Food and Drink Reads: Hibernation Instinct Edition

I know it is still hot as blazes but leaves are falling all over town and you know Fall is in the air when the pumpkin ales start taking over local taps.
Speaking of taps, and ales, and fall produce...

The Complete Beer Course: Boot Camp for Beer Geeks

This book was sitting on my desk the other day and I can't tell you how stoked I was to see that the book fairy knows what I like. If you have been meaning to develop your palate to keep up with Richmond's habit of opening a new brewery every 10 days or so and be able to hobnob with the hopsnobs you'll want to crack open this text book and get to studying, er, tasting. The book is broken into 12 "classes" in which you will learn to appreciate all varieties of beer, from ales to pils to sours. This is a crash course in knowing what you are drinking and why. Bonus points for coverage, depth, and readability, but I have to take away points for repeated use of the word "mouthfeel". That is a gross word, food nerds.

Apples of Uncommon Character:123 heirlooms, modern classics & little-known wonders
Behold, the humble apple, red or green, oft-forgotten and unwanted brown bag lunch staple. But oh my there is so much more to know and love about this curious experiment in fruit, far beyond Johnny Appleseed, more than cider even! Have you ever been to an apple tasting? Me either, but I desperately want to now. I am a long time apple devotee but I had no idea there were so many varieties. Expect lively apple history, appetizing photographs with details about individual varieties, and even pairing and cooking tips in this book.
Pro-tip from this apple fan: Try making a grilled cheese sandwich with plenty of Gouda, caramelized onions, and slices of Honeycrisp apple on Billy Bread sometime. Add a little bacon if you need it. Then read this book while eating that sandwich. You'll thank me.

The B.T.C: Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Revival

Truthfully, I like reading about Southern cooking and the idea of Southern food more than I actually enjoy cooking or eating it. If you feel the same way, or if you really like making biscuits and gravy and need a new recipe, then this is for us! The writing and the pictures are great and the recipes are actually interesting; some are twists on traditional Southern dishes and others less traditional. I'm totally sold on the curried cauliflower soup, southern yellow squash casserole, and tomato caper cream cheese!

I also might have hunker down with a series this fall. I tend to avoid books in a series because I hate waiting (flash back to the AGONIZING wait for the final book in the Maddaddam trilogy and the way I totally lost interest in the Strain trilogy by the time the second book came out) but the Southern Reach trilogy is about all published now so I can safely go ahead. My favorite quote from the mostly super positive reviews so far: "If the guys who wrote 'Lost' had brought H.P. Lovecraft into the room as a script doctor in the first season, the Southern Reach trilogy is what they would've come up with." Totally perfect because I also waited until Lost was over and done with before watching the whole series.  And how better to spend a blustery fall weekend than huddled under a blanket with a savory snack and an unsavory trilogy, and some apples? Lots and lots of apples. Or should I finally read Lev Grossman's Magician trilogy? If you've read either or both trilogies, what would you recommend? What series have let you down, left you hanging, or made you beg for a prequel?

Gotta love Fall!

It's almost Mother's Day! (Did you make a present for your mom yet?)

It's almost Mother's Day!  Mom loves handmade gifts that come from the heart, right?  You could bake her some fantastic cookies, invent some ridiculous new mimosa to serve at your Mother's Day brunch, sew her a darling new apron from a vintage Hawaiian shirt...yeah, I'm on this.  You know where you can find scads of books, resources, and even classes on everything from container gardening to crafting to crochet to cooking?

I think you know where.

Anyway, there are some scrumptious looking new finds for would-be and committed crafters on the shelves this Spring.  Allow me to introduce you to a few.

Upcycling

by Danny Seo

Mom hates waste.  There are starving children somewhere and finishing your peas matters.  Danny Seo also hates wasting things, including things you may still be using for their intended purpose.  He wants you to make pretty, functional wares and decorations out of "stuff you already have".  For some of the projects, "stuff you already have" only applies if you happen to live in an Ace Hardware, but in a craft book of 200 pages with nearly a craft per page, one can forgive a little stretching of the made-up term "upcycle".  I mean, there has to be some filler, like the crafts that are less "trash to treasure" and more "trip to Lowe's to trash".  I personally LOVE the faux bear skin rug made from another, non bear-shaped, rug (is this just "cycling"?) and the *darling* bird cage chandelier made out of fake birds, a cannibalized IKEA paper lantern and chicken wire. Namely, stuff I definitely do not already have (except a bunch of fake birds--of those I have plenty).  The Starry-Sky Artwork project is a really cool way to make your collection of ugly hotel landscape paintings really *pop* (yes, I'm serious). He even has a 10 second project to use that tangled wad of Christmas lights you swore you'd store neatly this time but didn't. Hoarding mason jars and river rocks?  Mom, I'm looking at you.  Danny Seo has a project for that and you only need strong glue.

Upcycling has a bunch of really cool projects, and a few head-scratchers, but everything is well styled and photographed, and there are some cute crafts for kids to do too.  Definitely worth checking out if you love projects and hate throwing things away.

Eat & Make

by Paul Lowe

Sweet Paul is sweet. And I mean sweet. My mom would love him. This book is just charming! Cover, styling, author, and all.  What is it about those Northern Europeans that they have such photogenic homes?  I am admittedly a sucker for vintage clothing, vintage linens, vintage dishes, etc, but for some reason when I put it together it looks more like Wes Anderson got drunk and went blindfolded to a flea market and then got into a fist fight with Rachel Ashwell (of Shabby Chic--the original upcycler) over the perfect ashtray. *Ahem*  Eat & Make is primarily a cookbook but with complimentary crafts, mostly for table settings, thrown in.  The book is divided by time of day with a slant toward brunch-y foods and lighting, the recipes being a sort of "quick Swedish fusion" that goes well with vintage speckled enamel crocks and quirky "upcycled" aprons. I literally can't get enough of the creamy, yummy photography, the clean and bright white interiors, and just the general, Scandinavian-wooden-wheel barrow-natural-farmer's market-ness of it.   And I can't wait to make his Morning Biscuits, Snug Eggs, and Merry Marys.  I don't even care if his idea of "upcycled" candlesticks are just tapers crammed haphazardly (fire hazardly!) into big metal nuts.  They look so off-beat romantic when photographed in extreme close-up on his rough-hewn barn door table!  Check this book out for the menus and the pictures.  Don't make any of his candles unless you want to burn down your kitchen.  Mom would NOT approve.  She will however approve of the gorgeous grapefruit, red cabbage, and goat cheese salad on the cover.  She thinks you should eat more fruits and veggies.

Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget
Clinton Kelly

This book is a kick.  It provides simple instructions about how to quickly and cheaply transform your boring life into an instant cocktail party. Picture this: Anne Hathaway starring in a romantic comedy about a girl who has to pretend to be the sort of ad executive who throws effortlessly fabulous cocktail parties all the time when in fact she is a temp who can barely afford her communal studio apartment, ramen noodle dinners, and 4 cats. "Sally", played by Ms. Hathaway, frantically dashes around her 200 square foot apartment wearing curlers in a montage of dip-dyeing her grubby white bathmat into a designer ombre masterpiece and whipping up some goat cheese and red pepper mousse (on a budget), wrapping her drab, white lampshades with burlap, and altering her ill-fitting thrift store rags into hot off the runway looks tailored to her perfect body. Hilarity and romance ensues. Roll credits. That's the upcoming film adaptation of Clinton Kelly's Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget.  Don't believe me?  Check it out.  You'll see.  And mom loves to be fabulous.  You know what else mom loves?  Thrift.


What we take away from most craft books now is "NEVER. THROW. ANYTHING. AWAY." What they don't tell you is what to do with the stuff you mustn't ever throw away until you have enough (fill in the blanks) to fashion into a new thing.  To answer this question I propose a pre-craft interior decorating book.  I'll call it "decor-cycle" and it will be nothing but well-styled, super close-up photographs of vintage-modern interiors decorated *tastefully* with old tires painted white and filled with wine corks--wine corks just hanging out *tastefully* until I have enough for a bulletin board, trivet, dog bed, bathmat, and miniature refrigerator magnet succulent gardens.  And if I never happen to get around to the bulletin board, trivet, dog bed, bathmat, and miniature refrigerator magnet succulent gardens, I still have a *totally chic and tasteful* arrangement of wine corks in my living room.  I am *not*, however, sitting on my charming vintage sofa (old futon) sipping wine and chucking the corks into an old tire. I will *not* end up on Hoarders. To all the moms out there, including my own mom who taught me to love making stuff out of other stuff and took me to the library every week to check out craft books, Happy Mother's Day!

What's Cooking at Ginter Park?

My mother is a marvelous cook, the sort of cook who seems to have this preternatural sense of when something is “just right”, be it dough, broth, or batter.  I, on the other hand, need detailed directions with pictures or my mother a frantic phone call away talking me through her gravy recipe again.  I've been so envious of what has always seemed to be completely natural culinary instinct, which I did not inherit, but have realized it is actually the result of years of patient trial and error using cookbooks.  She still pulls out a Martha Stewart Living, or Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day, or a well-worn 3x5 card penned in her neat script (something else I did not inherit) for a recipe she has been preparing for decades.  I can picture her cooking library lined up neatly on top of the pie safe.  I loved browsing their flour-dusted spines, pulling them off the shelf to look at the sumptuous images and reading the cryptic instructions to mince, temper, proof, etc. The thought came to me recently while I was shelving, as thoughts have a way of doing then, (trade secret: shelving can be a very meditative experience) that I should test-drive a handful of our wonderful collection of cookbooks available at Ginter Park to find my own flavor and to start compiling my own library of trusted recipes.  

Classic Spanish Cooking: Recipes for Mastering the Spanish Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard

This book presents traditional Spanish recipes to perhaps more confident cooks than me.  The directions are minimal and seem to assume a lot of prior experience with the ingredients, such as the time and temperature requirements for  short grain rice. Still undaunted, (no, slightly daunted) I opted to try out the arroz a la cubana, or Cuban rice, recipe because I love fried plantains and I already had the tomatoes pureed. Ultimately it was simple enough and fortunately I’ve prepared risotto before, which operates similarly, so I could make educated guesses as to the missing directions.  The result was great!  It was rated quite highly by Peter, my taste tester, and seemed pretty healthy at least in keeping with the Mediterranean diet I have been reading so much about, so I would definitely incorporate this into my culinary repertoire and I will definitely try another recipe from this book.

The Best American Recipes 2003-2004, ed. by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens

This series compiles the most highly reviewed recipes each year from sources such as The New York Times and House Beautiful. I love the little “cook’s notes” the editors add which are special caveats included with certain recipes.  I made a simple "escarole and little meatball soup" (minestra) because I love miniature things and "little meatballs" sounded a-dor-able. It was very easy and inexpensive, using ingredients I had on hand already, but it was a little spare in flavor, so perhaps it would be a good canvas for experimenting with seasonings. I liked it for the potential; Peter thought it was just OK. Alas, I am aware of my limitations and overall these cookbooks are great.

Richmond Receipts: Past & Present by Jan Carlton

I am new in town from Cincinnati so I wanted to try something local and this certainly fit the bill. Intimidated by all the ways to prepare ham, I got cook-shy and ended up choosing a recipe for rice croquettes, sometimes called arancini, that looked like a simple way to use up leftover rice.  I opted to use some leftover risotto rather than the long-grain rice the recipe calls for, so I basically ignored the recipe completely but the result was every bit as good as I had hoped and the book itself is an informative collection of local culinary history and customs so it is well worth a read.  And anyway, the rice croquettes provided a nice side dish for the recipe I tried from the next book.

The Breakaway Cook by Eric Gower features beautifully photographed results of recipes with gorgeous, exotic, and sometimes difficult to find, ingredients.  I selected a recipe with a short ingredient list: the baked peas with tarragon, yogurt, and pistachios.  I found it to be fabulous and Peter agreed. With such fresh, light, and flavorful ingredients, (yogurt, tarragon, peas, pistachios, scallions and olive oil) it brought summer to mind, and then it snowed.  Spring is finally springing though and I am so ready to dine  outdoors again!  I will definitely be making this dish again.

Moosewood Restaurant New Classics by the Moosewood Collective

My mother has a Moosewood cookbook, so this was sort of a nostalgia checkout for me; I can't walk past this book on the shelf without thinking of her.  Nobody does vegetarian cooking better than these guys, seriously.  Fare that can often be sad, bland veggies with under-heated grains is transformed into food so flavorful you won’t miss the meat.  I made the curried quinoa because it used up all the leftover peas from the recipe above.  It paired well with a leftover chorizo soup and some homemade bread. Hungry yet?  

Just think how extra great a home-cooked meal using your homegrown herbs this summer would be!  Maybe you should go sign up for the container gardening program at the Ginter Park branch, March 30th, to find out?