Book Giveaway Times Two

We're so happy to have a second copy of Melissa Clark's fabulous new cookbook, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, to give away to one lucky reader. We did a full review of the book here, but if you want a brief recap here's what you need to know: You want this book.

Clark is a wonderful writer (New York Times columnist of A Good Appetite, award-winning book author, for starters) who introduces her terrific recipes with short vignettes from her past. Sometimes they're about family memories; sometimes they're about how she created this particular recipe — whatever they're about, they're funny and down to earth. This is a cookbook for real people in real kitchens.

Our favorite part? She doesn't obsess about every little detail. If she's missing a certain ingredient, she wings it — with obvious great success.

Winning couldn't be easier. Just leave a comment below and we'll pick one lucky winner to receive a free copy of the book. Winner will be chosen at random on Thursday and announced on Friday.

Good luck!

---Janet and Rachel

Books That Make Us Hungry: In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

It's been a while since we chatted about a book that was making us hungry, but Melissa Clark's new cookbook, In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite, is worthy of note. When I asked to get a copy of the book from the publisher, I figured it would be a typical, but tasty of course, cookbook. What I didn't realize was that Clark has written the book we'd planned to write. Dammit!

So I was prepared not to like the book or Clark. But instead we had a lovely chat on the phone AND I love her book! A food columnist with the New York Times, Clark peppers her food escapades with recipes and memorable anecdotes. Sometimes they are about her life and her family’s; other times they focus on food trends and ideas. It’s a chatty, down-to-earth style that immediately makes her recipes seem equally accessible.

The book’s chapter titles—titles like Things with Cheese, There’s Always Room for Pie (and Tarts) and My Sweet Tooth and Me—further reflect Clark’s down-home approach. She opens each one with a memory before moving on to recipes and more stories for each one. The chapter My Mother’s Sandwich Theory of Life, for instance, describes her mother’s premise: “Good sandwiches are like interesting people, unpredictable and filled with surprises,” writes Clark, “Each bite should be a little different; otherwise it gets boring. It’s like a conversation. If you can anticipate the next sentence, why bother? If you know exactly what the next bite of a sandwich will taste like, why eat it?”So true, don't you think?

Clark moves on to her favorite sandwich recipes, opening each with her own recollections. The recipe for pan bagnat, a traditional tuna and vegetable sandwich hailing from Nice, France, is prefaced by a tale of her family’s yearly trek to France for the summer where they essentially ate their way around the country. (Not what was happening in my family, I can tell you, where the Jersey shore was the annual option, not exactly a place known for its culinary wonders.) When her mother made this flattened sandwich, she relied on Clark or her sister to sit on the well-wrapped sandwich to mash it down to just the right consistency of olive oil and vinegar mixing. Today, Clark relies on a filled kettle placed on top of a baking pan to achieve the flatness she desires, but I just loved picturing a squirming little girl schmooshing a sandwich.

Switching a kettle for a butt is no biggie for Clark because she is the consummate relaxed cook. No capers for that soft-shell crab sandwich? No problem. Use the jar of caperberries sitting in the fridge instead. I love that about her and her cooking.

By the time I was done with In the Kitchen, I felt as if Clark is a friend, someone I could easily chat with at a party or over a meal. Oh, and I also had a 150 tasty recipes to try.

Now, dear readers, here's the good news! You, too, can have this fabulous cookbook. Just leave a comment below and we'll be picking a reader at random on Friday to have a copy mailed to them. It's Free! Free! Free!

In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, 150 Recipes & Stories About the Food You Love, by Melissa Clark, Hyperion Books, 444 pages, $27.50.

Books That Make Us Hungry: Happy Haulidays from Chronicle Books Giveaway!

Yes, readers, the holidays are upon us soon, and Chronicle Books, a real favorite of ours here at Life Told in Recipes, is having a lovely little contest where we can all win. Here's how it works. We create a list of books we would love to win (see below). Then you just comment on the books and why you'd like to be a winner. Then on Dec. 13 Chronicle picks a winning blog AND one reader from that blog who has commented. We both then get a happy shipment of the books on this list.

How great is that!!!! Could it be any simpler??? This is the proverbial win-win for us all so spread the word to your friends etc.

Without further ado our list of top faves:

Cake Pops by Bakerella (yes we already did one giveaway of this book but we had so many interested readers, that we would love to spread the love here some more)

Farmers' Market Desserts by Jennie Schacht (the more dessert cookbooks the better, we say)

Whoopie Pies by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwell (ditto to dessert cookbook comment)

Savory Baking Pastries by Mary Cech and Noel Barnhurst (clearly a baking theme is emerging here)

Cupcake Kit by Elinor Kilvan (because the more cupcakes in the world, the better for us all)

The Big Book of Appetizers by Meridith Deeds and Carla Snyder (who doesn't love throwing a dinner party with lots of great appetizers?)

Delicious Dips AND Skinny Dips by Diane Morgan (we could go low or high-fat if we had both of these wonderful books)

Soup's On by Leslie Jonah and Frank Frankeny (nothing is better for warming the heart on a wintry day than homemade soup)

At Home with Friends by Michele Adams, Gia Russo and Victorial Peisor (tips for fab entertaining)

Blackbird Bakery's Gluten Free Baking by Karen Morgan (we're curious about this and what better way to try out the idea)

Time for Dinner by Pilar Guzman, Alanna Stang and Jenny Rosentrach (everything every busy parent needs to know to put quick, healthy meals on the table seven days a week)

Commonsense Kitchen: 500 Recipes Plus Lessons for a Hand-crafted Life by Tom Hudgens (appeals to our obsessive recipe collection natures)

Latin Grill: Sultry and Simple Food for Red Hot Dinners and Parties by Rafael Palomino, Arlen Gargagliano and Dan Goldberg (who doesn't love spicy food?)

Love in Spoonfuls: Fast and EAsy Ways to Make Nutritious Food for Your Baby (The Divine Miss M deserves this!)

Book of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks by Bethany Keeley (one of us is a grammar freak)

Mom's One-Line a Day: 5-Year Memory Book (one of us is a new mom who STILL talks about how her mother, the other one of us, didn't do a baby book about her; this is the revenge gift)

Baby Face Nesting Blocks (another gift for the Divine Miss M)

and a few Moleskins planners and notebooks because they are the coolest books ever for keeping track of life's stuff.

So that's it. We want to win because we want YOU to win! So comment below and spread the word.....

Happy Haulidays to all!

Janet and Rachel

Books That Make Us Hungry: Rachael Ray's New Cookbook

Rachael Ray falls into a similar category as Martha Stewart for a lot of people: You either love her or hate her.

I happen to be a fan so I was thrilled to get in on a group conference call last week with Ray about her new cookbook, Look + Cook, which goes live today. When I say "live," I mean that literally because the book, in addition to feature 100 "can't-miss main courses in pictures," also includes interactive 30-minute meals online where she cooks the recipes with the clock running in real time. In other words, you can follow along online or in the book by pictures and see how things really are supposed to look as you put the meals together. It's multi-media all the way, which is impressive.

In the interview, Ray said the first 100 meals "are the equivalent of a paint by numbers set." You can also, from the pictures, see if you're really interested in making this particular meal. How many pots will you really need, for instance?

Anyway, the photographs look positively yummy, and I will definitely be trying a few out and let you know what I think. In the meantime, if you want to see the videos, click here.

Books That Make Us Hungry: Toddler Meals by Shana Priwer and Cynthia Phillips

Rachel here: I love breastfeeding M, I really do. I know that when she and I stop doing this I will feel a sense of loss, of final physical disconnection from the baby who grew inside me for nearly 10 months. I'd be lying, though, if I said that I don't get excited about introducing our kid to solid foods. John and I love to eat and we love to cook and we both get pretty animated when we discuss sharing this with M someday in the not-so-distant future. We joke, too, that because we enjoy food so much M is nearly guaranteed to be finicky. This is where Toddler Meals by Shana Priwer and Cynthia Phillips will come in handy.

Priwer and Phillips offer up a mini-Bible when it comes to the initial transition to solid foods and the days that follow. With information ranging from appetite sizes to storage options, I know this is a book I'll be opening often in the next year. Besides that, their recipes actually sound like they taste good. There's a broad variety, too. Personally, I might not wait for M to stop breastfeeding before I try their recipes for whole milk yogurt and bagels. For those of you who've fed kiddies before out there, what are/were your tried and true recipes? I figure I should start stockpiling now...

Books That Make Us Hungry: Food Rules

Janet here: If you're confused by the many mixed messages sent our way about food and nutrition science — ie. the nutritional plan du jour — then you should pick up a copy of Michael Pollan's new (very short) book, Food Rules. Pollan, in case you don't know, is the author of the very thorough In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma. He's basically spent the better part of his most recent journalism career investigating food and how/why we eat the way we do. But where those books are for people who really want to know all the details about this engrossing subject, Food Rules is for the folks who just want a down-and-dirty guide on to how to eat healthier. It's kind of the Readers' Digest version of healthier eating.

Pollan sets up his premise with a little food history in which he reminds us that nutrition science is really a fairly young science. As he so aptly puts it, as a science it's just about where surgery was in 1650. Would you want to be operated on in 1650? I thought not. So why, er, swallow without question what nutrition scientists say (and change) today?

After a ton of interviewing and research, Pollan boils down his own rules to this: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." In other words, bag that Western diet.

The 64 rules that follow are just variations on Pollan's theme with a little more depth or specificity. Rule 2, for instance: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize. Rule 7: Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce. Rule 11: Avoid foods you see advertised on television. And my personal favorite: It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car. Common sense we all could use.

P.S. As a parent, I know firsthand how tough it can be to sell kids on "healthy" eating. If you need a little help, Pollan has created a young reader's version of his omnivore book. You can read a review here at Ohdeedoh.

Books That Make Us Hungry: The Way to Cook by Julia Child

Rachel here: For several years now, I have lived in a house that has Julia Child cookbooks in it (I don't recall any in my mother's stash from growing up). In my head, though, they have always been John's. Sure, this is partly because he has bought them and received them as gifts; it is also partly due to the esteem he holds for his books and Julia in general. I think the real reason, though, is that John is hands-down, without a doubt a better cook than me. Since he loves all things Julia Child so much, I think I relegated her cookbooks to a shelf in my head reserved for cookbooks for those who can really cook. What I'd neglected to consider, though, until the other morning, is that John hates pretension and would never love a cook or cookbook that was as inaccessible as I'd preemptively decided all things Julia must be.

Anyone who's ever realized their morning slipped away while they watched old Julia Child cooking shows on PBS knows that this is a woman who cooked for the love of food and people. I knew this, and yet still considered her cookbooks off limits. The other morning, though, over a cup of coffee and my breakfast, I found myself completely ensnared by her The Way to Cook for over an hour. Like Alice B. Toklas (who I blogged about here), Child winds a narrative around food that is both sensuous and sensible, hilarious and hunger-inducing. Most importantly, though, after spending time with the book, I felt like I could actually attempt most of the recipes in it. Ingeniously organized to facilitate the acquisition of a true understanding of food (for instance, foods that cook similarly are grouped together, so instead of looking up pork chops and veal chops separately she teaches you how to cook one and then informs you that you can apply the same techniques to the other), Child even goes so far as to inform you which are the easier recipes and which are more involved, thereby also guiding you through the learning process. I really felt like I could approach her cooking, though, when I saw her note on cornbread. On page 59 she writes that for "cornbread baked in the traditional square pan...I usually use the recipe on the Quaker cornmeal box." *Swoon* While she advises elsewhere in the book to withhold the sugar in cornbread if making it as part of a stuffing, I found this little passage incredibly revealing and exciting. Whereas so many cookbook authors' egos would have necessitated their own twist on cornbread, Child possesses and displays the humbleness to say, "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" Even if the rest of her book weren't so expertly concocted, this mentality alone would induce me to follow her lead.

Anyway, have any of you embarked on your own Julia Child culinary adventures? If so, we'd love to hear about them. In the meantime, though, I'd highly recommend this book for your own collection or as a gift to a burgeoning cook (I am thinking every college graduate should get a copy).

Books That Make Us Hungry: The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

Rachel here: Ok, so I have to start with a confession: I haven't actually read The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook in its entirety. I desperately want to, though, and am crossing my fingers that I can squeeze it in once school is out (there are simply too many pages to read when you are a rhetoric major). What I have read, though, delights me to no end. Here is an example from the first few pages of the chapter entitled "Murder in the Kitchen."

The first victim was a lively carp brought to the kitchen in a covered basket from which nothing could escape. The fish man who sold me the carp said he had no time to kill, scale or clean it, nor would he tell me with which of these horrible necessities one began. It wasn't difficult to know which was the most repellent. So quickly to the murder and have it over with. On the docks of the Puget Sound I had seen fishermen grasp the tail of a huge salmon and lifting it high bring it down on the dock with enough force to kill it. Obviously I was not a fisherman nor was the kitchen table a dock. Should I not dispatch my first victim with a blow on the head from a heavy mallet? After an appraising glance at the lively fish it was evident he would escape attempts aimed at his head. A heavy sharp knife came to my mind as the classic, the perfect choice, so grasping, with my left hand well covered with a dishcloth, for the teeth might be sharp, the lower jaw of the carp, and the knife in my right, I carefully, deliberately found the base of its vertebral column and plunged the knife in. I let go my grasp and looked to see what had happened. Horror of horrors. The carp was dead, killed, assassinated, murdered in the first, second and third degree. Limp, I fell into a chair, with my hands still unwashed reached for a cigarette, lighted it, and waited for the police to come and take me into custody.

From here, Toklas effortlessly segues into a recipe for carp stuffed with chestnuts. Are you kidding me? This woman was amazing. It almost seems like she could single-handedly be credited with laying the foundation for Amy Sedaris and Martha Stewart's culinary and hostessing careers. Toklas is in turns funny, insightful, focused and irreverent and, thankfully, unlike her partner Gertrude Stein, she believes in the use of punctuation. I don't know which I'm looking forward to most when I finally dig into this book, the commentary or the recipes. Both, to my taste, seem scrumptious.

Have any of you read this book?

Books That Make Us Hungry: Kitchen Confidential

Janet here: I have had Anthony Bourdain's bestseller Kitchen Confidential on my bookshelf for a few years, but for some reason I just never got around to opening it up until a few months ago. This was a mistake.

This is a wonderful no-holds-barred Hunter Thompsonesque romp through the kitchens Bourdain inhabited before he became famous as a host of No Reservations on the Travel Channel. That Bourdain was around long enough to write this lively tale, much less become an acclaimed chef, is incredible given that he drank, coked and heroined his way through much of the early years of his chef life. Nor is he apparently alone. Any illusion that the restaurant business is glamorous or even sane goes up in smoke as Bourdain dishes on the back-room machinations in the many kitchens he's worked in. The writing is vibrant (if you are averse to swearing, don't get this book; Bourdain peppers his sentences with the F word as liberally as he seasons his food), the stories often hilarious and the look into restaurant life fascinating. Like a good meal, you'll savor it and be left wanting more. You'll also learn why you should never, and I mean never, order fish on a Monday.

Books That Make Us Hungry: Comfort Me with Apples

Janet here: As Rachel mentioned last week, we thought we'd occasionally offer up our thoughts on our favorite food-related books on Tuesdays, and there is no better place for me to start than with Ruth Reichl.

The last editor of Gourmet magazine before it was sadly killed last year, Reichl was, prior to that and in no special order, a restaurant critic for the New York Times, food editor and restaurant critic for the LA Times, and the author of the bestselling Tender at the Bone. I haven't read that memoir yet, although I did read her book on her mother, Not Becoming My Mother (great title and wonderful book). I found Comfort Me with Apples while cleaning out my mother-in-law's house and grabbed it immediately. I am so glad I did.

Reichl holds nothing back in this book, which takes up presumably where Tender left off with her first gig as a freelance food writer for a now-defunct California magazine. She lived in a commune in Berkeley with her long-time boyfriend, eventual husband, Doug, an artist. It's not long into her gig that she begins an affair with another serious foodie, her editor (never a good idea in general to get involved with your boss). She doesn't stay with him, but she learns a great deal from him as he exposes her to all kinds of food, especially during a memorable trip to Paris. By the time they part, she has evolved — as a woman and as a food writer/critic.

Reichl's writing about the food is so clear and descriptive you feel as if you're at the table with her. While I personally wouldn't want to eat all the foods she describes — I prefer my brains in my head for instance — I felt as if I could understand their wonder thanks to her beautiful prose.

Added bonus? The book is interspersed with recipes. I can't wait to try her crab cakes. She cooks them right after the first of many awkward phone calls with Doug as their relationship dissolved. That turning to the familiarity of cooking while under duress is a place I've been many times and is just one of the many many honest moments she shares in this book.

Books That Make Us Hungry: "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence" by Amy Sedaris

Rachel here: Until today, my ma and I have featured blogs on Tuesdays (under the monicker Blogs That Make Us Hungry). Today, though, we are branching out to include books on Tuesdays (this isn't a goodbye to blogs, just a branching out). I couldn't be more delighted, either, with the book I chose to kick this off (sorry, Ma! we never discussed this and I hope you like my choice...): "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence" by Amy Sedaris.

I was given this book as a going away present by my coworkers at my old job the first time I quit (yes, first time...but that's a story for another day). It is one of my favorite books that I own and I have read it cover-to-cover (including taking the dust jacket off to admire the poster of a sprinkles-coated Amy). Filled with themed parties, recipes, and general do-it-yourself gumption, there is not a page in this book that won't make you laugh. Amy (like her brother David Sedaris) is nothing short of hilarious and in this marvelously twisted and perverse fashion that I am rather in awe of. She rigs ashtrays out of clamshells, shamelessly places collection jars out for her pet rabbit, and includes information for how to tell which drugs people are on. The best part, though, is that buried beneath this glorious mountain of kitsch are some recipes that actually work. I keep swearing that one of these weeks I'm going to do right by my love for Amy and actually make one of them.

Anyway, if there's a doubt in your mind about whether or not you should step away from your computer and purchase this book immediately (or don't step away and click on the link above), ask yourself this: Am I awesome in a way that perhaps too few people appreciate? If the answer is yes, then Amy's the gal to join you in your entertaining and culinary endeavors.