Does anyone else love food books?

[ccowie]

I read a wide variety of things, both fiction and non fiction. I love Sci Fi and just plain good literature.

I'm also a bit of a foodie. I love cooking and eating! So, over the past few years I have developed a real penchant for food books. I'm not a real cook book fan because I generally tend to experiment a lot and only occaisionally use recipies for general guidance.

But, I love books about food and can't seem to find enough of them. I've read Michael Pollan's books and loved them. I've read Fast Food Nation, The Year of Eating Dangerously and other similar books. I also enjoy books about restaurants, bios of chefs and I love everything by Anthony Bourdain.

Does anyone else love this stuff as much as I do, and if so what are your favourites?

[DixieGal]

I've never had a food book, but I have seen a cake made to look like a pink iPod.

[phenomshel]

I like mysteries with food (and recipes!) in them. Diane Mott Davidson, Joanne Fluke, Julie Hyzy, Jessica Conant-Park.

[jes1]

I love the Anthony Bourdain tv shows and his books. I just picked up the Julia Childs e-book version of "My Life in France" since she has long been one of my heroes. I also have a very extensive cookbook collection. Food movies and books and tv shows are very entertaining to me. Unfortunately, they make me very hungry, and then I need a snack.

[ccowie]

I read My Life in France the week it came out and enjoyed it thoroughly. If you like it, you may also like Devil in the kitchen by Marco Pierre White. For Bourdain fans this is a good book too.

Also, if you want to really laugh, but in a completely different way than with a Bourdain book try It Must Have been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten.

Phenomshel,
I've never read a mystery that has food and recipies in it. Any suggestions?

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by ccowie

I read My Life in France the week it came out and enjoyed it thoroughly. If you like it, you may also like Devil in the kitchen by Marco Pierre White. For Bourdain fans this is a good book too.

Also, if you want to really laugh, but in a completely different way than with a Bourdain book try It Must Have been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten.

Phenomshel,
I've never read a mystery that has food and recipies in it. Any suggestions?

Uh oh, you got me started *grin*. Well, first off, anything by the three authors I mentioned in the previous post.

There's a ton of "food" mysteries out there. Miranda Bliss has the Dying for Dinner series, Lou Jane Temple's Heaven Lee series is all about food in the Kansas City area (and beyond), Tamar Myers' Pennsylvania Dutch series has recipes....Joanne Pence's Angie Amalfi series, JoAnna Carl has chocolate mysteries, Sammi Carter has candy shop mysteries...and on and on and on. Do a search for "food mysteries" on Google and you get a couple of Amazon lists that are helpful.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by ccowie

But, I love books about food and can't seem to find enough of them. I've read Michael Pollan's books and loved them. I've read Fast Food Nation, ...

Given these books you might like Ruth L. Ozeki's "My year of meats". She's also written a second book that features potatoes and the potato industry, but it's still only on my to-be-read list.

I've recently read two of Pollan's books myself - very interesting - and I'd like to see "Food inc." but I guess I will have to wait until it's out on DVD

[bookfiend]

I'm currently reading Born Round, by Frank Bruni. It's more autobiographical than anything else, but there's a lot of food too!

[jes1]

I love food movies, too. "Big Night", "Tampopo" and "Eat Drink Man Woman" stand out as movies that make you hungry.

[BenG]

Don't forget Babette's Feast and Like Water For Chocolate.

[ccowie]

Hey, Thanks all for the great suggestions. I've been away for a few days and just checked in. I'll look forward to some tracking down some of these books.

Pollan's books really are fantastic and if you can get a chance before it leaves theatres, definitely make an effort to see Food Inc. I talk about the contents of food books alot at home and so I took my kids (12 and 14) to see Food Inc. It's resulted in hours of great discussion and a genuine interest in changing eating and general food habits.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by ccowie

Pollan's books really are fantastic and if you can get a chance before it leaves theatres, definitely make an effort to see Food Inc. I talk about the contents of food books alot at home and so I took my kids (12 and 14) to see Food Inc. It's resulted in hours of great discussion and a genuine interest in changing eating and general food habits.

It probably won't even reach a cinema here... so no chance even to forget to catch it

[BenG]

Cross Creek Cookery by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is another cookbook that's also a great read.
Rawlings was the author of The Yearling and Cross Creek.
It's just good Florida cracker cooking and anecdotes of life in Florida in the early 20th century. The Black-bottom Pie is the best but if you ever need a recipe for gopher or coot this is the place to look.

http://monthsofediblecelebrations.bl...k-cookery.html

[Panda Rose]

There are a few in the UK too. One in particular,Toast by Nigel Slater.

[chlorine]

The Mistress of Spices, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, is a great book about a woman who knows spices to the perfection, and uses them both for cooking, but also healing, up to the point that this becomes a kind of magic.

Other food-related books that come to mind, but may not be the kind of thing you're looking for:
The world according to Monsanto, by Marie-Monique Robin. A non-fiction book about the Monsanto company and the GMO foods it designed (also about other products, non-food related, by the company).

And somebody in this forum recommanded
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, crèche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

The thread's here.