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Happy Earth Day!

April 22, 2010 in cookbook, environment by Claire | 6 comments

It IS Earth Day, right? Kind of snuck up on me.

I totally forgot to pose the family for our Earth Day cards.  Guess we won’t be sending them this year.

Actually, in all seriousness, one of the reasons I don’t send holiday cards is the wastefulness of the paper involved.  A lot of people I know are going paperless with their cards and the online options are getting fancier and classier.  There’s an Earth Day tip right there!

Kim thinks I’m relatively conscientious about this stuff because I compost.  It’s so easy to impress her.  (I will say that there’s a disgusting aspect to composting that does test your commitment).  I’m happy to report that our recycling waste now far outpaces our regular waste, and between that and the composting, we’ve definitely cut down on icky bags of goo going out to the trash can.

And of course I made a vow to be a vegetarian this year (and maybe on into the future) for strictly environmental reasons.  If you’re a faithful reader of this blog, you’ll remember that I “went” vegetarian on New Year’s Day, which makes it roughly four months now since I’ve eaten meat or fowl.

(Okay, confession time: I had a few mouthfuls of chicken at a literary festival where I had JUST spoken and was sitting back down, still shaking from having been up in front of hundreds of people, and found lunch waiting on the table in front of me.  Without thinking, I had devoured a bite or two of chicken salad before realizing what I was doing.  I cried out, “Oh, no!  I just ate chicken and I’m a vegetarian!” which raised some skeptical eyebrows among my tablemates, since most vegetarians know not to eat chicken. Also: once I nibbled on my daughter’s leftover pizza and she pointed out to me it was barbecue chicken pizza.)

Overall, though, I’ve found it surprisingly easy to stay the course, even when we were traveling all over the place for spring break.  Of course, I made it easy on myself: I’m not a vegan, so I eat eggs and dairy–can’t imagine doing this without cheese–and I also eat fish which pretty much solves the “what do I get at a nice restaurant” problem.  I try to focus on types of fish that are environmentally sound, like anchovies, sardines, and tilapia, but when I branch out from those, I can’t always remember which ones are best, so I may have made some mistakes in that area.  (I should carry one of those lists around–I know you can get them online–that tell you which fish you shouldn’t order because they’re being overfished or are toxic or are caught in ways that harm other species.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Tasteful Literature: Don’t Eat the Pages

February 22, 2010 in cookbook, food, guest by Claire | 3 comments

Book lover, faithful reader, and occasional contributor Meagan discusses culinary novels.   Thanks, Meagan!

I have a complicated relationship with culinary novels; kind of a love-hate thing going on. Back in high school I stumbled on Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel in my mother’s library and was completely seduced. Every chapter started with a recipe that somehow led into the story of Tita, whose life was defined by cooking and her forbidden love with Pedro, her sister’s husband. Throughout the story Tita’s emotions leak into her cooking, mouth watering dishes of Christmas rolls, Chabela Wedding cake, Quail in rose petal sauce… And yes, that is a real recipe no matter what Julie Powell says. I swear I’ve never had a book make me so hungry.

Quail with Rose Petal Sauce!

Usually it’s the other way around; what I’m eating will actually put me in the mood to read a particular book. Not necessarily the whole thing, just a few chapters. To this day I can’t eat a burger without wanting to flip through The Princess Diaries. Don’t ask me why. I’m as mystified as anyone else. But that’s a different story.

It was a terribly romantic introduction to cooking. Being a ‘modern woman’ and all, plus having a mother around to serve all my meals, the only cooking I’d ever attempted was toasting frozen waffles. Reading about it, everything sounded so simple, so natural. So when I attempted it myself, I was a bit disappointed. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tasteful Literature: Writing and Reading about Food

January 14, 2010 in cookbook, essay, food, memoir by Claire | No comments

We’re adding another feature

You already know that Kim and I like to read.  We also like to eat.  So it stands to reason that we like to read about food.  When I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago that described my new year’s resolution to become a vegetarian–a resolution inspired by two books about cooking and food–faithful reader and occasional contributor Meagan suggested we make food writing a regular part of the blog.  We love that idea.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that books about food can be broken down into four categories: 1. Cookbooks, 2. Essays about food and meals, 3. Anecdotes and memoirs about life in the food industry, and 4. Diet or prescriptive books about food (i.e. books about what we should or shouldn’t eat).

I’m sure I’ve left something out, but let’s just say for now that most books about food fit into at least one of these categories.

Oh, wait–thought of one more.  5. Fiction that includes recipes, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.

I think I’ve mentioned before on this blog that cookbooks are like pornography to me: I love to acquire them and leaf through their pages, giving free rein to my imagination as I gaze at photos and pretend that I could do such things, knowing full well I’ll probably never have the energy.  The truth is that most of the recipes I cook from are either old and scrawled on index cards or culled that day from the internet–it’s a lot faster to search for “miso salmon recipe” than it is to scan index after index of the cookbooks on my shelf.  But I still find myself drifting over to the cookbook shelves in bookstores and I still want to take home the most appealing ones I find. Like I said: it’s about dreaming, not necessarily doing.   Read the rest of this entry »

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A New Year’s Literary, uh, Culinary Resolution

January 6, 2010 in Challenge, cookbook, Uncategorized by Claire | 6 comments

This is a tale of two books, neither of which I’ve read.

But let me first start with Kim who last year made a true literary resolution to elevate her daily conversations about books and reading, thus encouraging others to read and to talk about what they’ve read.   Kim also challenged herself as a reader in a variety of awe-inspiring ways: I invite you to enter the word “challenge” into our search engine and discover the various goals she set for herself–and kept, from reading more essays to searching out books about art history.  This year, it was my turn to think about a New Year’s resolution.

But there’s a problem: I’m terrified of goals because I have a bad habit of not keeping them.  You may have noticed I didn’t join any of Kim’s challenges.  It wasn’t because she didn’t invite me.

So I didn’t wake up all hungover and bloated on New Year’s Day and start making lists of how “this year is going to be different.”  I’m too old to believe that January 1 is anything special.  I’ve seen too many come and go and can’t help noticing that the woman who wakes up on on the first day of the new year is the same one who went to sleep the night before.  She’s just a day older.

And yet there’s this: I’m going to be a vegetarian in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

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First NYC Independent Booksellers Week

November 12, 2009 in bookstore, cookbook, Literary Event by Kim | No comments

image_largeWell, actually it’s more than a week since it’s advertised to be November 15th to the 21st, but the launch party was on the 11th.  Longer is better as far as I’m concerned.  Launched by the Independent Booksellers of New York City, the week-ish long series of events is basically a marketing tool, but what a great marketing tool.  By bunching together events and setting aside a week to highlight them, it caught my eye out here in LA and if I lived in NYC (or, even better, if the LA stores copied the idea), I would take a second look at my calendar and try to fit in a few extra events.  Actually, who am I kidding, I’d be running all over town.  There are several events every day, here are just some of the ones I’d try very hard to squeeze in:

  • Paul Auster in conversation with Granta editor John Freeman at powerHouse Arena
  • The New York Review Classics 10th Anniversary Party at Greenlight Books (see my guest post about Greenlight Books at Bookshop Blog).  Jhumpa Lahiri and several other authors will be attending this free event; I’d like to note that I paid $40 to hear Lahiri last year, so if you can go for free, do it.
  • Every day during the week of celebrations, Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks will be giving away free cookies, YUM!
  • But the food doesn’t stop with cookies, on Sunday morning stop by Book Culture for a free Bagel Brunch.
  • Unnameable Books will host a midnight release of Sarah Palin’s book and Vladimir Nabakov’s book at midnight Sunday night/Monday morning.  Which book would you chose?
  • In honor of the paperback release of State by State, WORD is offering a “Neighborhood by Neighborhood” essay contest.  My kids still wear the t-shirts they received for winning an essay contest at our local bookstore and much to their embarrassment, I’m still bragging about it.
  • The weeks festivities close with a reception at Book Culture where they will give out a 20% discount coupon.

And in the midst of all of it, the National Book Award winners will be announce on November 18th in New York City.  Visit the stores, buy some gifts, and then don’t forget to reward yourself by entering our ABA gift card giveaway to spend on books for yourself!

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