Parsons Public Library

Foodie

When you come into the library and pick up bookmarks or lists of ideas for books to read, you’re probably picking up a list that I have created. In order to do this I spend a lot of time looking at booklists that other people have created so that I can get ideas. One day I found these two lists from NextReads. One called The Gourmet Way and another entitled Foodie.

According to Wikipedia, foodies are amateurs who simply love food for consumption, study, preparation, and news. While gourmets want to eat the best food, foodies want to learn everything about food, both the best and the ordinary, and about the science, industry, and personalities surrounding food.

The descriptions of the books looked interesting, so I checked out “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen” by Julie Powell and “Garlic and Sapphires” by Ruth Reichl. I liked “Julie & Julia” well enough to keep reading to the end. I shot through “Garlic and Sapphires” in about 24 hours.

“Julie & Julia” is about a woman living in a small New York City apartment who borrows her mom's copy of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and decides on a whim, to cook all 524 recipes. She sets up a blog and writes about her experiences.

“Garlic and Sapphires” is about a food critic for the New York Times who finds out that there is a reward offered to anyone who can spot her in a restaurant or alert the restaurant to when she will come to critique it. She discovers that her picture is posted in kitchens all over the city. She knows that if she goes into a restaurant and is identified she will get special food and special service so her solution is to hire a retired acting coach and disguise herself. Each time restaurateurs learn to identify her she switches to a new character.

My next read?

posted by Cayla @ 11:39 AM