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564. The $64 Tomato

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Frank and Lisanne

Author:    William Alexander

Genre:   Non Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Environment, Food, Nature

304 pages, published March 2, 2007

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Bill Alexander writes about his struggles to create an ideal garden on the acreage that comes with a house he and his wife buy in the Hudson River Valley of New York.  What follows is an adventure rivaling the Perils of Pauline.

Quotes 

“Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was, there’s always next year. Experience doesn’t count.”

 

“The great, terrifying existentialist question: If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I’ve always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses , and do something about it.”

 

“Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit.”

 

 “One event is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, and three a pattern.”

 

“but I had set the precedent of declaring my preference for the solitary pleasures of gardening over social events.”

 

“Well, ah don’t weed; ah cultivate. (As it turns out, ah will cultivate a lot.) Whereas weeding evokes images of backbreaking labor, kneeling under a broad-brimmed hat while hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard, cultivating suggests nurturing, caring for tender shoots, feeding, and raising. All of which you accomplish, of course, by kneeling and hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard.”

 

My Take

The $64 Tomato was a very fun read.  With acerbic and humorous anectdotes, author Bill Alexander brings to life his mighty struggles to create the perfect garden.  This book confirmed my life long aversion to the big garden and made me happy with the few potted herbs and plants that I maintain along with the volunteers who populate our outdoor mountain area.

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310. The Language of Food

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Chad Stamm

Author:   Dan Jurafsky

Genre:  Non Fiction, Food, Linguistics

272 pages, published September 15, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

In The Language of Food, linguist Dan Jurafsky (who specializes in food linguistics), offers  up a smorgasbord of food/linguistic topics including menus, dinner courses, the use of different types of food adjectives depending on whether the restaurant is upscale or downscale and the history of foods from different parts of the world.

Quotes 

“Taste, says Bourdieu, is “first and foremost . . . negation . . . of the tastes of others.” A high-status group maintains its status by legitimizing some tastes but not others, independent of inherent artistic merit, and by passing on these tastes as cultural preferences.” 

My Take

While parts of The Language of Food were interesting, other parts were a bit of a bore.  I also could have done without the recipes (especially as I was listening to the audio version of the book).  I think there must be better books out there on the intersection of language and food.

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294. The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children—And the World

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Darla Schueth

Author:   Roger Thurow

Genre:  Non Fiction, Health, Environment, Food, Public Policy

282 pages, published March 3, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The First 1,000 Days refers to the time period of pregnancy and a child’s first two years of life.  During this crucial time, whether or not a pregnant woman and her baby receive proper nutrition, medical care and hygiene can have an enormous impact on the rest of that child’s life, and in turn the social and economic health of the nation in which the child is born.  Author Roger Thurow explores various aspects of this global issue by profiling poor women and children in Uganda, Guatemala, India and Chicago.  Great progress has been made, but as The First 1,000 Days poignantly illustrates, there is still a long way to go.

Quotes 

“The time of your pregnancy and first two years of life will determine the health of your child, the ability to learn in school, to perform a future job. This is the time the brain grows the most.”

 

“Your child can achieve great things.” 

My Take

The First 1,000 Days is a well researched, compelling read.  It is heartbreaking to read about the abject poverty suffered by many people in the world, especially women and babies.  Reading this book really made me appreciate how good we have it in the United States.  Our lives are truly golden. The encouraging news is that progress is being made on several fronts to improve the global health of children.  Access to better nutrition and health care has improved and is continuing to improve.  Hopefully, the next decade will see a dramatic reduction in infant mortality and stunting.

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275. Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Jackie Funk

Author:   Michael Pollan

Genre:  Non Fiction, Food, Health, Science, Nutrition

152 pages, published December 29, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The title of Food Rules describes its content perfectly.  In this short book Michael Pollan, the author of many best-selling books on food (including The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food; both of which I read and enjoyed) offers the reader practical advice on what to eat and what not to eat.  His main advice is to “eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”  The book elaborates on each part of this guidance with enough explanation to understand the reason behind the recommendation.

Quotes 

“Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!”

 

“Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is a literal shame, but most of us can: Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food, less than the citizens of any other nation.”

 

“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

 

“As grandmothers used to say, ‘Better to pay the grocer than the doctor”

 

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

 

“Use the apple test. If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not hungry.”

 

“If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t. .”

 

“…There’s a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them. ”

 

“For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be processed rather than a whole food.”

 

“The healthiest food in the supermarket – the fresh produce- doesn’t boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don’t have budget or packaging. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.”

 

“Be the kind of person who takes supplements — then skip the supplements.”

 

“Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].”

 

“Leave something on your plate… ‘Better to go to waste than to waist”

 

“Human beings ate well and kept themselves healthy for millennia before nutritional science came along to tell us how to do it; it is entirely possible to eat healthily without knowing what an anti-oxidant is.”

 

“So don’t drink your sweets, and remember: There is no such thing as a healthy soda.”

 

“The banquet is in the first bite.”

 

“For as you go on, you’ll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.”

 

“So: Ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone? That moment will arrive several bites sooner.” 

My Take

Having read and enjoyed two previous books by Michael Pollan, I was looking forward to this mini-book which distilled his eating philosophy into small, bite-sized, easily remembered chunks.  I was not disappointed.  Food Rules offers a lot of pithy, common-sense advice in response to the age old question:  What should I eat?  While I’m still following the low-carb recommendation of Gary Taubes (author of Why We Get Fat), I am intentionally eating more vegetables and some fruit after being reminded of their healthful properties.

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255. Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Gretchen Rubin

Author:   Gary Taubes

Genre:  Non Fiction, Health, Nutrition, Science, Self Improvement, Food

272 pages, published December 28, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The title tells it all.  This a non-fiction book in which science writer Gary Taubes investigates and reports why we get fat.  Taubes argues, and empirically supports, that our diet’s overemphasis on certain kinds of carbohydrates (mostly sugars and starches), not fats and not excess calories, has led directly to our country’s obesity epidemic.  Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, none more damaging or misguided than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat, and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin’s regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers the most persistent questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat, and what foods should we avoid?

 

Quotes 

“We don’t get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we’re getting fat.”

 

“The simple answer as to why we get fat is that carbohydrates make us so; protein and fat do not.”

 

“In other words, the science itself makes clear that hormones, enzymes, and growth factors regulate our fat tissue, just as they do everything else in the human body, and that we do not get fat because we overeat; we get fat because the carbohydrates in our diet make us fat. The science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one—specifically, the stimulation of insulin secretion caused by eating easily digestible, carbohydrate-rich foods: refined carbohydrates, including flour and cereal grains, starchy vegetables such as potatoes, and sugars, like sucrose (table sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. These carbohydrates literally make us fat, and by driving us to accumulate fat, they make us hungrier and they make us sedentary.  This is the fundamental reality of why we fatten, and if we’re to get lean and stay lean we’ll have to understand and accept it, and, perhaps more important, our doctors are going to have to understand and acknowledge it, too.”

 

“Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious – obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth – is what makes it so alluring. But it’s misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it’s hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years. It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world – while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat – but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

 

“It may be easier to believe that we remain lean because we’re virtuous and we get fat because we’re not, but the evidence simply says otherwise. Virtue has little more to with our weight than our height. When we grow taller, it’s hormones and enzymes that are promoting growth, and we consume more calories than we expend as a result. Growth is the cause – increased appetite and decreased energy expenditure (gluttony and sloth) are the effects. When we grow fatter, the same is true as well.”

 

“Researchers have reported that the brain and central nervous system actually run more efficiently on ketones than they do on glucose.”

 

“Any diet can be made healthy or at least healthier—from vegan to meat-heavy—if the high-glycemic-index carbohydrates and sugars are removed, or reduced significantly.”

 

“The obvious question is, what are the “conditions to which presumably we are genetically adapted”? As it turns out, what Donaldson assumed in 1919 is still the conventional wisdom today: our genes were effectively shaped by the two and a half million years during which our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers prior to the introduction of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. This is a period of time known as the Paleolithic era or, less technically, as the Stone Age, because it begins with the development of the first stone tools. It constitutes more than 99.5 percent of human history—more than a hundred thousand generations of humanity living as hunter-gatherers, compared with the six hundred succeeding generations of farmers or the ten generations that have lived in the industrial age.

It’s not controversial to say that the agricultural period—the last .5 percent of the history of our species—has had little significant effect on our genetic makeup. What is significant is what we ate during the two and a half million years that preceded agriculture—the Paleolithic era. The question can never be answered definitively, because this era, after all, preceded human record-keeping. The best we can do is what nutritional anthropologists began doing in the mid-1980s—use modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as surrogates for our Stone Age ancestors.”

 

My Take

When Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project and my personal guru) mentioned that after reading this book she was hit with a lightning bolt moment and changed her eating habits dramatically to extremely low carb, I was very interested to see what Taubes had to say.  Following his recommendations, I have been on a ketogenic (high fat and protein, very low carb) diet for several weeks.  After a few months, I’ll report back if it works.

 

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139. Kitchens of the Great Midwest

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   J. Ryan Stradal

Genre:  Fiction, Food

310 pages, published July 28, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Kitchens of the Great Midwest opens with the story of Lars and Cynthia, an unlikely couple from Minnesota.  Lars is an overweight chef devoted to his infant daughter Eva.  Cynthia, who lacks maternal feelings, falls in love with wine and leaves Lars to raise their child while she escapes her oppressive family life with a dashing Sommelier.  Lars is determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter.  As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota.  Focusing on authentic ingredients, Eva becomes a culinary star and in her own no-nonsense, Midwestern manner, she comes to terms with the people who have shaped her life.

 

Quotes

“After decades away from the Midwest, she’d forgotten that bewildering generosity was a common regional tic.”

 

“When Lars first held her, his heart melted over her like butter on warm bread, and he would never get it back. When mother and baby were asleep in the hospital room, he went out to the parking lot, sat in his Dodge Omni, and cried like a man who had never wanted anything in his life until now.”

 

“Even though she had an overbite and the shakes, she was six feet tall and beautiful, and not like a statue or a perfume advertisement, but in a realistic way, like how a truck or a pizza is beautiful at the moment you want it most.”

 

“God made her a giving person, and even in this house of people who could be so hateful and hard, her one skill, she knew, was to serve them and make them happy, the way even an unwatered tree still provides whatever shade it can.”

 

“What people don’t understand about deer is that they’re vermin. They’re giant, furry cockroaches. They invade a space, reproduce like hell, and eat everything in sight.”

 

“He couldn’t help it—he was in love by the time she left the kitchen—but love made him feel sad and doomed, as usual. What he didn’t know was that she’d suffered through a decade of cool, commitment-phobic men, and Lars’s kindness, but mostly his effusive, overt enthusiasm for her, was at that time exactly what she wanted in a partner.”

 

“She’s told me that even though you won’t meet her tonight, she’s telling you her life story through the ingredients in this meal, and although you won’t shake her hand, you’ve shared her heart. Now please, continue eating and drinking, and thank you again.”

 

“Girls were lucky, they didn’t have to have a thing. They just had to look nice and come to your shows and not call you all the time about stupid stuff.”

 

“But Octavia was a nice person with a big, generous heart who felt sorry for outsiders and tried to help them. And people like her never get any thanks for their selflessness. They are not the ones with the hardness to make others wait; they are the ones left waiting, until their souls are broken like old pieces of bread and scattered in the snow for the birds. They can go right ahead and aspire to the stars, but the only chance they’ll ever have to fly is in a thousand pieces, melting in the hot guts of something predatory.”

 

My Take

While I enjoyed Kitchens of the Great Midwest, it is quirky and a bit disjointed.  Each chapter tells the story of a single dish and character, but the main focus is on the enigmatic Eva Thorvald.  We follow her journey from a girl who grows and eats specialty peppers that are extremely hot to a chef sensation who can charge thousands of dollars to attend one of her pop up food events.  The other characters are also richly drawn and I mostly enjoyed the time I spent in this particular Midwestern kitchen.

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61. Vegan Before Six

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Mark Bittman

Genre:

288 pages, published April 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

Vegan Before Six or VB6 as it is referred to was written by food writer Mark Bittman after his doctor told him to adopt a vegan diet or go on medication.  He didn’t want to do either, so he compromised and decided to become a “flexitarian” in which he focused on a vegan diet heavy in vegetables, fruits, and grains until 6:00 p.m.  After that time he would eat however he wanted in moderation. The results were quick and impressive.   Bittman lost 35 pounds and saw all of his blood numbers move in the right direction.  He also kept the weight off and his health continued to improve.

Quotes

“I live full-time in the world of omnivores, and I’ve never wanted to leave. But the Standard American Diet (yes, it’s SAD) got to me as it gets to almost everyone in this country.”

 

“Like pornography, junk [food] might be tough to define but you know it when you see it.”

 

“We spend a trillion dollars a year on food, but it’s only 9.4 percent of our expendable income, the lowest percentage of any country on record.”

Read more

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39. Life from Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by: Chris Guillebeau

Author: Sasha Martin

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Food

Info: 352 pages, published March 3, 2015

Format:  Book

Summary 

Life from Scratch is really two stories in one book. The first part of the book is a traditional memoir where Sasha Martin recounts her unconventional and difficult childhood with a free spirit, eccentric mother who had difficulty caring for Sasha and her siblings.  In the second part of the book, over the course of 195 weeks, Martin takes on the challenge of cooking and eating a meal from every country in the world.  She achieves her goal and makes peace with her mother, partially due to a shared love of creative cooking.

 

Quotes

“There are mysteries buried in the recesses of every kitchen — every crumb kicked under the floorboard is a hidden memory.  But some kitchens are made of more.  Some kitchens are everything.”

“Marcel Proust, the 20th Century novelist, knew how easy it is to bring the past to life:  When he bit into a tea-soaked madeleine, the shadows of his childhood took on color, snapping into full dimension.  If I put the right ingredients in my spice jars, I realized, they’d be portals to a bygone era.”

“And perhaps that’s been Mom’s secret all along:  her brutal common sense that slices through any and all notions of what “should” be.  From our living room kitchen back in Jamaica Plain to this global table, it’s been about getting our fill.  Not just of food, but of the intangible things we all need:  acceptance, love and understanding.”

“My first encounter with a baguette, torn still warm from its paper sheathing, shattered and sighed on contact. The sound stopped me in my tracks, the way a crackling branch gives deer pause; that’s what good crust does. Once I began to chew, the flavor unfolded, deep with yeast and salt, the warm humidity of the tender crumb almost breathing against my lips.”

“Happiness is not a destination: Being happy takes constant weeding, a tending of emotions and circumstances as they arise. There’s no happily ever after, or any one person or place that can bring happiness. It takes work to be calm in the midst of turmoil. But releasing the need to control it—well, that’s a start.”

“Once, I thought happiness was the sizzle in the pan. But it’s not. Happiness is the spice—that fragile speck, beholden to the heat, always and forever tempered by our environment.”

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31. Little Indiscretions

Rating:  ☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author: Carmen Posadas

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Food

Info: 320 pages, published July 12, 2005

Format:  Book

 

Summary 

Little Indiscretions, a whodunit and social satire, was a huge international bestseller and winner of Spain’s top literary prize. Nestor Chaffino, pastry chef to the rich and famous, is invited to cater a party in a villa on the Costa del Sol.  When Nestor is found frozen to death in a walk-in freezer with a notebook in his hand, the party guests gathered that evening are the natural suspects.  It turns out that just about everyone staying in the house had a motive to kill Nestor who had decided to publish incriminating information  about his hosts and their house guests.

 

Quotes

“He vowed that this little indiscretion would never be divulged, because coincidences, he thought, are like soufflés:  they come to nothing unless someone takes the trouble to beat, stir, or otherwise agitate the egg whites.”

“All things fade away in time. Any pain can be anesthetized by carefully covering it up with layer after layer of insignificant memories.”

“I will always love you until 8:30.  That was the prudent strategy she had used with her other lovers.  She had learned early on that the verb to love should be conjugated only in the present tense.”

“People think that men like me give money to buy forgiveness or out of vanity, when really it’s the winners pathetic tribute to the loser.  Look at me, we seem to be begging, I need you too.  I need you to accept me, to admire me, to love me.”

“Eight: the age of exploration, of ghosts and secret forays; the age at which a mystery lurks behind every curtain and every armoire opens into a magical world, which you may enter at any time, but who knows when you will return.”

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