Booklist Food Webinar
Slide 1—if you’re still with me, then you’re probably starving by now and if you’re
not, please bring the rest of us some of those Grandma’s cookies or a Twix out of
the vending machine. We know where you went.
Food will always be one of the most popular and fascinating subjects for readers
because everybody does it. Eats, that is. Whether you’re a closet candy freak or
a galloping gourmet you don’t need a refined palate to enjoy reading about
America’s oldest pastime.
Some readers like to know where their food comes from. Anthony Bourdain is
more than happy to give you all the spice-infused dirt while brandishing a butcher
knife in his restaurant memoir, Kitchen Confidential. Steve Dublanica does for the
dining room what Bourdain does for the kitchen and fine diners will hopefully
think twice before ordering everything on the side and then sending it back to the
kitchen. And tipping? Do it. Dublanica agrees that restaurant staff deserve to
make a decent hourly wage, but you not tipping in protest of their poor wages
won’t make it a national labor law. Debra Ginsberg provides the flip side of the
server story from a waitress’s POV. And she has some very interesting stories to
tell about life in a diner.
Slide 2--How did food obtain celebrity status? Ask David Kamp. He chronicles
the rise of foodie culture in The United States of Arugula, a compelling work of
food journalism. Both of these books are about fast food, but one of them
probably won’t kill you. The Zen of Fish traces the history of the sushi craze in
America by reaching back to Japanese traditions. Fast Food Nation will fascinate
and frighten anyone who has ever had it their way with a side of fries. Give these
books to readers who enjoy the nuts and bolts of a business.
Slide 3--If the American interstate system gave rise to our Fast Food Nation, it
was the railroad empires that helped build America’s first chain restaurants,
Harvey Houses. Get the true story of Fred Harvey and how the west was fed in
Appetite for America. Fashionable Food examines some of the culinary crazes
going back to the 1920s. From luaus to crock-pots to fondue, this book is a
smorgasbord of laughable, yet occasionally tasty, food trends. Try talking your
historical fiction fans into one of these titles
Slide 4—Food brings people together in strange and cramped places. The
Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, explore kitchens on wheels on the
NASCAR circuit, the lunch counters that gave birth to political movements, and
makeshift kitchens of the homeless. An eye-opener about food and how it
humbles and inspires us. Don’t look here for recipes, look instead for humanity.
Lighten the mood with a history of candy, in Sweets. From the cocoa bean
currency of the Mayans, to the construction art of gingerbread houses,
Richardson explores all the spun sugar memories of childhood.
Slide 5—Remember when I said if you were still with me you were probably
starving? Yeah, well, let’s cure that with Horsemen of the Esophagus. Americans
will compete for anything, even a golden hot dog trophy. Fast food gets a whole
new meaning here. Each winner deserves a year’s supply of Pepto Bismol.
Anytime someone throws a potluck, at least two women go into Olympic-level
competition mode. Think dueling-cupcake-mommies raised to the highest stake
in Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America. There are thousands of cooking contests
held every year from chili cook offs to that Holy Measuring Cup of contests, the
Pillsbury Bake-Off contest. These ladies could shrivel all the knives of the Iron
Chef.
Slide 6—Cooking is a science. The unexamined pot roast is not worth eating.
Russ Parsons takes some basic cooking tenets and applies accessible science t
explain why onions make us cry, how apples get “mealy” and why potatoes are
better boiled than fried. Oh, and there’s some recipes in here, too, to prove his
point, that cooking is matter of carefully crafted formulas. Cake Wrecks is the
schadenfreude of dessert picture books. We all know we’ll never bake like
Martha, but we can misspell names, accidentally make a baseball look like a
wayward body part, and whip up black frosting that would scare Wes Craven. No
one’s caught it on camera—yet. Find the funny in the bakery flipping through
these butter cream monstrosities.
Slide 7—Everybody likes to talk about food and apparently write about it. Food
memoirs are one of the most popular subgenres of memoir. Barbara Kingsolver
applies her thoughtful, humorous writing style to a year of eating locally and off
her own land Animal Vegetable Miracle. She’s not preachy about it either.
Patricia Volk focuses on the recipe that makes a quirky, loving family and what
feeds them. As much about food as it is her delightful relatives, Volk’s story is
funny, touching, and nostalgic. Good for book groups. Give A Stew or a Story to
the fierce foodies who also read. MFK Fisher’s eclectic mix of essays on people
and places, as well as food, is not just about the ingredients, it’s about the love of
a profession.
Slide 8—What a great pairing we have here! Ann’s tropical island cooking
adventures with oregano-eating goats and nutmeg plantations and Jason’s rapid
fire, “I get paid to play with knives” in New York’s culinary madhouses. Both talk
about food and the people who cook it with passion in completely different ways.
Give Spice Necklace to fans of the Barefoot Contessa and give Cooking Dirty to
readers who want to be Cake Boss.
Slide 9—If he’s master of the grill and she’s mistress of the sauté pan, they’ll
both see the humor and wisdom in He said Beer, She said Wine. They make
informed inspired suggestions for pairing beer and wine with everything from
pizza to petit fours. Of course women eat. Our emotional relationship with food is
so complex sometimes even we don’t understand it. The essay collection in
Women Who Eat explores many of our conflicted feelings and offers some
recipes for garnish.
Slide 10—Guys probably aren’t as conflicted, as evidenced by the Two Dudes in
their first cookbook. While women are scouring the pantry for all suitable
ingredients, the dudes are checking the cupboards to see if there’s a cooking
vessel he can both cook in and eat from. But don’t write these guys off, they offer
100 one-pan recipes that use minimal ingredients and prep time hearkening back
to their early days of no money, ingredients, or cookware.
And of course, what kind of cookbook presentation would this be without the
Kitchen Goddess herself, Julia Child?
Slide 11-- Everyone walks into the kitchen sometime, even if it’s just leave the
dirty dishes or gaze into the fridge one more time. Which is why these books are
here. They are picture books of food for adults. What I think of as food porn.
These foodstuffs are dressed up, garnished, butter-dabbed, and make you want
to lick the page.
Slide 12—The Blackberry Farm Cookbook takes this fantasy further. It’s a
fantasy picture book about how grownups would live and eat if they ran away to
Blackberry Farm and money and waistlines were no object.
See? Adults still read fairy tales, we call them cookbooks.