Chris-yes! The Monsieur Pamplemousse books by Michael Bond-lthe same Michael Bond who wrote the Paddington books, so you can imagine the tone-sheer lunacy! I love them.

After all this food book discussion, I picked up Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell from the library this morning. I'm looking forward to it!

Thanks, Cece. I read one and had forgotten the author when I went back to find more.

What is golden syrup?

Chris, the DH (an ex bio-chemist) says "Golden sypup is a liquid sugar (sucrose) obtained when sugar cane is processed into sugar. It is treated through hydrolysation to slow down its change into sugar crystals."
The site below shows a variety of Tate and Lyle's products.
btw it was Mr Tate who's money helped found the well-known museum of art in London.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup

Thanks, Vee. I've never seen it here. But speaking of processing sugar cane, it is molasses making time of year again. My extended family gets together for several days to make molasses every fall. It is always a big party. Less work that when my grandpa, a serious Luddite, was making them, but still if anyone wants molasses they show up to help. As a kid I never could figure out how that green frothy stuff turned into a black syrup.

Frieda, I'm so glad you had some success with the biscuits. I don't know if dessiccated coconut is the same the world over either. We generally just call it coconut here, it is small lengths about 5mm long and generally round in profile, about as thick as a thin lead pencil. And yes, carb soda is sodium bicarbonate, which I'm pretty sure is baking soda.
This international cooking can be really tricky!

I always thought that kind of wedding cake was French. I have seen it a couple of times, but wedding cake here is most often fruit cake. The basis is profiteroles, or what my mother has always called cream puffs, but I think they leave the cream or custard out so it won't go soft. I have seen pictures of it with chocolate sauce over the top too.

SheriZ6 - please let us know what you think about Julie & Julia! I am anxious to go and get it!

Crazydogs -- I finished it last night and really enjoyed it. It's a pretty fast read, the author is very funny, her style is conversational and self-deprecating, and she is most definitely R-rated. The book includes a good bit about her life and friends as well as about the cooking project and the blog that started it all. I'd recommend it.

Can anyone recommend a good biography of Julia Child? I'd definitely like to know more about her now.

Not exactly a food book, but Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides has an interesting bit about how the mother came to be a fine cook by cooking from a couple of the better cooking magazines.

In case anyone is interested, the link to the original 2002-2003 Julie/Julia Project blog is below:

Here is a link that might be useful: Julie/Julia Project Blog

One of my favorite food books is Julia Child's biography, Appetite for Life. Not a lot of recipes, but a really great read. I believe it was done with Julia's cooperation-so there is a lot of background, family photos, etc. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly.

And, I've heard that Julia Child's last book, My Life In France is being released this Spring (2006).

Both sound interesting; I've reserved Appetite for Life at the library. Thanks!

So glad to return from my trip to find this thread. Thanks, FreidaG. I worry about the Britishisms thread, up around 130-something now. As soon as the management sees it, it will be frozen.

My DH and I recently went through the cookbooks to get rid of the ones we never open (we both cook) so now we're down to two shelves full. Here are my favorites.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison - I'm not a vegetarian, but I love vegetables, and this book has great recipes, including my favorite, extremely easy recipe for making tomato sauce for pasta.

Jacques Pepin's Simple and Healthy Cooking - I eat as much chocolate as anyone, and more than some. The rest of what I want still has to taste wonderful, but I'd like most of it to be good for me. Yes, I'm greedy; I want it all. This is a pretty good book for those two conflicting desires.

American Medical Association Family Health Cookbook - This one too. I'm not kidding. I'd never have picked this one up on my own. However, after being served several excellent meals at the home of a friend who is a superb cook, I asked her what book she was using these days. She showed me this one.

Fannie Farmer Cookbook - I have the 11th edition by Wilma Lord Perkins. I use this book as a general how to reference. If I can't find it here, I next look in The JOy of Cooking. I baked a lot of cookies using this book as a girl.

Good Cooking by Marjorie Heseltine - the subtitle of this depression-era cookbook is "Made Economical and Easy". My mother had this cookbook too, so it is a comfort book for me. Yes, I made a lot of these cookies, too.

Finally, On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. It's not a cookbook, but it is a fascinating bok about food. I've never read it through and probably never will, but I dip into it frequently and with pleasure.

Paula, I get so distracted sometimes that I don't always reply immediately to every thread. But better late than never, maybe. Thank you for your list of food-book keepers. I know I need to weed my cookery collection, but somehow I can't bring myself to do it. I have to admit that I browse more in cookbooks than I will ever use them. I have a copy of Heseltine's Good Cooking. She and my grandmother were contemporaries, and they exchanged correspondence although I'm not sure if they ever met face-to-face.

Thank you, too, Paula, for continuing the "Britishisms" thread -- and in such an ingenious way!

Vee, I thought I would pose this to you in the Brit thread, but since it's about food (again) this is probably the more appropriate place. I appreciated your "butter" reply there. Anyway, now I'm going to ask you about nuts:

A couple of decades or so ago, American pecans were considered a bit exotic in the UK and were very expensive. Some of my British friends weren't, then, very impressed with pecans, saying that English walnuts have more flavor. But I guess some Brits developed a taste for pecans, because for years I would send my English friends tinsful that I shelled myself for Christmas. Now that I live away from pecan-growing areas and have to import them myself, I send Hawaiian-grown macadamias instead (yep, I know they're Aussie natives). Okay, all that just to ask what's the going price nowadays in the UK for pecans? I understand they are much more readily available now. And do you and your family eat pecans, Vee? If so, do you use them interchangeably in recipes that usually call for walnuts?

OK Frieda, I've just been through the 'special' cupboard the DH reserves for his bread-making flour, grains and nuts; with his permission of course.

It was lucky you asked on the 'Food' thread rather than the B'isms as none of this list is grown in the UK (let alone England).

The following are in 250g. shelled weight

Pecan (USA) £4.00, Pine (China) £3.00, Walnut (China) £2.50, Almonds (USA) £2.40, Cashew (India) £2.00.

As you can see pecans are still very expensive (250g is not much more than a large handful) and I don't suppose they are eaten much over here; DH only bought them for an American cake recipe!
I sometimes chuck a few walnuts/pecans into a salad, but (and I'm only guessing) I don't think we eat many nuts at all over here which is a pity because English walnuts are excellent. Christmas is the exception when people usually have a few in a bowl on the sideboard, then can't find the nut-crakers (ours have Hudson Bay Co stamped on them) so they sit gathering dust and are finally thrown out at Easter.

Our nuts come from a 'Whole Food/Organic' place; they may be cheaper elsewhere.

Now if you were to mention roasted salted peanuts that my VA cousins sometimes send for Christmas; I find those very 'more-ish' ;-)

My regular lunch is a bed of greens with crumbled Gorgonzola, a handful of dried cranberries, half a handful of pecans, and a raspberry vinaigrette. I do love pecans. But you know, they aren't cheap here either, and they seem to have become slightly harder to find in bulk.

For anyone who lives in western United States and has a Trader Joe's available, pecans are not very expensive. I buy them as a snack as well as for baking. In fact I prefer them to walnuts.

What does take some searching to find are currants.

Nut prices here seem OK.

Walnuts - free from Kath's mum's tree (and a few from our own *g*)
Almonds - Australian grown paper shells about $15/kg
Cashews - usually from Vietnam - $16/kg
Macadamias - from Queensland - about $25/kg

Pecans are available, but mostly in packets which I presume are imported. Due to the free walnuts, I never buy them.

BTW, a raw broken walnut rubbed on scratched wooden furniture can often hide the scratch.

Raspberry vinaigrette sounds wonderful. I love the Asian dressing at Panera, but I can't determine what the secret ingredient must be.

Paula, Trader Joes has gone nation wide. I have one about a mile away here in Maryland, right next door to the bookstore.

Pam, since they added wi-fi, I frequently spend the morning at Panera having a bagel and checking in on Reader's Paradise. I'll have to try that Asian dressing.

Vee and others, what about roasted chestnuts one used to buy on the corners of Paris in winter? Do the Brits eat these?

Chris, Oh good. I tried oil and vinegar with sesame oil and sugar but there is something more to it....

Mary , I remember seeing the roasted chestnut sellers in London with their little portable/push along braziers when I was a child. They always did a good trade with theatre queues. I feel now we live in an age of fast food and ankle-deep litter/trash on the streets there is no demand for these simple foods.
The link below is a pale imitation of the real thing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chestnut Seller to the Stars

Re chestnuts: I always liked the idea of them -- "chestnuts roasting on an open fire; Jack Frost nipping at your nose" and the countless Victorian novels where they are steaming, fragrant delicacies piled into their paper cornets -- but, boy, was I disappointed in the reality! Insipid and unpleasant in texture was what I thought of them. 'Course I didn't grow up eating them and never really gave myself a chance to develop a taste for 'em, either. Mary, I, too, first had roasted chestnuts in Paris.

Vee, thanks for the pricing info on pecans and other nuts. I'm trying to make up my mind what to send out for Christmas this year. Nuts seem to be well-liked gifts. I usually give a tin each of plain, sugar-coated, and spicy-hot pecans halves. My farm in west Texas supposedly has a grove of about sixty pecan trees (I've never seen them except in photos). I called the farmer to request he send me some Choctaws or whatever he had that made good this year. He used to do that for me when I lived in Colorado, but since I moved I thought the shipping was too high. Oh well, all shipping to Hawai'i is high.

Kath, lucky you to have walnut trees! Your nut prices sounded exorbitant to me until I realized you, of course, are talking Australian dollars. (Slap myself on the forehead.) Our cashews come from Vietnam, too. I have a special weakness for the onion & garlic-seasoned ones.

But my absolute favorite nut is the pistachio. Back when I was a kid, nearly all pistachios were imported from Spain. They came dyed a fuchsia color and were heavily encrusted in salt. My fingertips and left thumbnail (the prying-open nail) were always stained with the dye. It was quite a conversation starter, and I got more friends and acquaintances hooked on pistachios as a result. Now that pistachios are grown in California and they figured out how to harvest and process them without bruising -- the reason for the dye was to cover the blemishes -- I don't think they are as good as they used to be; most barely have any salt in them, which may be better for us, but I loved the gritty crunch of that salt. Ahhh! Well, anyway, there's benefit to California-grown pistachios: they're reasonably priced.

Frieda, I forgot our pistachio trees! You need to have both male and female, but they can be planted in the same hole. My DH picks, peels and salts the nuts (and also opens the ones I can't manage, bless him) and then we gobble them up. Price? About $18/kg I think, but I haven't bought any for a couple of years.

Afterthought: we don't have a very big garden but my DH is into fruit, particularly of the exotic kind, so we have a white sapote, babaco, jaboticaba, pistachios, kiwifruit, raspberries, youngberries, thornless blackberries, as well as the more mundane oranges (2 types), mandarins (2 types), apricot, peach, almond and apples (2 types). We don't harvest many almonds because parrots tend to get them before they are ripe. If you could see the size of our garden, you would be amazed at how productive it is, and I can take absolutely no credit for it *g*

Astrokath, I've never even heard of the first three fruits you mentioned. It sounds wonderful. As a young woman I would buy my mom a fruit tree for Mother's Day every year. She now has more pears than she knows what to do with. Pear butter anyone?

I think Martha had Julie on her TV show yesterday. I clicked in as Martha was paging through a well worn cookbook, reminiscing about cooking her way through it. The guest, Julie (?), said she cooked right up to the kidney pie, I think it was. She then proceeded to cook a boeuf bourguignon for Martha. Martha in that name dropping way she has noted that the last time she had the dish was when Le Circ was closed for renovation and the chef came up and cooked for her for a month. I love that this incredibly successful woman still needs to let people know how cool she is. Anyhow, it fit the description of what you have said about Julie and Julia.

Speaking of blogs, have you ever checked out the weekly Carnival of Recipes? Uneven, but I've picked up some good tips from it, including how to cut open a butternut squash without taking all ones fingers. (I have one now that I am determined to cook before it goes bad.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Carnival of Recipes #53

Chris, I can assure you most people haven't heard of them either! The white sapote is a handsome tree which we have in the centre of our front garden, and more than once someone has rung the front doorbell to ask what it is. The fruit is the size of a smallish apple with green skin which tears easily, and the flesh has a lovely vanilla taste. Unfortunately, it also has a slimy texture a bit like a wet avacado, and I don't like to eat it! There is also a chocolate version, but I haven't tasted that one.

The babaco grows long (12'), thick (4" diameter) green fruit in clusters, with a vaguely star shaped cross section. It is quite watery and doesn't have a lot of taste.

The jaboticaba is quite odd. It is a smallish tree (well, ours is!) and the fruit, like small grapes, grows directly on the stem.

I tried to link to a picture of the jaboticaba but it wouldn't work, but there are plenty if you google it.

I did google them. Here's what I found.

white sapote

jaboticaba

Babaco

So do you use them or leave them to the critters?

I have just read over this thread and throughly enjoyed myself. I just bought Julie/Julia But- I can't cook worth beans myself even though I love to read food books, love to eat and collect recipes. I know it doesn't make much sense. I have currently been looking for good pumpkin recipes (desserts, not pie) and looking for recipes for all types of squash which I bought last week (several varieties)and my poor DH will have to prepare, all because I had a yen for spaghetti squash. Actually DH enjoys cooking but does so many volunteer things now that our daughters are grown that he doesn't cook as often.

I have just read On Rue Tartin by Susan Loomis.
Does she still write books/articles about cooking in the US?
She seems to be one those super women who went to France to study French cookery and learn the language and went on to marry her American sculptor boy friend. The book describes how they found an old house in Normandy, he did it up while she cooked, had a baby, wrote and loved the French . . . and they all loved her right back.

I'm resurrecting this great thread because 1) it's a fun thread and 2) I need your help.

I'll be teaching a class on food-themed writing as literature and I'm in the midst of putting together a reading list. As usual, I'm driving myself nuts with considering too many books while still looking for the "perfect" books. Basically, there are piles and piles of them all over the house.
We'll be reading food-themed novels, memoirs, and non-fiction.

Right now these are in my for-sure list:
Garlic and Sapphires Reichl
The Making of a Chef Ruhlman
Like Water for Chocolate Esquivel
Heartburn Ephron
Kitchen Confidential Bourdain
Heat Buford

I've just started The Language of Baklava Abu-Jaber
So far so good, but I'm not sure. And I'd like to use parts of Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything.

I've rejected (for various reasons):
Crescent Abu-Jaber
the Debt to Pleasure Lanchester
Hotel Pastis Mayle
Chocolate Harris
and various others.
I've tried using M.F.K. Fisher in another class and it didn't work so well. So I'm probably only going to use a few bits and pieces from her work rather than an entire book.

I'm looking for excellent writing and books that are very different from the ones I've already chosen. I'm expecially looking for one other novel and another memoir.Any ideas? Opinions?

I would highly recommend The Bialy Eaters by Mimi Sheraton...from the B&N website (where the book is available):

"For most, the bialy is the bagel's lesser-known cousin, with a scattering of onions and an indentation instead of a hole. For food writer Mimi Sheraton, it's an entree into the history of the Jews of Bialystok, many of whom she befriended over years of obsessive inquiry and travel. The stories she uncovered are a reminder of what food can mean to people living far from their homeland, and the many ways in which it can nourish.
On assignment in Poland, Sheraton takes a detour to Bialystok to sample the bialy on native soil. But she discovers that not only are there no bialys in Bialystok; only five Jews remain of the 60,000 who lived there in 1941, when the Nazis entered the city. More determined than ever, Sheraton embarks upon a project to trace the diasporas of both the bialy and the Bialystokers."

It is fascinating and different from your other definite choices.

It sounds really interesting. I'll take a look at it.
Thank you ccrdmrbks!

And it's relatively short-less than 200 pages

I enjoyed Julia Child's "My Life in France." (When she arrived in Paris in 1948, she did not really even know how to cook). I found the book very entertaining and well-written. This was published in 2004, just a few months before she died....

I'm curious about your choice of Garlic and Sapphires rather than Tender At The Bone. G&S is really only about being a restaurant critic. TATB is more about a general feeling for food and finding a life in it. I don't think G&S stands alone in the same way as TATB.

The one author I think you are missing is Calvin Trillin. His humor about food and our eating prejudices is wonderful. His 3 food books have been collected into The tummy Trilogy. If I could only pick one I'd have to re-read to make my decision.

I think your other for sures are great, especially Rhulman's Making of a Chef. Too bad M.F.K. Fisher doen't work because no one is better.

Miriam's Kitchen by Elizabeth Ehrlich.

It's one of my favourites and I'm pretty sure it was rec'd by another RP poster a while back.

This exceptional memoir documents Ehrlich's slow embrace of a very different lifestyle, that of her Orthodox Jewish mother-in-law, Miriam. Totally food oriented and quite humourous.

Here is a link that might be useful: Miriam's Kitchen

woodnymph2: I'm looking forward to reading the Julia Child book for myself. But I decided not to use it for the class because she didn't actually write it herself. She worked with her grand-nephew, Alex Prud'Homme. I seem to remember reading about how she might have had some notes and then talked him through it. Since the class is, to a great extent, about the writing and the decisions made by each writer, I just figured that this particular book might present too many problems.

granjan: I LOVE Tender at the Bone and have used it (very successfully) before in a different class. But I promised the students who are taking this class that I wouldn't repeat any books they've already read. And I have several who took that class and others from me. I figured that the second Reichl book couldn't really stand alone, so I opted for G & S which, to me, seems to.

mummsie: Thanks for the suggestion! It sounds very good and I'll look into it.

Toad, I'm interested in hearing about how the M.F.K. Fisher did not work out. Which did you use? What do you think the problem was?

I loved Miriam's Ktchen but I'm not sure anyone who isn't interested in the difficulties of keeping a kosher kitchen would enjoy it. If they didn't like M.F.K. Fisher I'm not sure about this one.

But what about Calvin?

granjan: Oops! Sorry about not mentioning Trilling. Yes, I'm going to take a look. I've read a few pieces of his and liked them a lot.

chris in the valley: I taught The Gastronomical Me by Fisher, and there are some absolutely wonderful pieces in there. Quite perfect actually. However, the book, as a book, is awfully choppy, more like a loose collection of sketches and remembrances placed in chronological order. As a memoir (and that class was a class on memoir and autobiography) it confused the students more than engaged them. I might end up giving them copies of short pieces to give them a feel for her writing, but I don't feel like any one book of hers is going to fully work for them.

So what did you choose?
(just came in from the weekly family "after-church breakfast" and I'm thinking food.)

I'm curious as well.

On my recent food-obssesed trip, I bought a book called The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation. It is an account of American food tastes and taste-makers since colonial days, but concentrating on the past fifty years. I found it both fascinating and entertaining. And after I read it, I bought myself several new cookbooks.

Heartily recommended to the food-loving reader.

Rosefolly

Paula, I'd never heard of arugula and looked it up to find it is what I call rocket.
Is the title of the book accurate? Is the US a gourmet nation? And I'd love to hear some of your coooking experiences. Did you come home with lots of new ideas?

veer, I just learned recently myself that what we call arugula is the same thing as rocket. Shaw was very clever when he said that we are two nations divided by a common tongue.

The book maintains, and I agree, that there is a great divide in America. A great many people live primarily on fast food and convenience food, and eat both unhealthfully and without much sophistication. Lots of people never cook other than to heat something in a microwave oven. On the other hand there is a large and growing segment of the population with a great interest in good food -- the "foodies" -- who dine out or cook at home. Look at the success of the Food Network on television these days. This interest seems to be centered most heavily around the Northeast and the West Coast, although I'm sure many such people are found all throughout the country.

The book was a lot of fun to read. My poor husband was trying to read his own book on the plane and I kept nudging him to read bits to him. (It's only fair -- he asks me crossword puzzle questions.) You should be able to find it if you are interested. I bought in a bookstore in Florence, and I see that Amazon UK has it.

And yes, we did come home inspired. I have made several things we learned, and my son was gratifyingly impressed. Tonight Tom will be cooking my almost-birthday dinner and I'm eager to see what he comes up with. Someone said to me, Oh how nice that you took your husband to cooking school with you. I replied, How nice that he took me. It was his idea in the first place! He generally comes up with good ideas.

The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation

Rosefolly, Looks fascinating, Thanks for the rec!
PS.Homemade pizza with arugula is my favourite.

Toad ca,
How about Under the Tuscan Sun?

Hi Folks,

Sorry, I haven't been around for a little while. Here is the final reading list for my class:

Diana Abu-Jaber. The Language of Baklava: A Memoir
Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Bill Buford. Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and
Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Julia Child and Alex PrudÂHomme. My Life in France
Nora Ephron. Heartburn
Laura Esquivel. Like Water for Chocolate
Jacques Pepin. The Apprentice: My Life In The Kitchen
Ruth Reichl. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Michael Ruhlman. The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute
Calvin Trillin The Tummy Trilogy

Thank you all for your great suggestions.

And I agree that Arugula is a very informative read. Some of the less savory personal details weren't always germane to the topic. But Kamp (the author)makes a good case for a character-driven food history.