French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle

French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle
Published May 2001 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Ranging far from his adopted Provence, Mayle now travels to every corner of the country, armed with knife, fork, and corkscrew. He takes us to tiny, out-of-the-way restaurants, starred Michelin wonders, local village markets, annual festivals, and blessed vineyards.

We visit the Foire aux Escargots at Martigny-les-Bains-a whole weekend devoted to the lowly but revered snail. We observe the Marathon du Médoc, where runners passing through the great vineyards of Bordeaux refresh themselves en route with tastings of red wine (including Château Lafite- Rothschild!). There is a memorable bouillabaisse in a beachside restaurant on the Côte d'Azur. And we go on a search for the perfect chicken that takes us to a fair in Bourg-en-Bresse.

There is a Catholic mass in the village of Ri-cherenches, a sacred event at which thanks are given for the aromatic, mysterious, and breathtakingly expensive black truffle. We learn which is the most pungent cheese in France (it's in Normandy), witness a debate on the secret of the perfect omelette, and pick up a few luscious recipes along the way. There is even an appreciation and celebration of an essential tool for any serious food-lover in France-the Michelin Guide.


My Thoughts:
I'm a little bit at a loss as to how to review this book, which is, essentially, a group of essays Mayle put together about food experiences in France. And by food, I mean food and wine. I'm not sure there's a single chapter in this book that doesn't mention wine and there are quite a lot that include drinking a lot of wine. To the point that even Mayle, a man who is accustomed to drinking wine with his meals on the regular, concedes that the French may have taken their wine drinking a step too far. More on that later. Instead of a real review, I'm just going to share some takeaways from this one.

• The French like their weekend food festivals and they will celebrate almost any food, including blood sausage, frog legs, and chickens with blue feet. These festivals are likely to include ridiculous rituals and costumes.
• There are, apparently, a lot of "right" ways to cook an omelet and the pan I cook mine in is absolutely not the right pan. 
• In Bordeaux they host the Marathon du Medoc - an actual marathon with serious runners but where the majority of the runners are in costume and the water tables are actually stocked with wine. I've never run a marathon (duh) but I've watched them and can't imagine how anyone could run 26 miles in drag and stop for wine several times along the route. 
• The French people aren't nearly as snobby as their reputation would have you believe. Maybe because Mayle, at least in this book, spends his time in small villages that appreciate a visit from someone who appreciates their food and festivals. 
• The Michelin guide was originally meant as an aid for people who were driving around in very unreliable vehicles and only included hotels. Their maps were so good that the Allies used them in World War II as they made their way across France. Also, working as a Michelin inspector is extremely secretive and wearying business.

I will admit to getting a little bored toward the end of the book. It began to feel a little repetitive - visit quirky little village, meet quirky people who like to argue amongst themselves, drink copious amounts of wine, eat lots of great food. On the other hand, Mayle has me convinced that you can hardly go wrong in visiting small French villages in search of great food and wine. He write with humor and respect for the country he's adopted as his home. 

Stir: My Broken Brain and The Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor

Sitr: My Broken Brain and The Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor
Published June 2015 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: my copy checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary: 
At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved.

Jessica’s journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth, Stir is a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished."

Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight. For readers of M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan, Stir is sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen.


My Thoughts: 
I have had a sinus headache for a week. I'm not saying that to make you feel sorry; I'm saying it so that I can tell you that, even though I've had sinus headaches for more than forty years and even though I'm exceedingly familiar with their symptoms, every single time I get one that lasts for more than 24 hours, I begin to worry that I'm having an aneurysm or that I have a brain tumor. That's the way my thought process works.

It never occurred to Jessica Fechtor, on the other hand, to think that something might be seriously wrong with her when she felt a click in her head then what felt like water running inside her head. Not when she was rushed by ambulance to the emergency room of the local hospital. Not when she was transferred to another hospital, moved to the ICU, not when all of her family raced to be by her side. Not until they had to open her skull and put a clip on a blood vessel in her brain did she begin to understand that her life might have taken a turn for which she was not prepared.

Fechtor was a driven young woman who was working on her doctorate, running miles everyday, teaching, and entertaining regularly. She and her husband were nearly ready to start a family. She was not, in other words, a person who was used to sitting, taking it easy. But when a severe infection set in after her first brain surgery, it was the beginning of a long road to recovery. Fechtor was blessed to have family and friends who stepped up and really helped. But it was hard for her to sit on the sidelines, especially when it came to working in the kitchen. So it's no real surprise that it was the desire to get back to feeding her people that got Fechtor to push herself to recovery. It was not just a matter of building up stamina again. Fechtor had to learn to deal with the fact that her depth perception was off - the knife in her right hand might end up slicing the fingers on her left hand instead of the apple that hand was holding, the liquid she was pouring into a bowl was just as likely to run all over the counter instead of into the bowl.

I enjoyed this book on multiple levels - as a kind of medical memoir, as a memoir of a life in which food played a huge part, and for Fechtor's writing, which she honed by writing a blog as part of her recovery.

"Being sick is supposed to come along with grand realizations about What Really Matters, but I don't know. I think deep down, we're already aware of what's important and what's not. Which isn't to say that we always live our lives accordingly. We snap at our spouses and curse the traffic and miss the buds pushing up from the ground. But we know. We just forget to know sometimes. Near-death forces us to remember. It pushes us into a state of aggressive gratitude that throws what's big and what's small into the sharpest relief It's awfully hard to worry about the puddle of milk when you're just glad to be here to spill it."

All of the recipes Fechtor includes in the book come with the story behind them - the morel mushroom and fresh pea dinner she had on her 27th birthday that she worked to recreate - and explanations for why recipes give particular instructions, such as salting a chicken days in advance of roasting it. These recipes are all getting copied before I take this book back to the library!

Perhaps this was my favorite bit:

"Home is a verb. It's not only where we live, but how." 

I've never thought it home in exactly that way before, but it is absolutely the way I feel about my home. Fechtor has inspired me to up my game in the kitchen to get back to being the person who expresses my love through food but also in all of the ways I treat people - taking into consideration what will make the people I care about happy, what will provide comfort, what will make them want to linger.

Life: It Goes On - September 29

September is over and the month that should be my favorite month is upon us. But October is also the month that we could start having winter and you know how much I loathe winter. Autumn would be much easier for me to love if only winter didn't start until the end of November. Alas, I live in Nebraska so the length of autumn is entirely at Mother Nature's whim.

Yes, I own an iron. No, I cannot
be bothered to pull it out.

To try to keep my focus on the season at hand, I've made two trips to the pumpkin farm and my house is full of pumpkins and warm fall colors. The bread machine has been pulled back out and, especially after reading all of these books about food, I'm ready to pull out the crockpot, too, and start making soups. In fact, it's grey, rainy, and in the 60's today so it may be time for the first batch of chili of the season.

Last Week I:

Listened To: Hunger by Roxane Gay (so good!) and I started Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane which I'm impressed with so far.

Watched: The season premiere of The Voice and lots of football. LOTS of football.

Read: I've been on a reading roll this week - I read Stir by Jessica Fechtor, Relish by Lucy Knisley and French Lessons by Peter Mayle. I am so inspired to get back to cooking!

Made: Two loaves of bread, BLTs (trying to get as many of these in with garden fresh tomatoes as we can!), caprese pasta (ditto with using tomatoes fresh from the garden), and grilled turkey burgers. Clearly, I've still been cooking summer meals this week!

Enjoyed: Working on a cookbook project. Ten years ago I put together a recipe book of the recipes that my side of the family has enjoyed when we've been together. Now it's time for an update that includes a lot of new recipes that each of our families enjoy, not just when we're all together. At this point, the supplement may be as big as the original book!


This Week I’m: 

Planning: On finishing the cookbook project and continuing with a massive reorganization project I started yesterday in the basement. 

Thinking About: Food. See what I've been reading. I'm putting together a menu for the week today, something I rarely do in the summer months. I need a whole chicken (thanks to Stir), good mushrooms (thanks to Stir and French Lesson), and pancetta and cheese (thanks to Relish and French Lessons). Fall Feasting always  does this to me!

Feeling: Groggy. I've had a sinus headache for more than a week, thanks to the weather. I need a couple of days without low pressure and with a lot of sunshine!

Looking forward to: Getting my hair colored on Saturday. I always feel ten years younger when I leave the salon but also so relaxed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I ever win the lottery, I'm never doing my own hair again!

Question of the week: What's on your menu this week? Are you busting out the soups yet?

Relish: My Life In The Kitchen by Lucy Knisley

Relish: My Life In The Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
Published April 2013 by Turtleback Books
Source: my local library

Publisher's Summary:
A graphically illustrated, recipe-complemented memoir by the indie cartoonist author of French Milk describes her food-enriched youth as the daughter of a chef and a gourmet, key memories that were marked by special meals and the ways in which cooking has imparted valuable life lessons.


My Thoughts:
Honestly, doesn't that summary make this book sounds kind of boring? It's the summary I found for the hardcover book. At the very least, it sounds so serious. Knisley may be serious about food but her storytelling is definitely not boring. First of all, it's a graphic novel - can they even be boring? For some reason, the paperback has an entirely different summary:

"Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe—many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy's original inventions. 

A welcome read for anyone who ever felt more passion for a sandwich than is strictly speaking proper, Relish is a graphic novel for our time: it invites the reader to celebrate food as a connection to our bodies and a connection to the earth, rather than an enemy, a compulsion, or a consumer product."

Now doesn't that sound more like a book you'd want to pick up? Knisley's writing and drawings are lighthearted and fun. What's more, although she's clearly a woman who appreciates fine food, she's not a food snob, confessing to a fondness for fast food and baking cookies.

The recipes Knisley shares at the end of each recipe are fully illustrated and, for the most part, not complex. She even makes rolling sushi look do-able. This book will not be going back to the library until I make copies of all of them. Sure, I could just write them down; but they wouldn't be nearly as much fun to make without the drawings!

Fall Feasting 2019

Several years ago I decided to devote a good portion of my fall reading to books about food. As much as I adore summer and love sitting on the patio eating salads, when the temps start to drop and the leaves start to change, I start to get my cooking mojo back. It stands to reason that books about food are just going to give me that much more inspiration. Last fall, it kind of got away from me but I'm feeling ready to mix in some food books this year so I'm brining it back.

I'm kicking this Fall Feasting season off with Lucy Knisley's Relish: My Life In The Kitchen, a graphic novel. I haven't read a graphic novel in a long while. If this goes well, I may just pick up Knisley's French Milk when I take Relish back to the library.

Also on my list of possible reads this fall are:
Stir: My Broken Brain and the Foods That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver
French Lessons by Peter Mayle
Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Harvest by Richard Horan

What books would you recommend for me to add to my list?

The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti

The Telling Room: A Tale of Loe, Betrayal, Revenge And The World's Greatest Piece of Cheese by Michael Paterniti
Published December 2013 by Gale Group
Source: this one is mine

Publisher's Summary:  In the picturesque village of Guzmán, Spain, in a cave dug into a hillside on the edge of town, an ancient door leads to a cramped limestone chamber known as “the telling room.” Containing nothing but a wooden table and two benches, this is where villagers have gathered for centuries to share their stories and secrets—usually accompanied by copious amounts of wine.

It was here, in the summer of 2000, that Michael Paterniti found himself listening to a larger-than-life Spanish cheesemaker named Ambrosio Molinos de las Heras as he spun an odd and compelling tale about a piece of cheese. An unusual piece of cheese. Made from an old family recipe, Ambrosio’s cheese was reputed to be among the finest in the world, and was said to hold mystical qualities. Eating it, some claimed, conjured long-lost memories. But then, Ambrosio said, things had gone horribly wrong. . . .

By the time the two men exited the telling room that evening, Paterniti was hooked. Soon he was fully embroiled in village life, relocating his young family to Guzmán in order to chase the truth about this cheese and explore the fairy tale–like place where the villagers conversed with farm animals, lived by an ancient Castilian code of honor, and made their wine and food by hand, from the grapes growing on a nearby hill and the flocks of sheep floating over the Meseta.

What Paterniti ultimately discovers there in the highlands of Castile is nothing like the idyllic slow-food fable he first imagined. Instead, he’s sucked into the heart of an unfolding mystery, a blood feud that includes accusations of betrayal and theft, death threats, and a murder plot. As the village begins to spill its long-held secrets, Paterniti finds himself implicated in the very story he is writing.

My Thoughts:
I know what the "experts" say about the food groups, but I have my own edition of what the food groups are and one of them is cheese. Yep, cheese gets it's own group. There are a whole lot of cheeses out there in the world and there are very few of them that I've tried and didn't like. So four years ago when I first heard about this book, I knew that I had to find out about the world's greatest piece of cheese.

I must admit that it seemed like it would be a stretch to write an entire book about one kind of cheese. Clearly I did not read the summary before I started reading because this book is so much more than a book about cheese. It is, at least a little bit, about the slow-food movement (it was that movement, after all, which caused Ambrosio Molinos' cheese to gain world-wide fame).

"Ambrosio saw himself as the needle and thread, stitching backward in time, unifying epochs. The awards had validated the idea that you could still make old food, the old way, and enthrall."

It's also about the Castilian way of life and the land. It's about family, friendship gone wrong, greed, and obsession. Not only Ambrosio's obsession with revenge but Paterniti's obsession with Ambrosio and the village of Guzman; Paterniti, a journalist who had traveled the world, became so obsessed with Ambrosio's story, eventually, he moved his entire family to Guzman. Which all makes it a book that's hard to put down, something you almost certainly wouldn't expect from a book you thought was just about cheese.

A word about Paterniti's writing: this book is chock-a-block full of footnotes; footnotes that have footnotes that have footnotes. Some of this is because of the way Ambrosio told his tale (and the tales of others). Much of it is simply Paterniti traveling down side roads, roads that were often humorous, often filled with Spanish history. Occasionally they were distracting but for the most part I enjoyed them. Just as I did Paterniti's writing. He brings the processes, the food, the land, and the people alive.

"The only constant was the bodega. It was nearly guaranteed that at some point along the way we'd end up in the telling room with Ambrosio holding forth, in great word gusts of appreciation for the joys of Castile. He slurped wine and let out wondrous sighs, saying, "Its taste reminds me of the old people who once sat here. It's a privilege to drink this wine." It was a privilege to eat the almonds and the chorizo and jamon, too. It was a privilege to sit on one's derriere in the telling room and get pleasantly soused while hearing stories. It was a privilege to walk this land, to live in this place, to watch the grain grow."

Years ago, my husband picked up a book called Driving Mr. Albert. He thoroughly enjoyed it but it didn't appeal to me (let's be honest, I wasn't really listening when the hubby was telling me about it). Turns out Paterniti wrote that book. I wonder if we still have it. Suddenly, it sounds very much like something I'd like to read!

Lit: Uniquely Portable Magic

So many bookish tidbits to share with you this week!

#1 Better World Books had a sale. The Big Guy suggested that I shouldn't have ordered books because I don't need any. I laughed. Then I reminded him that they were on sale. If you read my post yesterday, you know what a sucker he is for a sale so he really had no comeback for that. Here's what I picked up (after I removed ten other books from my cart - BG has no idea how lucky he is I didn't buy all of them!):

Defending Jacob by William Landay: this one isn't something I'd normally pick up but it's the kind of thing I'm into right now and it does get very good reviews

Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf: I've never read a Haruf book I didn't love

You Can't Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson: because humor works for me know but I'm also getting a some racial enlightenment while I'm at it

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert: Creative Living Beyond Fear is the subtitle - hope against hope that she can get my creative juices flowing

#2 Like a lot of communities, Omaha has chosen one book for the city to read together (Omaha Reads). This year's selection is Jonis Agee's The Bones of Paradise (which my bookclub will be reading for October). As part of the celebration of that book, the Omaha Public Library system has lined up speakers/authors whose books or areas of expertise tie into The Bones of Paradise in some way.

Wednesday night, a friend and I went to hear journalist/teacher/author Joe Starita talk about his book, I Am A Man: Chief Standing Bear's Journey For Justice. Starita was a great choice; he is passionate about the subjects he writes about and about story telling in general. He spoke for 45 minutes then took another 30 minutes just to answer two questions! The money he made selling books last night all goes into a scholarship fund for Native American high school seniors for college. It was great to see people who already had the book drop off money just for the scholarship fund or add a couple of extra dollars to their purchase. As it happens, I had my parents' copy and was able to get it autographed for them.

#3 I mentioned yesterday that we had gone to the Milwaukee Art Museum while we were in that fine city. Mini-me wanted to get us into the building (it's an incredible structure) but he was also eager to have us see the works of Rashid Johnson. The biggest piece on display is titled "Antoine's Organ." It's an incredible work.

And why might it be relevant to this blog? Because throughout the work, Johnson has included books about the black experience in America, including Richard Wright's Native Son, Te-Nehisi Coates's Between The World And Me, and W. E. B. Dubois's The Souls of Black Folks, all of which I'd like to get read one of these days.

In the final room of the exhibit, copies of the books were available for people to sit down and read through; of course, they were all available for purchase in the gift shop as well. I loved seeing the book world and the art world blended together.


#4 Finally, it's September, which means it's time for my annual Fall Feasting reading. Because I kind of forgot about it and because I want to make time for R.I.P. reading and Nonfiction November reading, I'm probably only going to get a couple of foodie books this fall.

I do have other books that could work for both Fall Feasting and Nonfiction November so I may be able to get one of two more worked in as well; but, for now, I'm shooting on (finally) reading The Vegetarian by Han Kang and (in honor of the people I love who live in Wisconsin) The Telling Room:  A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. 

I'd also like to take the time to read a cookbook as well; you know, the kind that don't just have recipes but all kinds of great information about food and cooking. Perhaps the one that's simply titled Soups? It is, after all, the perfect time of year to find some new soup recipes! Do you ever just sit down and read your cookbooks?

Butter: A Rich History by Elaine Khosrova

Butter: A Rich History by Elaine Khosrova
Published November 2016 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Source: my ecopy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary:
It’s a culinary catalyst, an agent of change, a gastronomic rock star. Ubiquitous in the world’s most fabulous cuisines, butter is boss. Here, it finally gets its due.

After traveling across three continents to stalk the modern story of butter, award-winning food writer and former pastry chef Elaine Khosrova serves up a story as rich, textured, and culturally relevant as butter itself.

From its humble agrarian origins to its present-day artisanal glory, butter has a fascinating story to tell, and Khosrova is the perfect person to tell it. With tales about the ancient butter bogs of Ireland, the pleasure dairies of France, and the sacred butter sculptures of Tibet, Khosrova details butter’s role in history, politics, economics, nutrition, and even spirituality and art. Readers will also find the essential collection of core butter recipes, including beurre manié, croissants, pâte brisée, and the only buttercream frosting anyone will ever need, as well as practical how-tos for making various types of butter at home—or shopping for the best.

My Thoughts:
You know I totally judged this book by its cover when I requested it on Netgalley. But almost as soon as I downloaded, I began to have my doubts. Just how much history can butter have? How can anyone write an entire book about one ingredient and keep it interesting?

I hadn't even read the summary before I started reading. Which, once again, proved to be a good thing because I kept being surprised. Turns out butter really does have a rich history.

Khosrova starts the book with the story of a Bhutanese family who still operate their dairy "farm" operations just as their long ago ancestors would have. This story might not suck all readers straight into the book but it did for me. The Bhutanese people are near and dear to my heart ever since my son spent a year working with refugees from that country who, literally, treated him as one of their own when it was time for him to move. And then, too, it is the perfect bridge between the earliest records of butter and the ways it was made to today's modern factory settings.

And just what did Khosrova teach me?

1. There's a "slow butter" revolution going on as the demand for local goods and artisan products grows. Smaller, independent dairys are making butters that have all kinds of flavors other than that perfectly acceptable version we can buy every day. I'm on the prowl now to find places near me where butter making is a craft.

2. Oh, so much science! From the way in which a vegetarian animal manages to produce a product that is so full of fat to the reason butter is yellow but the cream it is made from is white; from the physics of making flavor to the science between margarine versus butter. Not since Henrietta Laks have I been so fascinated by science.

3. Butter has actually played a part in the history of a number of world religions. Seriously. Druids, Celtic pagans, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity all feature butter in rites, celebrations, and as a means for control of believers. The Catholic church's demand that its followers abstain from butter during fasts caused a far greater hardship on those in the north who didn't have ready access to the olive oil that those in the south did during the Middle Ages, resulting in a Queen begging for permission to eat butter.

4. "Because dairying was closely identified with female rites of fertility, birthing, and lactation, strong cultural taboos against men handling milk existed for centuries around the world, and so the business of butter making free up squarely on the shoulders of hearty pastoral women." And so, butter making became the first real money-making, important job that women did.

5. The evolution of butter making is truly an amazing story. From what was likely an accidental discovery, to dairymaids  (Marie Antoinette even had her own aristocratic dairy operation), to the industrial revolution (beginning with the cream separator), and the fall and rise again of butter, I was surprised to see what a big role butter played in history.

6. The battle between margarine and butter came about in no small part because of faulty research which claims a definite link between the fat of butter and heart disease. Unfortunately, the initial push to do away with butter was based on research from only seven countries. Seven. That original study entirely ignored the research available from fifteen other countries, including France and Holland, countries with a high consumption of dairy fat and low rates of heart disease. It also did not take into account any other possible reasons people with a high fat diet might also be more likely to suffer from heart disease. Soddy research like that gives science a bad name. And that lead to...

7. Laws. About butter and margarine and the color of both. How crazy is that?

8. And back to science - the actual science of how butter impacts other foods and what happens to foods that are baked with it. Which lead to...

The recipes. The reason I now have to pay for a book that I just read for free. Also, because I know so many other people who will want to read this book!

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
272 pages
Published January 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: Bought this one

When Lillian was a little girl, her father left Lillian and her mother. Lillian's mother fell into books, spending day and night reading aloud, oblivious to everything around her. Lillian, in search of a way to bring her mother back, turned to food. She knew that if she made the right foods, she could bring her mother back to reality. When she discovered a little food shop operated by Abuelita, she discovered the true magic that the right kinds of food have.

Years later, Lillian owns her own restaurant. Once a month, on the nights that the restaurant is closed, Lillian opens her kitchen up for a cooking school, a place where she can show others what she has learned.

Tom has come to the lessons through a gift from his sister, a gift she gave him to help him deal with his grief. Antonia, a kitchen designer, is adjusting to life in America as she learns to show her customers how a kitchen can be much more than just a place to cook. Carl and Helen are a long-married couple working to rebuild their relationship. Young Chloe has lost what little confidence she had as her relationship with her boyfriend begins to fail. Claire is looking for something all her own, something that makes her more than just "the mom and wife." A computer wizard, Ian was sure he couldn't come to the class without knowing how to cook but learning how created more questions than answers. And Isabelle, who had years ago found an inner strength she had not known she had, is now dealing with the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Lillian will teach them all so much more than just how to cook. She'll teach them not just the essential ingredients in the kitchen but the essential ingredients in life. Along the way, they will bond in a way none of them would ever have thought possible.

I recently read Bauermeister's Joy For Beginners. This one is structured in a similar way; each of the characters is allowed their own chapter where they may or may not eventually interact with the other characters as Bauermeister explores their backstory. I liked it in Joy. I liked it even better in School where Bauermeister has interspersed the individual stories with the evenings in the school, bringing all of the characters together.

Of all of the books I've read about food the past few weeks, this is the one that most impressed me with it's ability to make the food it described come alive. Who would ever have thought a description of making white sauce could make me leave a book to go to the kitchen? Bauermeister has a unique way with words, bringing all of the reader's senses and memories a part of the book.

"...Lillian looked at the sauce, an untouched snowfield, its smell the feeling of quiet at the end of an illness, when the world is starting to feel gentle and welcoming again."

As with Joy, Bauermeister's has created a wide range of characters, some of which I connected with much more than others. Lillian's story touched my heart; Tom's story broke it, in no small part because of things that have happened in my life recently. Which, of course, is part of what makes one book affect people in so many different ways.

"For Lillian's mother, every part of a book was magic, but what she delighted in most were the words themselves. Lillian's mother collected exquisite phrases and complicated rhythms, descriptions that undulated across a page like cake batter pouring into a pan, read aloud to put the words in the air, where she could hear as well as see them."

Mythology Mondays

I've been reading all fall about food and I thought it was only fitting that when Mythology Mondays finally returned it would be to help wrap up Fall Feasting.

One can hardly talk about mythology and food without first talking about their apparent favorites: ambrosia and nectar. One can hardly imagine that the ambrosia referenced in mythology has any similarity to the salad pictured above. How in the world did a food that supposedly conferred immortality come to mean a fruit salad? I'm all for fruit, chopping it up and throwing different kinds together, and maybe even some kind of dressing. But I can hardly look at it and imagine it to be the food that Hera used to cleanse defilement from her body. Clearly this was not your ordinary ambrosia of grapes, apples and mandarin oranges!

Now nectar is, evidently, something we should all be having more of. The very roots of the word mean overcoming death. I'm not sure the Greeks had any idea how true that might be. Only recently have the antiseptic and antibacterial properties of honey, which is made from nectar, been discovered. Bacchus, god of wine, was probably your go-to guy if you were looking for the best nectar and in Norse mythology you'd find Odin and Saga enjoying the drink of immortality in golden cups.

There are rarely gods or goddesses that appear in mythology strictly as being in charge of food. More often there is a break down of the various parts of getting food to the table. For instance, the Greeks have Ceres, how is the goddess of the harvest. Ceres had several lessor gods who helped her get the harvest from the fields to those who would ready it for the table (Lactanus made the crops prosper and Insitor invoked at the sowing of the crops). Fornax was in charge of the food once it got to the oven, Molae was in charge of overseeing the grinding of the grain and Pomona was the goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards. In Latin mythology, the food was the charge of matrones who always appear in images in groups of three with one almost always holding a bowl of fruit.

I suppose it says a great deal about the state of the world that there are far more gods and godesses related to war, love and procreation than there are to food. Apparently, if they got the gods or goddesses to take care of the weather issues, they must have felt they were capable of handling the rest on their own. Perhaps they weren't so different from us after all.

My Life In France by Julia Child

My Life In France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
352 pgs
Published: my edition published June 2009
Source: I bought this one

Julia McWilliams was over thirty years old when she met and fell in love with Paul Childs. She couldn't cook, she couldn't speak French and she wasn't much of a foodie. Yet two years after the couple married in 1946, Julia found herself moving to France. She quickly set out to remedy both her language and cooking shortcomings. She roamed the streets of Paris, learning the language, local customs, and, mostly importantly, the food.

"This is the kind of food I had fallen in love with; not trendy, souped-up fantasies, just something very good to eat. It was classic French cooking, where the ingredients have been carefully selected and beautifully and knowingly prepared."

Paul was a gourmand and Julia, now in love with the food of France herself, enrolled herself in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school so that she could learn to prepare the kind of foods they loved. Although she found herself out of place at the school, she learned quickly and soon became lifelong friends with her teacher. In 1951 Julia met Madame Simone Beck Fischbacher (Simca as she would forever after be known). Simca was every bit as enthusiastic about food as Julia. Simca and Louisette Bertholle had been working on a cookbook. The three began working together, operating a cooking school out of Julia's kitchen. Soon Louisette and Simca invited Julia to help them with their cookbook, particularly once they decided that the book needed to be written in such a way so that it appealed to the American audience. The rest, as they say, is history. The first cookbook took years to write and have published. Julia was a a perfectionist when it came to making sure that the recipes were correct, that they would produce good results every time and that they were written in such a way as to make them doable for any cook. It was that first book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, the caught the attention of a public television producer in Boston and earned Julia her own cooking show. Soon Julia found herself every bit as well known as her cookbook.

Julia and Simca would remain friends for the rest of their days and compile a second volume of Mastering. But the two had vastly different methods of choosing and testing recipes for the books and Julia's fame was a thorn in the side of Simca who, no doubt, felt that she deserved equal attention. Despite the fact that the Childs spent their time in France in a house on land the Fischbachers owned, the relationship was often strained.

Paul and Julia spent the last years of their lives in the U.S. where Julia filmed her television shows in her own kitchen, a kitchen that became so famous itself that, when Childs moved to California, it was moved to the Smithsonian.

I picked this one up as a companion to Julie and Julia after seeing the movie of the same name. One of the things I loved about the movie was the back and forth between the two women's lives. I was surprised, then, to find that a lot of what was shown in the movie in the Julia parts did not actually happen. Julia didn't try her hand at hatmaking before she took cooking lessons, she didn't stumble across Simca and Louisette in the dressing room at a party, and she and her sister weren't close. I found myself repeatedly distracted by comparing the book and the movie.

Paul and Julia Childs certainly led an interesting life and the book portrays a fascinating look at Europe post-World War II. I can understand why so many people have enjoyed this book but I had some problems with it. Childs seems to have been under the belief that her readers also know French, frequently referring to things only by their French name or including sentences in French. How do I grasp how wonderful your meal was if I have no idea what the name of the dish means? I sometimes felt the book grew repetitious and often more detailed than was necessary. I can't say that I liked Julia very much. She was quick to point out the flaws of friends and family alike but never seemed willing to acknowledge her own faults. Still, I admire her tenacity, her passion and her deep love for her husband.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How A Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn
304 pages
Published September 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

When Kathleen Flinn returned to Seattle from studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the premier cooking school in the world, she had no idea what she was going to do with that education. Then a chance encounter in the grocery store set her on a mission to teach every day women how to cook for themselves and their families. Thus was born the Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Flinn invited a group of volunteers to weekly cooking lessons, learning everything from how to properly use a knife to how to cook all kinds of meet. Along the way the women learned to hone their taste buds, experiment with spices, and even to make bread. They gained confidence in their skills in the kitchen, learned how easy and fast it can be to make meals from scratch and discovered how much healthier it is to avoid prepackaged foods.

Following on the heels of Four Kitchens and Julie and Julia, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this book reinforced the ideas I had learned in those books. Even more surprising for me, was how much this book made me rethink the way I cook. I may not quite packaged foods altogether (c'mon, some of them taste so good!), but I'm certainly thinking about how I can do more from scratch using fewer canned and boxed goods. The book has wonderful recipes but the reason it will stay in my kitchen, where it will be handy, is for all of the helpful hints. I had no idea I should be cooking down my cream in my cream sauces.There were some industry-related revelations (for me, at least) in the book as well. Did you know that Hershey's used to the biggest manufacturer of pasta in the U.S.?

This is one of those books that I won't be lending, just recommending!

Sunday Salon - October 9

What a crazy week I've had...again! Prefer not to have another one like it but, on the plus side, I've had something of my own reading marathon the past four days. I managed to finished the better part of one book and two more and I've gotten a good start on a fourth book. Now that does feel good!

My month of Fall Feasting will finally kick off this week with a reviews of Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey and Table of Contents by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. Next up for my foodie reading is (finally!) Julie Powell's Julie and Julia. I might just have to follow this one up with a girls' movie night. My sister, niece, daughter and I all went to see the movie in the theater and loved it. I'm thinking we'll kick the guys out, get some popcorn and candy, and create the fun.

This week I'll also be reviewing Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes for a TLC Book Tour. Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer; the story of Capa and his love, Gerta Taro, have interested me since I first learned about him a couple of years ago so I jumped at the chance to read this one.

Next weekend is the Omaha Lit Fest. I believe I've mentioned (a few hundred times) how impressed I was with last year's event. Needless to say I'm really looking forward to this year's event and getting a chance to introduce myself to Mary Helen Stefaniak (The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA). Ms. Stefaniak teaches at Creighton University, here in Omaha, and I'm so excited that she's agreed to meet with the Omaha Bookworms in person this month!

Next up for me this week is The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn. I'm hearing great things about this one so I'm really looking forward to it. What are you reading this week?

Sunday Salon - October 2

As part of Banned Books Week this past week, BookBrowse.com offered these thoughts on reading:

9 Things That Happen When You Read

In a series of lectures, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk ruminated on what goes on in the mind of a person reading a novel. His thoughts are summarized by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. below. Do these match your experiences? The point about finishing a (great) novel and feeling that it had been written just for me particularly struck home - it maybe irrational but it's so true!

1. We observe the general scene and follow the narrative. Whether action-filled or more literary, we read all novels the same way: seeking out the meaning and main idea.
2. We transform words into images in our mind, completing the novel as our imaginations picture what the words are telling us.
3. Part of our mind wonders how much is real experience and how much is imagination. "A third dimension of reality slowly begins to emerge within us: the dimension of the complex world of the novel."
4. We wonder if the novel depicts reality as we know it. Is this scene realistic, could this actually happen?
5. We enjoy the precision of analogies, the power of narrative, the way sentences build upon one another, the music of the prose.
6. We make moral judgments about the characters' behavior, and about the novelist for his own moral judgments by way of the characters' actions and their consequences.
7. We feel successful when we understand the text, and we come to feel as though it was written just for us.
8. Our memory works hard to keep track of all the details, and in a well-constructed novel, everything connects to everything.
9. We search for the secret center of the novel, convinced that there is one. We hunt for it like a hunter searches for meaningful signs in the forest.

Yesterday kicked off two things; National Reading Group Month and my month for Fall Feasting, a month devoted to reading books about cooking and food.  Oh sure, National Reading Group Month has all kinds of gatherings and famous authors but I'm not going to get to go to any them. So I'll be looking forward to reading and talking about food. I just got a new refrigerator and swapped out my deep freeze with the old refrigerator so I've really taken stock this weekend of the food I have on hand and my mind is racing with the possibilities. Can't wait for the books to give me the final inspiration to get in the kitchen and make some delicious meals.

What are you looking forward to reading?

Fall Feasting

For some reason as fall arrives every year, it seems that we are prone to start thinking more about "comfort" foods, the kinds of things that will help us put on that extra weight we used to need to help survive the cold winters. Sure we don't need it any more but our bodies just don't seem to have evolved far enough to figure that out yet.

Maybe that's why I suddenly found myself accepting not one but two new books about food for review. Sensing a theme (I'm quick that way), I realized that I have several other food related books waiting patiently on my shelves. So, while the rest of you are reading the scary books that are more commonly read this time of year, I'll be devoting the next few weeks to books about or featuring food. On the agenda:

Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kat Finn

Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
My Life In France by Julia Childs
Table of Contents by Judy Gelman & Vicki Levy Krupp
Sugar Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

With my other commitments, that should get me through the fall. But if you've got another book I absolutely must read that is food-related, please let me know what it is and why you love it!