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.)

Anyway, the point is: I’ve had no problem sticking to this diet when it comes to what I eat, but since I’m happy eating crackers and cheese for dinner with a glass of wine and a chocolate cake chaser, that’s no surprise.  What’s significantly harder is cooking healthful meals for the family.  My husband and two older boys all are eating meat freely (and they also all have to eat gluten free which adds another complicating factor but I won’t bore you with that).  My daughter says she’ll eat chicken but nothing else (not sure why she won’t allow turkey in there, but she won’t.)  And my youngest son is trying very very hard to be a vegetarian although sometimes the flesh is weak . . . and delicious.  Because of him, I’m reluctant to cook meat or chicken–it would be nice to make something we can all eat together.

Of course, I could mix (rice) pasta with cheese every night, sprinkle bread crumbs and butter on top, and bake it in the oven until it’s crunchy on top and gooey in the middle and everyone would be happy.  How HEALTHY they’d be is more of an issue.  I do that often enough, but there’s probably a limit to how often we should eat that.

That’s where the Moosewood cookbooks come in.  I suspect that anyone in this country who’s ever tried to be a vegetarian, even briefly, has spent some time with a Moosewood cookbook.  For those living on another planet, Moosewood is a vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, New York, that was founded in 1973.  I know that the first and original Moosewood Cookbook was published before 1983 or so (it was actually 1977–I just checked) because my college roommate discovered it first and I learned about it from her.  It’s a friendly, jaunty cookbook (hand-lettered by the author and then-restaurant-owner Mollie Katzen), and everything in it is delicious.  And smothered in cheese and cream.  The desserts are awesome too.  There’s a poppy seed coffee cake in there that I still dream about but never make in my current life because none of my kids would go near a cake that had SEEDS in it.

Anyway, since that brilliant early cookbook–my own copy is missing the cover and the pages are falling apart from overuse–the Moosewood Collective has published a bunch of other good vegetarian cookbooks, some of which include fish, some of which don’t, and some of which are dedicated to a lower fat diet.  I have most of them and they’re my “go-to” books when the organic vegetable delivery company I use has dropped off a ton of kale and I don’t know what to do with it.  For pure entertainment, I recommend Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant which has different members of the collective exploring their ethnic roots by creating vegetarian versions of the foods their families have made for centuries. It’s fascinating and inspiring.

So thank you, Moosewood Collective, for always being there for me as I try to make meals that will we can all eat without compromising our health or protein levels.

I have eight more months to go and then I’ll decide whether this is a permanent life change or not.  Meanwhile: turn out your lights when you’re not in a room, close or turn off your computer when you’re not using it, recycle anything you can, avoid using plastic wrap and tin foil, don’t drive if you can walk, and try to eat grass-fed beef if you have to eat beef at all.

Got that?  Lecture is over.  As you were, people.

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.

Being utterly incapable in the kitchen is especially embarrassing as a woman. I at least, grew up on the myth that we were all naturals, as if something in that extra ‘x’ chromosome held all the secrets of timing and seasonings. One time on impulse I decided to make brownies. I wasn’t fool enough to try and make them from scratch. I had the Betty Crocker mix, so everything went along smoothly until the actual baking part. I don’t know how, but the batch came out burnt on the outside and gooey on the inside. I can’t truly say I’ve entirely recovered from the experience. It’s really a pity too because I love to eat.

No, I’m serious. I really love to eat. Every night I turn into a cavernous vacuum. Chips, ice-cream, donuts, cake, nothing escapes the wrath of my appetite. Then to make matters worse, I happen to be one of the most suggestible people you’ll ever meet. If someone casually mentions pancakes in a conversation, I start salivating and eventually try to convince everyone around me that we need to go to IHOP immediately. At this very moment, I’m now thinking about the pancake mix in my cupboard and the fact that I just got a new bottle of maple syrup and all the sweet, fluffy goodness that awaits me if I just get up and find the frying pan. That’s how bad it is. I can’t even think about food without getting hungry.

Taking such weakness into account, a wise person would stay away from food lit. Yet how can I possibly resist? Good plots and characters aside, there’s just something lovely about the language of cuisine.

Last summer I finally swallowed my utter loathing of Hemingway and read A Moveable Feast, persuaded after listening to Nicolas Cage quote it in ‘City of Angels’ one too many times.

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

It nearly broke my heart when I realized such imagery was merely a garnish, used sparingly rather than a staple of the memoir. Obviously Hemingway knew the effect it could have, or it wouldn’t have shown up in the book at all. He knew that describing the taste would resonate with people and allow them to understand more so than anything else how he was able to slip back into happiness again. Who wants to hear about the sights and sounds of Paris for the six hundred millionth time?

I’d much rather hear about the tastes. That’s why in my book, Julie Powell trumps Hemingway every time. It’s really rather ironic that an unstable New York secretary found more to write about French cuisine than a professional writer who had actually lived in France. Of course, he was a starving writer at the time so perhaps he didn’t get to sample it enough to be an authority on the subject. It would be truly sinful if Hemingway had eaten the amazing sex-steak and neglected to inform the world about it. Did I mention Julie/Julia’s sex-steak?

One of the featured Julia Child recipes in Julie & Julia is steak with a beef marrow sauce. Sounds like a good enough meal but nothing awe inspiring. Yet, this inconspicuous dish inspired one of the greatest lines of imagery I have yet to come across.

“The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex.”

Vegans, eat your heart out.

Granted, it’s not quite Shakespeare. It’s more titillating, more sensually evocative than that. Kind of like smut. Really well written smut.

It’s impossible not to love the genre. Which is precisely my problem. I can’t not love food lit. So I read it and end up consumed with envy. It’s extremely inconvenient to be incompetent in the kitchen when you’re drooling on the pages. One day I may just snap and buy and real cookbook. Until then I suppose I’ll just remain conflicted. And very hungry.

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.  

Diet books (and by that I mean any book that talks about food choices, so that would include things like Fast Food Nation or Food Matters) are inherently less interesting to me.  Ever since hearing Michael Pollan’s famous advice (“Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly vegetables.”), I’ve felt like any other advice is overkill.  What more do we need to know than that?   But I’ve bought my share of books about managing Celiac Disease and I’m grateful for the writers who keep reminding us that our health and the earth’s future is in our control and we should be mindful of both.

I may be a little sluggish when it comes to reading something that, like your vegetables, is more good for you than enjoyable, but I’ll read anything about working in a restaurant (does that make it metaphorical junk food?).  Nothing makes you appreciate how (relatively) easy your own life is more than reading about an amateur trying to survive in a real restaurant kitchen.  It’s truly dangerous, what with the burns and the tempers and the sharp knives, and the pressure of keeping up is unbelievable.   Bill Buford’s Heat is a fun read, and Anthony Bourdain’s books make you realize that even for a successful professional, the pitfalls of opening and running a restaurant are innumerable.  You’ll never go out to eat again without wondering what’s going on in the kitchen.

Fiction is as fiction does, which means a good novel will work with or without recipes, so I don’t have a lot to say about that trend (which seems to come and go) except that the story better be good and the recipes better be tested or I’ll end up annoyed.

I’ve left my favorite kind of food writing for last: essays about food and life.  The greatest food writer ever (as far as I’m concerned) is MFK Fisher who seamlessly and apparently effortlessly captures the role that food plays in memory, love, and our lives in all of her essay collections.  I read every book of hers I could get my hands on many years ago because–more than any other writer–she made me taste the food she wrote about.  Her recipes are practical and doable, but the charm of her essays is in the way she captures the role of food in her emotional life.  I frequently think about one essay of hers, when the man she’s seeing tastes the very subtle curry she’s been working on for hours and tells her it’s not seasoned enough and starts dumping in some heavy spices.  She watches him, not interfering, just aware that his inability to appreciate the subtlety of her cooking means he’ll never understand her and that their relationship is doomed.  Any fiction writer could learn from her. Amazing writer.  Amazing woman.

This is all just an overview, mind you–an introduction to a new regular feature on bookstorepeople.  Our goal is to showcase regularly books about eating and cooking that we’ve found particularly delightful or meaningful.  If you have any favorite food authors or books you’d like to share, let us know.   Meanwhile, as our friend Julia Child would have said, “Bon appetit.”  I’ll see you in the cookbook section . . .

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.

I realize that’s not a big deal.  A good portion of you reading this blog are probably vegetarians or are at least trying to eat less meat.  The point isn’t that I’m doing this thing: the point is how I was inspired.

Part 1: I heard a snippet of an interview on NPR back in mid-December.  I only got to hear a few seconds which is the story of my radio-listening in general since I’m always going on short pick-up drives and tend to punch the controls every few seconds until I arrive at my destination, but I managed to catch someone saying, “The best thing any single individual can do for the environment is to become a vegetarian.”

How’s that for clean and simple? It certainly spoke to me: I’m worried about the environment and I’ve known for years that the amount of energy needed to make any kind of meat, from beef to chicken, is much higher than that needed to make a comparable number of calories of grain and vegetables.  So there’s that.  And I hate reading about how cows are treated, crammed into small pens, forcefed grain and corn when they should be eating grass until their stomachs bloat and they have to be dosed with heavy amounts of antibiotics.  And then there are the growth hormones.  And the fact their gas is a huge polluter.  It’s all bad, really.  There is free-range grass-fed beef–at around twenty bucks a pound.  I try to buy it and just can’t bear to pay that much.  Chickens aren’t treated so great either.

I like animals.  I like clean air.  I’m worried about the future.  I get that if we all were suddenly to stop eating meat, the world would be a much better place (except maybe for those in the meat industry, but maybe they could try growing some crops).

I did some sleuthing (i.e. typed some words into Google) and discovered that the NPR interview was with Mark Bittman, my favorite NY Times food writer, who’s written a book called Food Matters about the environmental impact of our food choices on the planet.  I can relate to Bittman.  He’s not all laid-back and groovy and “meat will make you sick, man.”  It’s not that he finds meat unappealing and I don’t either.  In fact, I love steak.  The point is: it’s simply better for our world for us not to eat meat.  So we shouldn’t.

Part 2: I was on a vacation with my family over the holidays and we’d brought along some movie screeners to watch.  One of them was Julie and Julia (or is it vice versa?  I’d look it up but by the time I wrote it down, I’d have forgotten it again).  My movie review in a nutshell: loved Julia, hated Julie.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that in the movie–which is BASED ON A BOOK (see?  literary)–Julie decides she’ll set a year-long goal: for exactly one year, she’ll work her way through Julia Child’s iconic French cookbook.

Maybe it was the fact that 2009 was just ending that made the idea of a year-long goal so appealing to me.  I can remember only one other time that I had a goal that was meant to last for one specific year: I decided to try being gluten-free like my son who has Celiac Disease for an entire year.  It was a combination sympathy/curiosity impulse.  I mostly kept it, although the rules were far more relaxed for me than they were for him.  I could, for instance, eat soy sauce in restaurants which he can’t, since there’s a small amount of wheat in soy cause (crazy, right?)  But I didn’t eat bread or get pastries at Starbucks, and if you don’t think that was a big deal, then you don’t know me very well.

So there I am: Mark Bittman’s words are ringing in my ears and I want a year-long goal.  You already know what I decided.

But it’s not exactly a New Year’s resolution: it’s just a change in my life that happened to start on January 1 and will end on December 31.

Or maybe not.  The truth is, this isn’t like Julie Powell cooking her way through a book of recipes.  This is a decision that feels morally and emotionally right to me.  If the year goes well–and, frankly, if I don’t gain like twenty pounds doing this (which is my secret fear)–I think I’d like to do this for . . . well . . . forever.

A couple of my kids have joined me, with the agreement that they can lapse now and then which is more than fine.  It’s better to move in the right direction slowly than to jump over there and jump back because it’s too hard.

So far, it’s been a piece of cake.  Several pieces, actually.  I made this gluten-free milk chocolate cake that’s kind of amazing.

About those twenty pounds . . .

• 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!

We’re hoping to help you with your holiday shopping.   We’re encouraging you to shop at an independent bookstore by rewarding one lucky shopper, our official Holiday Helper, with an ABA gift card.  Additionally, as we did last year, we’ve asked booksellers, experts, and opinionated people to recommend various genres of books (regardless of when they were published) as gifts for the holiday season.  This year we’re launching our Best Gifts for Readers lists with cookbooks.

Catherine Ettlinger started Unconfidential Cook, a unique food blog with scrumptious recipes contributed by her and her readers.   Catherine’s theory is that many of us are happy to share our cooking experience, hence the name ‘unconfidential cook’.  From the chatting on her blog, she’s right.  To complement her blog, Catherine hosts unconfidential cook dinners where the guests bring a dish and the recipe, then eat every thing in sight.   I’ve been to three of the dinners and they are a Los Angeles foodie treat.  The perfect pairing of great food and interesting conversation, each evening combines the necessary ingredients for a lovely meal.  I asked Catherine for her cookbook recommendations, and while she mentioned that much of the innovative recipes and culinary writing is online, these cookbooks were so terrific, every foodie should own one:

Lost Desserts by Gail Monaghan:  If you think one of your all-time favorite desserts has vanished forever with the demise of a restaurant or the retirement of a chef, don’t despair. Monaghan has gathered dozens of legendary recipes and assembled them with mouth-watering photos by Eric Bowman. You’ll never make a dessert again without first referencing this beautiful book.  (Kim’s comments:  I’ve seen this cookbook at Catherine’s house and it is a work of art.  More importantly, I’ve tasted a few of the desserts and they are more than calorie worthy.)

 The Art of Simple Foodby Alice Waters, Clarkson Potter:  There are more than 250 recipes in this book by the champion of  the phrase “eat locally and sustainably”, but it reads like a memoir and is as much a philosophy and way of life as a hard-and-fast cookbook.

 How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman: Touted as a one-stop cooking reference for the modern cook, this book is exactly that–a must-have in every kitchen.  (Kim’s comments:  This is on my list, maybe my son will break down and get me a gift if he benefits from it!)

 Simple and Delicious Japanese Cookingby Keiko Hayashi and Japanese Cooking by Emi Kazuko:  Both books are very helpful for anyone who isn’t Japanese and doesn’t read Japanese…but wants to learn Japanese home cooking, which hasn’t gotten its just due thanks to the popularity of sushi. It is the ultimate comfort food…delicious and super healthy to boot.

 Anything by Ina Garten because she’s not afraid of fat or sugar but doesn’t go overboard like Paula Dean: Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, Barefoot Contessa at Home, Barefoot Contessa Family Style, Barefoot Contessa Parties, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

Thank you Catherine!  For a couple of other suggestions, check out the NYT article on cookbooks as edible adventures, a review of recent cookbooks geared to home cooking with a personal touch.

Excited to dive into Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I leafed through it at the bookstore.  Every recipe had multiple steps and a long list of ingredients.  I cap out at 5, maybe 8, ingredients and a page of instructions made my head ache.  I put the book down.   Mastering the Art of French Cooking is not The Way to Cook, Julia’s book that first taught me how to cook. 

Prior to marrying Keith, I prepared one dinner for him.  It was a given that he would be the cook in the family and with 5 recipes under his belt, his knowledge surpassed mine.  One year later, I couldn’t bear to eat another bite of any of those recipes.  Keith’s parents came to the rescue by giving me The Way to Cook.

The introduction hooked me: “I am aiming this, my seventh book, at the new generation of cooks who have not grown up in the old traditions, yet who need basic knowledge of good food so that they may enjoy fresh, healthy home cooking. ”  That was me!  The book is organized by technique allowing me to fumble through one recipe and then apply what I learned to different foods.  Julia even laid out the first steps for neophytes like me: learn to saute chicken, deglaze the pan and pop Provencal tomatoes in the oven (page 306, I love that recipe), toss a simple salad, and I had a yummy meal. 

I fell in love with Julia when she understood I arrived home from work late and did not want to tackle a multiple step Martha Stewart recipe, not even on a weekend could I face them:

Even if you’re working all day, why buy Chinese take-out food, or frozen dinners, or eat at a fast-food joint when you can make a fresh, informal home-cooked meal even in a minuscule kitchen–and you will know exactly what you are eating.  Pour out a glass of wine, and while you’re gossiping about the day and trimming the fish fillets, a big pot of water can be set to boil for skinning the tomatoes and blanching the green beans . . . While the fish has a short sojourn in the oven, you’re all by ready to dinner and everyone is refreshed and happy.

And that is exactly what we do, Keith comes home from work, pours me a glass of wine and we chat while I make dinner (Keith has clean up duty).  The Way to Cook changed our dinner life.  Julia’s love for cooking and confidence that anyone can master basic techniques and prepare tasty nutritious meals caused me to start cooking.

Since my first romance with The Way to Cook, I’ve fallen for other cookbooks, Mark Bittman is my current crush.  After watching Julie & Julia, I returned to Julia with my daughter, now she is the “new generation.”

Catherine Ettlinger of Unconfidential Cook and many other astounding feats, is a long time friend of both Claire and me.  Unconfidential Cook is not to be missed.  The premise of the blog is that people share the wonderful recipes that they find and use.  There are easy recipes (those would be the ones I use) and some more challenging (those are the ones I request that Catherine make when I’m at her  house).  Claire swears by the flourless chocolate cakewhich I have even made and it’s one of the best chocolate cakes ever.  However, the biggest impact Unconfidential Cook has had on our life are school lunches.  We’re all sick of sandwiches and Catherine has stacks of advice for alternatives, many are just choosing great appetizers to bake while the kids are eating breakfast, then wrap up, and drop them in the lunch bag.  Moreover, Catherine’s husband Bruce photographs all of the food and you just want to eat your screen looking at the scrumptious offerings.  While I’m on vacation, Catherine chipped in the following post.  She refers to her “Unconfidential Cook” dinners which she has graciously included me, they are full of wonderful food and even better conversation.  I spent one evening talking to Nancy Spiller and then loved her book, Catherine shares why:

Nancy Spiller, author of Entertaining Disasters: A Novel (with Recipes),was one of my mystery guests at The Second Unconfidential Cooks’ Dinner—that is, I had never met her; she is a friend of my friend Susan. Her book continues a tradition of fiction with food that began for me way back when Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn (I’ve been making her vinaigrette—6 T olive oil, 2 T red wine vinegar and 2 T Dijon mustard—to great acclaim for decades). I pretty much love everything I’ve read in the genre. Really, what more could a girl want than good writing/eating?

The premise of Nancy’s novel is simple. The heroine, FW…freelance Food Writer…is about to host a dinner party, and to say she’s suffering a bit of stage fright is an understatement at best. FW has been writing for years about her fabulous dinners in all the journalistic nooks and crannies in LA’s celebrity/culinary scene. It’s expected that a meal at her well-documented hillside home surrounded by gorgeous gardens will be nothing less than a 5-star extravaganza with, of course, the most sought-after A-list guests.

Hard to live up to? You betcha, especially since it’s all been lies. She’s fabricated every scrumptious detail about every coveted invitation to every one of her dinner parties! Nary a guest in her dining room for over ten years. Needless to say, the week before the real event is fraught with all kinds of reflections on her past, tension between herself and her husband, and a slew of personal doubts and insecurities.

I loved all of it. Nancy is a wordsmith and can tell a good yarn, and the whole conceit of entertaining in LA is an issue that hits home for me. Actually, entertaining in LA is something else. Before I moved here I visited a friend often who lived right on the beach in Santa Monica and had party after party at her fabulous house—coming from NYC, it was an amazing break—like a Saul Steinberg drawing…my bed, pool, sand, ocean. One day-of-a-big-bash, I was just hanging out when my friend got on the phone and started calling around to see if people were coming that night. It was a sit-down dinner for 18 and with just a few hours to go, more than half of the lucky invitees hadn’t even bothered to rsvp! Not only did she call each of them, she phoned the others to remind them of the time and make sure they were coming. I couldn’t believe my ears. No biggie, she said—she has to do this before every party. I was appalled when, after all that, one (re)confirmed guest didn’t show, or even call with PROFUSE apologies and a great excuse. (Nothing less than death really would have been acceptable as far as I was concerned.)

When Bruce and I started entertaining (so as not to leave baby Emma for a nanosecond), it was a deja vu. Only difference was I didn’t do that much calling and the no-shows’ empty seats begged a story…which I divulged willingly. Naming names.

Mean old me.

Here’s what Nancy wrote about all this LA nonsense: “Most people are too busy making something of themselves so that other people will want to make themselves available to them, thus making themselves unavailable to those ignoble others who might alleviate the loneliness motivating their frenzied face to success. If you live in Los Angeles, you know what I mean.”

Yes, I do.

I recommend Entertaining Disastersto any foodie, host/hostess as well as to those who just like a great read. The recipes are great. Nancy made two wonderful hors d’oeuvres for The Second U-C Dinner about which she said: “It was a wonderful group of women, a terrific collection of dishes and I am still in its thrall. It truly was the kind of evening that my novel’s narrator thinks only happens in magazines.” Yay!

GOAT CHEESE AND ONION MARMALADE TARTLETTES
Mini Filo Shells (in the freezer section of most markets)
Goat Cheese
Red Onion and Roasted Garlic Marmalade, recipe below
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill the mini-filo shells with a garbanzo-bean-to-almond-size chunk of goat cheese. Top with a dollop of onion marmalade and then heat for 7 to 10 minutes just until the filling is heated. They’re quite good warm from the oven. (NOTE: Nancy said that in retrospect, if she were bringing to a party again, she would heat them onsite.)
Red Onion and Roasted Garlic Marmalade
6 medium red onions (about 2 lbs)
1 head roasted garlic
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup organic chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 t. salt, or to taste
5 T balsamic or red wine vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
Thinly slice onions crosswise into rings, then saute in a noncorrosive medium saucepan with the oil until soft. The large pile of onions you began with will soon cook down to a more manageable mass. Add broth, vinegar, salt, and brown sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened and most of liquid is evaporated, about 1 hour. After you get the onions cooking on the stove, begin squeezing the garlic cloves from the roasted head. Add these to the onions about halfway through the cooking hour. Store covered in refrigerator for up to 1 week. Serve on anything that makes sense.
GARLIC CREAM CHEESE DIP ON LITTLE TOASTS
Toasted ciabatta
Red cherry peppers, sliced
Garlic cream cheese dip, recipe below
Spread the dip on slices of toast and top with peppers. (NOTE from Nancy: This dip is also wonderful to serve with ruffled potato chips.)
Garlic Cream Cheese Dip
1 8-oz. block cream cheese, brought to room temperature
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 stick butter, brought to room temperature
3-4 cloves garlic, more or less
Whip cream cheese and butter together with an electric mixer; mix in mayonnaise to a smooth consistency, but not so still it will break chips. With garlic press, press cloves of garlic in, then whip further until fully incorporated. Serve with ruffled potato chips and a crisp, bubbly prosecco. Nancy’s mother enjoyed serving this with a gin martini made with aerated gin. She civilized the gin by attacking it for several minutes with a hand-cranked eggbeater, thus taking out all the spirit.

When you live in Los Angeles, you get used to that feeling of urban anonymity wherever you go, but the first time I walked into the new Diesel Books in the Brentwood Country Mart, I glanced down at the guest list and immediately spotted the name of one of my closest friends just a few rows above where I was about to sign up for their email newsletter, and I suddenly felt like I lived in a small town.

Diesel just opened up a few months ago, less than five minutes from my house.   Locals like me who live near the Country Mart tend to go there regularly for their Reddi Chick fix, since they have the best rotisserie chicken and ribs in Brentwood.  (Also possibly the only rotisserie chicken and ribs in Brentwood.)  You order at their take-out counter, then sit outside in the courtyard, either close to the fire or far away from it depending on how warm it is.  (When it’s really warm, there’s no fire at all, of course.)

Reddi Chick has always been in the Country Mart (and by “always,” I mean as long as I’ve lived here), but more recently a Barney’s Burgers, a Frida Taqueria and a City Bakery (pretzel croissants, hallelujah!) have all set up shop there, too.   So you can now order a turkey burger or some enchiladas, take the beeper they give you, and go right on into Diesel Books while your food is being prepared.  Browsing away your waiting time–that’s just heavenly.  I used to feel like it took forever for my burger to cook and now it’s ready way too soon.

That’s because Diesel is my kind of bookstore: small, cozy, well-stocked and airy.   (Cozy and airy are not easy to achieve simultaneously but they manage it.)  There are two other Diesel bookstores, which makes it, I guess, a mini-chain, but in feel it’s pure Indie.  Maybe that’s because it doesn’t have that big chain store attitude of “put out the bestsellers and to hell with everything else.”  The “bestsellers” out by the front entrance are specific to the store, and not to the New York Times, so you can check out what other people in Brentwood are reading these days and either join in the fun or eschew it altogether.

They pride themselves–rightfully–on their art and cookbook collections which are impressive ones for such a small store.  I checked out the graphic novel section which had migrated from one visit to the next, so I had to ask where they had moved it (way down low as it turned out) and, again, they had an impressively wide range of interesting titles given their limited space.

The graphic novel section wasn’t the only part of the store to move around: sections and display tables were shifting a lot at Diesel for the first couple of months, but someone who worked there assured me that they’re pretty happy with the current lay-out and I think things will stay the way they are for a while, although they’re still getting a feel for the local community and are shaping their inventory to respond to people’s interests and needs.

Here’s my advice for them:  offer lots of books with pictures of hot, juicy hamburgers on the cover.  They’ll sell like hotcakes.  Or, you know, burgers.

Diesel Books
Brentwood Country Mart
225 26th Street, Suite 33
Santa Monica, CA 90402
310-576-9960
info@dieselbookstore.com

(also in Malibu and Oakland)

To put it succinctly, G’DEE taught me everything I know about the Jewish holidays.  Really.  Everything. 

It’s a children’s book, with colorful illustrations, and it tells the story of twins, a brother and a sister, who get sent a goat by their relatives in Israel.  (I think “g’dee” means goat in Hebrew.)  The book then follows a year in the twins’ life, as marked out by the Jewish holidays.  Because G’dee is a very young goat, the siblings make a point of teaching him the meaning of the holidays and explaining the ways in which they observe and celebrate them, from a Purim puppet show to fasting on Yom Kippur.

G’dee is your typical goat (I assume), good-natured, eager to please, and extremely hungry at all times.  Fortunately for him, Jewish holidays–as described in this book–center largely on the special foods that are eaten for symbolic or joyous reasons.   So G’dee basically eats his way through the Jewish holidays.  The book always made my mouth water.  

Sadly, G’dee the book does not appear to be in print anymore.  In fact, as far as I could tell, the last printing was in 1966 which would date me if . . .  um . . .  er . . . it hadn’t been such an old hand-me-down when I read it.  (Nice save, Claire!)  You can probably still get a used copy or two, or you’re welcome to borrow my copy (which is really my older sister’s, so if you notice her name written on the title page, don’t go running to her to tell on me), or you can at least capture the spirit of the book by indulging in some hearty holiday cooking for Chanuakah.  (Say that ten times fast.)

For the past ten years or so, my holiday cooking companion has been Joan Nathan’s The Children’s Jewish Holiday Kitchen.   Organized by the holidays, this book is a cross between a cookbook and a celebration guide.    Nathan discusses each holiday at the beginning of the chapter, giving a historical overview and describing her family’s traditions.  She often includes games and gift ideas in the book, but the majority of it is devoted to recipes.

The book is aimed at people with fairly small children and does a good job of simplifying traditional recipes so the children can help make them.  Nathan even separates out the directions into what the kids can do alone, what they can do with adult assistance, and what adults need to do to be safe. 

Nathan also has a purely adult version of this book, called The Jewish Holiday Kitchen.  (Or, more accurately, this book is a simplified, child-friendly version of THAT book, which I believe preceded it.)  She’s best known for her incredibly well-regarded book called Jewish Cooking in America.   She has her niche nicely carvedout.  (My husband  and I always says the key to success in life is specializing.)

So here’s my recommendation for Chanukah: buy Nathan’s book, then gather your family around to light the candles and then fry up a big batch of potato latkes (Nathan has an unusual recipe for those–you might want to go more traditional, but it’s your choice).  Drain the latkes, smother them in applesauce and sour cream, and eat until you feel sick.  Which, with latkes, won’t take all that long, leaving you plenty of time to curl up with a good novel before bedtime.  (I recommend The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham about a young ultra-orthodox Jewish girl whose secret reading of romantic novels makes her wonder about the world beyond her very repressive community.)

Happy Chanukah.