read 'Em And Weep: Mid-August, 2021

 There was reading, but no weeping. I promise. It's just allergy season.

What I read:

Who Was Juliette Gordon Low? - Dana Meachen Rau. Another standout in the Who Was..? series. Juliette Gordon Low a.k.a. Daisy (and sometimes Crazy Daisy for her impetuous nature) to her friends and family jumps off the pages. Being a one-time Girl Scout, I thoroughly appreciated this book. Using the cookies as a ratings marker, I give it 10 boxes of Thin Mints. As for Dana Meachen Rau, she should have the Writer badge sewn on her sash straightaway.

Best Food Writing 2003 -Holly Hughes, editor. Unlike some years with this series, I found 2003 to be an uneven mix of good and  ho-hum. I did enjoy Nigel Slater's "Kit", an assessment of kitchen essentials; "Travels with Captain Bacon", which involved a road trip through Kentucky and Tennessee in search of the most perfect part of the pig, in my opinion; "Sustaining Vision" by Michael Pollan, which already grabbed my attention when I read it in The Omnivore's Dilemma; "With Pancakes, Every Day is Sunday" Hell YES!; "Grilling, Short and Sweet" by John Kessler, who Asian-grills rather than Texas-barbecues again HELL YES; Kathleen Brennan's "Cajun Pig Party" which follows the Louisiana back country action all the way from Sue the pig's last snorts and squeals to the after-dinner dancing; Robb Walsh's "Say Cheez", in which he explores the debate about what cheese or Cheez truly completes a perfect Philly Cheesesteak; Andrea Strong's fond look back in "Ode to Sloppy Joe, a Delicious Mess". The origin stories are as messy as the dish itself; "Bread Winner" by Susan Choi who serendipitously meets up with a true sandwich artist on her daily trip to her neighborhood deli; and "The Culinary Underground" by John T. Edge about a couple in Mississippi who serve lunch out of their modest home every weekday.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo. Care asked me in a recent postcard if I'd read this book. When I replied, I forgot to tell her I had not, then I found the audiobook, and now I have and it was beautiful, brilliant, devastating first-rate reporting. The author spent several years following the up and down (mostly down) fortunes of a handful of people in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai, located near the airport. It reads (or in this case, listens) like a novel, but the onionlike levels of corruption that Boo peels back again and again are frustratingly and wrenchingly real.

What I'm reading:

The Andy Warhol Diaries - Andy Warhol, edited by Pat Hackett. Since Warhol dictated his entries over the phone to Pat Hackett, they have a sort of unreflective flatness. Then it hit me that Warhol was yet again well ahead of his time. Except for the character count, they're tweets! My favorite diary entry so far: I had so many dates for tonight, but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows. It was a refreshing change from all that name-dropping.

The Spawn brought home a series of books called "Food Dudes" which are juvenile nonfiction offerings that tell the story behind iconic American foods and beverages: M&Ms, Oreos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, Heinz Ketchup, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Hershey's chocolate, to name a few. I don't know why, but I'm just not feeling this series. Overall, the writing seems a little dull.

In a similar vein, The Spawn also brought home a huge stack of books --Toy Trailblazers-- that chronicle iconic American toys: American Girl Dolls, Barbie, Lincoln Logs, My Little Pony, Rubik's Cube, Hot Wheels, and Monopoly are examples. I've just started reading the one about the young woman who became a sensation on YouTube for getting creative with slime. This series' writing seems a little more lively.

Who Is Dolly Parton? - True Kelley. I'm still reading, and I already love this book. Bonus points to True Kelley for mentioning "Joshua", the song that made me a Dolly fan so many, many years ago.

Strange reading coincidence: Dolly Parton and Andy Warhol crossed paths! He's name-dropped her three times already in the diaries, and I'm only on page 186.

What I want to read:

I went to the bookstore today and cast a longing eye upon Billie Jean King's autobiography.

Vernon Gravely, who wrote Promise Unfulfilled, a biography of actor Robert Morris, has written a historical book about boxing. It will be out in the early fall.

The DNF Files: Medieval Tastes

I'm kicking off 2020 with a DNF. After struggling for a while, I finally threw in the bookmark.

Admitting defeat was difficult for several reasons: I purchased Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking and the Table by Massimo Montanari, a very attractive trade paperback back in 2018 and paid a lot of money for it. I was so sure I would enjoy a scholarly jaunt through the culinary Middle Ages that I plunked down $30 without blinking.

Medieval Tastes is just not to my taste. It's that kind of academic writing that feels airless and claustrophobic, and it's a translation.  Every paragraph feels torturous. The content seems interesting, but I'm not sure because I was hacking my way through the print equivalent of brambles.

As always, I question myself: Am I just dull, or undisciplined? Shouldn't I relish (ahem) some rigorous reading? After stewing (sorry) for a while, I put the enjoyment criteria to Medieval Tastes. There are books you enjoy reading, and there are books that you enjoy having read. I wasn't enjoying it, and if I could make it through the book, I doubt that I'd have that warm glow of satisfaction from hard work.

Ciao, Medieval Tastes. Mi dispiace molto.

Sprinting Towards the Finish Line 2019

Wind in my hair! Apples in my cheeks! Sweat in my shoes! 

Yes, it's nearly the end of the year and I'm scrambling to finish three more books by midnight December 31:

Middlemarch - George Eliot. This is doable. I'm 73% in, and I have a 4-hour layover in Denver. Gotta finish. Must finish to make my own personal goal of reading Middlemarch every ten years since 1999.

Black Beauty - Anna Sewell. BB was my choice for the above challenge, BOOK BINGO BLACKOUT in the category Classic I've Never Read. Cakewalk, right? Should I say Caketrot? No, because it's really not. So far, the horses have really looonnnggggg conversations about all the ways humans can be cruel. I'm not even that far along in the novel yet; Black Beauty is still having a great life, if you can overlook that bit business. I've already had my big shock though: Black Beauty is male! I never realized.

Spam: A Biography - Carolyn Wyman. I'm reading this for Novelty Book in BOOK BINGO BLACKOUT.  It's a compilation of history, trivia, cartoons, recipes, and articles about an interesting foodstuff. Put together in a patchworky manner that hearkens back to the days of 'zines, it's fun, and like it's subject, tolerable in short doses. I'm determined to finish, and perhaps even try one of the recipes.

I'll return to BOOK BINGO BLACKOUT at the beginning of the year to discuss my outcomes and to look with fresh eyes upon a whole new bingo board of challenges.

Meanwhile, Merry Readmas and Happy Book Year!

The Reading: October/November 2019

October was a slow month; I only finished two books: Sontag, the biography of Susan Sontag by Benjamin Moser (Which seemed to say as much about the biographer as it did about his subject, but that's not a criticism. I like mulling about these fraught kind of relationships.) and Bettyville by George Hodgman, which, as I predicted, broke my heart. I had no business reading about elderly parents and adrift, middle-aged children at this point in my life, but I couldn't not read it. Anyway, two books, but the weightiness felt like ten.

November was much more productive. It truly turned out to be a banner Nonfiction November (Hi, Unruly Reader!) with tiny whiffs of novel.

The fiction, first. Interestingly, these were both rereads from many years ago. Some sort of nostalgia bug must have been gnawing on my entrails:

The Truth About Mary Rose - Marilyn Sachs. A 1973 juvenile novel. The plot, which involves Mary Rose, named after an aunt who died as a child in an apartment fire. Her obsession and hero-worship of the original Mary Rose is less interesting than the look back into the 1970s at New York City and people trying on new ideas like women being dentists and men being full-time homemakers. I always liked Sachs' work, as a young reader. It felt real, honest and gritty.

The Sterile Cuckoo - John Nichols. Did you ever revisit a novel and then wish you hadn't? I remember loving this one, but why? I hated the leaden prose, and the blockhead narrator, Jerry. The characters are supposedly having fun and high jinks at college, but it's stifling, airless. No oxygen can get in, Only the wistful, frustrating Pookie kept me from bailing. This is a book that has aged badly. I propose a rewrite. From Pookie's POV.

The nonfiction!

What Do We Need Men For? - E. Jean Carroll. Elle advice columnist Carroll goes on a road trip across America with her dog. She stops in towns with female names and asks women the title question. Answers vary. Meanwhile, readers are treated (probably the wrong word) to her list of the 21 Most Hideous Men she's ever known. Donald Trump is on the list, and he's not even the worst. I was amazed, sickened, uncomfortable. I recognized that I could make a similar list. Carroll gives the impression of triumphing over all of this, but it feels brittle. Brittle or not, I hope it's lasting.

The Grief Recovery Handbook - John W. James and Russell Friedman. I read this because I went to a Grief Recovery class. I misjudged the book early, thinking it would be all hippy-dippy, touchy-feely. Instead, it is dignified and restrained. There is a thoughtful and sensible balance between intellect and emotion, each receiving their due. Exercises in each chapter guide the reader through the grieving process. James and Friedman intelligently wrote the book to deal with any sort of loss in life. Recommended.

Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell. This was my first outing with Gladwell. What can I say? I like the play of his mind, the warp and weave of his thoughts. The cut of his jib. Talking to Strangers explores why we often get people's intent wrong, although we think we've studied them during our interactions and we're good judges of character. Apparently, we default to the premise that the person is being straightforward and truthful when they aren't. I didn't quite see how some of the chapters fit into the book, but I was intrigued, and left wanting more Gladwell.

Dannemora - Charles A. Gardner.  Gardner lives in upstate New York and worked in the prison system there, so he was a front line witness to the three-week manhunt for two escaped killers during the summer of 2015. His writing style is a little dry but his derision for the escapees and their feckless accomplice Joyce Mitchell, who flagrantly broke rules to help them shines through. His true scorn is reserved for Governor Andrew Cuomo, who seems to see the prison break as an opportunity to shore up his sagging PR. On the other hand, Gardner is unstinting in his admiration for the volunteers, supporters, and law enforcement who worked without rest in rough terrain to bring the ordeal to its end. 

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell.  Gladwell poses an interesting question and tries to solve it. How do we know what we know when we don't even know why we know? How can we make lightning-quick, accurate judgments? How could someone barely glance at a forgery and comprehend it is so wrong that they felt nauseated? Gladwell then gives various examples of what he terms as 'thin-slicing'. His writing is so addictive. I just want more, more, more.

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie & Clyde - Jeff Guinn. This is the most comprehensive study of the 1930s outlaw pair. Guinn traces the two back to their dirt-poor origins in Texas where they were both born, within months of each other, in 1910. Both had families who had relocated from rural surroundings to West Dallas, a downtrodden area near Dallas proper. Back in those days, there was little hope of upward mobility, which was difficult for a couple of youngsters with ideals of romance and a dislike of being labelled. Before I read this book, I didn't realize how young Bonnie and Clyde were -- barely in their twenties. Guinn also covers in detail their fumbling attempts at crime in the beginning. Clyde excelled mostly at stealing cars and robbing armories. His bank-robbing skills weren't as developed. He and his gang spent most of their time knocking over small grocery stores just to meet their traveling expenses, stealing cars, and taking serpentine routes that always led back to West Dallas for family visits. Go Down Together is empathetic, readable and scrupulously researched, It was my favorite read for November.

Now it's December, and I'm finishing a memoir by Frank Bruni called Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater. Bruni has got me drooling with his descriptions of food, which are vast and contain multitudes (mostly of pasta, but trust me, the man leaves no scone unturned.) I'm reading a library copy, and I found some sort of food or sauce (reddish-orange) caked on page 54. Usually, I'm disgusted, but in this case, the previous reader has my complete understanding and forgiveness.

Beach Blanket Book Blackout Bingo

Beach Blanket? Why yes...don't I wish. But where there's still summer, there's still hope. We're only in July.

Book Bingo Blackout? I've been working my way through:

Elevation - LGBTQ . Two of the characters are a lesbian couple.

Nomandland - Life Hack. Rent too high? Take to your vehicle and do it with panache!

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gen X Author. Gail Honeyman was born in the Gen X time frame. 1970, I believe.

The Nightingale - Heroine. More like HeroineS in the French Resistance.

If Beale Street Could Talk - Place Name.  The book doesn't take place on Beale Street; James Baldwin named it after a famous blues song.

Buttermilk Graffiti - Odd Couple.  Chef Edward Lee explores more than a dozen cities across America and finds unlikely but happy culinary/place combinations: Lowell, Massachusetts and Cambodian food. Lebanese food in the heart of Mississippi blues country. Nigerian food in Kentucky, and the best Jewish deli in the United States -- not in New York as you might guess, but Indianapolis. Lee delights in his discoveries, and it shows in his writing. His prose makes the tastes and aromas fly right off the page.

#Nonficnov Wrap-Up

I read a variety of nonfiction during November.  I noticed that I read differently. Slower, with more absorption.  I missed mixing it up, though.

Will December find me on a fiction bender, or will I alternate fiction and nonfiction once again?

Here is what I read this month. As usual, my reach exceeded my grasp and I wandered too willingly from the list I'd made. As a bookworm, shouldn't I be made of sterner stuff? Then there's that other bookworm part of me that says oh, nevermind.

Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic was at the top of my list. I adore Jennifer's previous books about her efforts to live like Madame Chic, her mentor from her foreign exchange student days in Paris, I avidly look forward to her weekly videos at The Daily Connoisseur on YouTube, and I admire her steely yet charming determination to get Americans to step back from the precipice of tacky and unrefined. Jennifer's tips are extensive, positive and helpful and she maintains that anyone can cultivate inner and outer poise. I hope so. I'm still struggling, but fighting the good fight.

When Ball Four was first released, it was scandalous. Knuckleball pitcher Jim Bouton had dared to tell all that went on behind the scenes in baseball; most of that is now common knowledge. For me, Ball Four was more like peering into a time capsule. The salaries were so low then, and the players were ordered to groom and dress to a certain standard when not in uniform. During the long season, the players were bored and played some pretty funny pranks on each other, but the stuff involving women dates badly and was rather distasteful to my 21st century sensibilities. Korean connection: Bouton and his wife adopted a little boy from Korea, and he has been with the family for a few months when the 1969 season commences. I loved those few glimpses of Kyong Jo/David.

I first got to know Kathleen Flinn's story in a subsequent book she wrote, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good. I enjoyed that memoir so much, I set out to find The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry, her earlier memoir of attending Le Cordon Bleu Institute in Paris. The three-part course is what gives this book its structure, but it is also a memoir of her courtship and eventual marriage to Mike, who comes across as the perfect man. Chock-full of the recipes Flinn was required to prepare at Cordon Bleu, some of them staggeringly complicated. I have to admit that I scanned most of these lightly. Korean connection: Some of Flinn's Korean classmates do not come off well, but she met difficult personalities from many countries during this time. If you're a foodie, this one's for you.

I don't know what to call this book. An art book? A humor book? It's funny, fresh, original, brilliant -- Artist Terry Border takes ordinary household objects such as cheese curls, potato chips,  an ice cube, (my favorite of the "scenes" he arranged!) lemons, marshmallows, and using bits of wire, turns them into figures and imagines these strange, surrealistic lives for them. So much fun! Go find it.

I also read Laura Ingalls Wilder's On The Way Home,

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, a family memoir by Kathleen Flinn. I loved the stories of her lively and slightly eccentric Midwestern family. I'm glad I read this book before The Sharper The Knife, The Less You Cry.

Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Pop Songs by Erik Didriksen. I'faith, this tome was poetry, yet the lovely verse was inspired by yon Top XL, so that belongeth in the category of Pop Culture, which did fit firmly on mine shelves of nonfiction. I did love these verses and have proceeded apace to annoy anyone within earshot to listen and figure out which pop song inspired the sonnet. Verily, I know how to clear a chamber!

There was also that unfortunate biography of Patsy Cline. I'm still cringing.

So that was the Nonfiction November that was! Can we do it again next year?

Are You Really Going To Eat That? - Robb Walsh

I read this book for the Foodie's Reading Challenge.

Judging by the title, I thought this book was going to be food essays by some wiseass geek (or geeky wiseass).  I thought it would be laden with obscenities and heavy on the gross-out factor.  Understand that I don't have any trouble with any of the above of course, but I was wrong.  Although the title is slightly misleading, the book is far richer than that.  You get food, you get culture and you get a nice dollop of geography.  Can you say lagniappe?

Texan Robb Walsh isn't a gross-out guy.  Instead, in this series of articles he wrote over a period of several years, he traveled far and wide to find things like the best cup of coffee in the world, an actual bowlful of a chowder that Neruda rhapsodized about in a poem, sheep cheese, authentic soul food (he visited a prison for that one), the hottest pepper, the ultimate barbecued kid goat, the best brisket and along the way, he revels in culinary mysteries like: Why do Spam and poi suck by themselves, but together they're sublime?  He's also made a believer out of me regarding the proper way to eat okra:  Stew the pods in tomato sauce.  Genius.

There's so much more, but I'm hungry.  Robb Walsh has that effect on me.  He hasn't got that otherworldly way of describing food like M.F.K. Fisher or Ruth Reichl, but he lays down some pretty damn good description and he's generous with the recipes.   Reader, I drooled.  I couldn't help it.  Every single day, I see tiresome news stories scolding people for the foods they choose.  In one essay in Are You Really Going to Eat That? Walsh dived with gusto into a lunch of rare hamburger with a side of a dozen raw oysters.  If someone scolded him, he'd tell them to kiss his CFS (Chicken-fried steak).

Walsh is a veteran food writer who has been around and eaten all kinds of strange things in his line of work.  This chowhound could have a big head but he doesn't take himself too seriously, either, which I like.  When he visited Thailand to do a piece on durian AKA "stinkfruit", he admits that his ego took a smacking since he barely manage "two small sections" without gagging.  

I wish I could compare notes with him.  I'm combing through my own list of strange foods:  Has he eaten rattlesnake?  Buffalo?  Pig intestine stew?  Pumpkin porridge?  What about my own culinary Waterloo, bondeggi AKA silkworm larvae?  Does he know stonecrop?

I want all my friends to read Are You Really Going to Eat That?, but I'm scared I won't get it back.  This is one of those times I'm sincerely glad I bought the book, and it won't be my last helping of Robb Walsh.

Late To The Table

I don't know how I let this challenge almost slip by me. I'm definitely in, tying on a napkin and going for the Bon Vivant level (4-6 books). This is the prompting that I need to finally read Becka's copy of Chocolat, which I borrowed last fall. It's also a great excuse to go shopping for some of those food memoirs I've been coveting. In addition, maybe this will compel me to stop circling copies of Good Morning, Kimchi! and take the plunge. The upcoming Readathon just got a little tastier. Is this ironic or just merely funny?... it's the middle of the night, and I'm awake and wandering around in Blogland because of indigestion.

Readathon: Hour 22

Pages read: 25
Blogs visited: 3
Snacks: bottled water and a handful of sunflower seeds

In spite of her annoying tendencies, I do like Julie Powell. She's plucky regarding her cooking project, but she's willing to admit when she can't go the distance with Julia's directions. I also like her salty sense of humor. Her blog audience is starting to become more and more vocal. They dug their heels in when Powell attempted Poached Eggs in Aspic -- it's like gelatin made from calves' feet. There were 9 aspic recipes in all in Julia Child's cookbook, and her readers actually begged her not to try the others. Bon Appetit. Not.
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I'll have to read My Life In France to find out exactly how and where Julia Child found the recipes that went into her masterwork. Poached Eggs In Aspic definitely has a medieval feel to it.

Slumping In January

My totals haven't been this bad since graduate school! So far, I've read only 2 books this month and 511 pages of Middlemarch. I am getting a little bit of a break though -- I fly out of Korea back to the US on January 31st around noon, and thanks to the magic of time travel (or at least time difference), I'll get to my destination on ...January 31st!

I (reluctantly) left Middlemarch behind and decided to travel with the 3 books for my Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge:
Let's Eat Korean Food - Betsy O'Brien
Fried Eggs With Chopsticks - Polly Evans
Consider The Oyster - M.F.K. Fisher

When I got to Seoul, I went to What The Book? hoping to pick up a copy of Lonesome Dove, but no joy. After looking at what Updike they had available (small but very nice selection), I decided to work on my Pulitzer shelf and bought a copy of The Bridge Of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. It's the 1928 Pulitzer fiction winner. This purchase dovetails nicely with my resolve to concentrate my US book buying frenzy into this particular area. I'm hoping to find Lonesome Dove (I need it for the February 15th book group meeting), The Optimist's Daughter, Advise and Consent, The Fixer, Humboldt's Gift, The Confessions of Nat Turner, One Of Ours, Alice Adams, and The Magnificent Ambersons. Wish me luck. My Inner Completist Bookworm is bouncing off the walls with this one.

I hope to post while I'm gone...or at least read *your* blogs!

Five Food Facts Meme

Food or books, which do I love more? I'm going to try and combine them in this meme that I found over on the most excellent You Can Never Have Too Many Books.

1. My favorite part of Nicholson Baker's Vox was the recipe for Stouffer's creamed chipped beef over spiral pasta. After reading that book, I went on to serve it often. I wish I had some now.

2. When I was a child, I desperately wanted to taste gruel. Although poor people in stories ate it because they had nothing else, I wanted it. Although the name itself didn't sound very appetizing, I knew it had to be good. In the same vein, although Heidi's school chums complained bitterly and at great length about the smell of the goat cheese her grandfather sent her, I wished that she could share some with me.

3. Every now and then, I get an urge for a tomato sandwich, thanks to Harriet The Spy.

4. I've never been able to read Farmer Boy without putting it down to go get a snack. Laura Ingalls Wilder writes like every meal was a food orgy on Almanzo's family farm in upstate New York.

5. I've always enjoyed massive amounts of salsa/picante sauce/hot sauce on my eggs, but since reading How To Cook A Wolf last year, I lovingly refer to this concoction as "Eggs In Hell", after a similar but better-executed recipe in M.F.K. Fisher's book.

How To Cook A Wolf

First published in 1942, How To Cook A Wolf grew out of several columns MFK Fisher wrote for her father's newspaper in Whittier, California. World War II had just started, and food rationing was on with a vengeance. Lean times were nothing new to MFK Fisher. She'd lived in post World War I Europe on a student stipend, then returned to the United States where, like most other Americans, she suffered through the Great Depression.

How To Cook A Wolf could have been another deadly earnest and dull cookbook except for two things: Fisher spent several years in France, particularly in Dijon, which was well-known as a culinary center, and this has a profound effect on her; also, food -- its history, its preparation, its consumption, among other things -- brought out the playful and imaginative in her. She couldn't have been boring if her life depended on it. Fisher was superbly capable of a type of alchemy in her writing that kept her from being dismissed as shallow, out-of-touch, airy-fairy. She wanted her readers to come out and play and imagine with her, but she had just enough common sense and kitchen know-how as a sturdy foundation to keep them. Past and present, she informs, persuades and ultimately, seduces.

Nine years after its publication, How To Cook A Wolf was updated and reissued. Although food rationing was a thing of the past, it was still wartime -- The Cold War -- and although people had plenty, MFK Fisher felt that it was still important to know "how to eat with grace and gusto". In one of the last chapters, MFK Fisher deplores the types of foods generally used to stock a bomb shelter.

The way the update was done was quite clever. In brackets, MFK Fisher adds or refines recipes, cracks little jokes, chastises herself about advice she gave that hasn't quite proven out, discusses how she's changed as a person since the first edition, and constantly questions what she's written: [Is that important?]

At first, this structure grated on my nerves because, although MFK Fisher is charming and witty and knowledgeable, it felt as if there were two such people talking simultaneously. After a while, I adjusted, but for me, How To Cook A Wolf is best read twice: The first time, reading the original prose and ignoring the bracketed information, and the second time, concentrating on the updates.

When discussing meals, MFK Fisher will often describe a perfect accompaniment less than specifically. She'll use the terms "good" and "honest", as in "...this should be served with good, honest bread..."

Being far from a gourmet, I found this confusing, and sometimes, a little off-putting. I'm part of the generation that has watched Martha Stewart since young womanhood and I'm used to Martha's grim assurances that in order to duplicate her blueberry muffins, you really must have fresh blueberries that were picked right off the bush somewhere in Maine in the past three hours, or the whole recipe's not going to taste worth a damn anyway.

Part of me was suspicious that this was what MFK was up to, but if you keep reading, you start to understand what she means by "good" and "honest", as if it were shared, ancient knowledge hard-wired into you that you'd finally managed to access. Even better, you start to think, "Yes! I can do this!" Just one example of her alchemy.

Nobody describes food better than MFK Fisher. (Well, okay, Ruth Reichl is a close runner-up.) In a discussion of vegetables, her phrase "round, satiny onions..." rolls voluptuously around in my brain, pleasing to at least four out of five senses. Lately when I've been eating, I've wanted her to be right by my side, describing it all to me. (In particular, I wish I could sit at her feet while she described Pablo's mother-in-law's kimchi, which I firmly put above all other kimchi in Korea, South or North. The more mature it gets, the better it gets. It's difficult to explain that exquisite sensation when crunchy, salty, sour and spicy are at the ends of the chopsticks sliding into your mouth, but I know MFK Fisher would be equal to the task; it would truly be a case of genius saluting genius.)

Earlier, in a previous chapter, when MFK insists on the kind of salad she'd like to eat, "I want a salad of a dozen tiny vegetables: rosy potatoes in their tender skins, asparagus tips, pod-peas, beans two inches long and slender as thick hairs...I want them cooked [until nearly done] each alone, to fresh perfection. I want them dressed, all together in a discreet veil of oil and condiments..." I began to believe that this was the salad I'd been waiting for all my life and had only just now realized it.

MFK Fisher was not only a brilliant food writer, she was well ahead of her time. She argues quite persuasively that the "balanced dinner" is not really economical at all, and that many of the foods when combined can wreak havoc in more delicate stomachs. She advocates the "balanced day" rather than the "balanced meal." When I saw a chiropractor 3 years ago for my "frozen shoulder" (known as "50-year-old shoulder" here /-: ) , he had a list posted near the receptionist's desk, saying much the same thing.

In all, there are 73 recipes in How To Cook A Wolf. I'd love to try most of them, but some, such as the War Cake and Edith's Gingerbread will have to wait until I a) get back to the US or b) break down and buy an oven. The soup chapter, "How To Boil Water" is sublime, and I especially want to try her Parisian onion soup recipe. Some of the recipes in the other chapters, for example "How To Carve The Wolf" probably won't fly with most readers, but should be read anyway because of her gorgeous prose style.

My favorite chapter was "How To Keep Alive", in which MFK carefully gives instructions for a dish she calls "Sludge", which is comprised of ground beef and wilted vegetables, which are ground through a food-mill then boiled with all-grain cereal together in a large pot. The resulting "Sludge" is then put in a cool place, and can be eaten hot or cold. MFK recommends slicing it and frying it like scrapple, if you're rich enough to possess a little fat and gas or electricity for frying. (MFK cautions against using beets since it would turn the whole concoction bright pink, then a dull gray.) This dish is for people who are a whisker from starvation. I agree with 50 books who said that this would've been a useful recipe for George Orwell when he was Down And Out In Paris And London. In the chapter "How To Have A Sleek Pelt", Fisher returns to this recipe, noting that it makes an excellent dog food, which put me off trying it out for myself.

One dish I am eager to try is "Eggs In Hell". Eggs are generally easy to prepare, you can dress them up or down with a minimum of effort, and besides, who can resist a dish with a name like that? The recipe calls for tomato sauce or even ketchup, but in my mind, I've already substituted salsa. There's something about Mary (Frances Kennedy Fisher) that reassures me that any variations would not only be forgivable, but laudable.

How To Cook A Wolf has already proved useful to me in another non-food related way: My students saw me reading it on a recent field trip, and after they reacted to the totally dishy (pun intended) picture of MFK Fisher on the cover, ("She is my style! Bombshell!") I was able to give an impromptu mini-lesson about the idiom "the wolf's at the door", when they expressed puzzlement at the title.

CanadaBoy, (who should give up this teaching English gig and go be a chef somewhere) has already done a cursory examination of the recipes in the book, but I plan to loan it to him so he can peruse it at his leisure. But now that this review is FINALLY done, How To Cook A Wolf will go sailing first thing tomorrow morning into Pablo's mailbox. He also likes to cook, and I'm almost sure he'll find MFK's prose as mesmerizing as I did.

As MFK Fisher would recommend simple yet dazzling accompaniments for dishes, I recommend that How To Cook A Wolf be read in conjunction with: Hunger by Knut Hamsun; Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell; and The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn.

And of course, the very best thing to go with MFK Fisher is more MFK Fisher -- I plan to put this into practice soon by abusing my credit card to order Serve It Forth, The Gastronomical Me, and Consider The Oyster.