Review: The Butcher and the Vegetarian

Rife with ethical dilemmas, The Butcher and the Vegetarian follows author Tara Austen Weaver’s struggle with eating and health. Raised on a strict, vegetarian diet she’s been happy to follow into her thirties, Tara suddenly finds meat-eating the doctor’s orders. And then multiple doctors’ orders. What to do? How to start? Weaver’s meandering tale is pure foodie flip-floppery, as she eats in ways that defy a label, trying to take her waning health in hand.

What we’re eating is a charged choice these days, ethically speaking, from winter tomatoes to organic labelling issues. It’s rare to grow up veg and not have your choices challenged by friends, relatives, and even medical personnel, though you, like me, may be a nonconfrontational person who doesn’t object to others’ carnivorism and simply prefers a face-free, guiltless diet. Weaver’s embracing approach to all the major eating groups — meat-loving to raw — sets the tone for a truly unbiased memoir of one woman’s journey to find her ideal diet, food to replenish sapped energy levels and fuel her adventurous spirit.

Weaver balances the scale between improved personal health and minimized environmental impact by thoroughly researching her food’s origins. Even if it means visiting a grass-fed beef ranching operation on slaughtering day and then downing a burger afterwards, Weaver proves it’s possible to make to make food decisions — meat or veg — that one can proudly defend.

In the end, Weaver shares a personal experience and ends with a personal choice, one she admits is far from where she began and never expected to find herself. While Weaver’s eating habits may not be my own, this is a woman I’d invite to dinner for her thoughtful, open approach to both food and friendship.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian
Tara Austen Weaver
Rodale, Hardcover, February 2010
$23.99

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Review based on a free copy of the book courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Lucid Food

Lucid Food arrives, already a present, gorgeous with scrolling artwork and vibrant images, wrapped and ready. I am enamored. Also, I am hungry. Thumbing past photography for Chickpea Cakes with a verdant green Cilantro-Jalapeno Sauce, Fall Fruit Focaccia succulent with apple wedges, Crispy Yuba Rolls that look toasty brown and crunchy, ready to dip, I confess to some absent-minded lip licking. On the second pass, I’m stuck on the Ash-e-reshteh, or Persian New Year’s Soup with Beans, Noodles and Herbs, all the colorful, herby bits crowded into a steaming bowl.

Louisa Shafia knows how to eat well, fashioning meals from quality produce and local fare. Nestled amid the recipes are the nuggets of valuable health information that expand Lucid Food from a mere (heavenly) cookbook to kitchen notebook. Shafia’s voice, warm and genuine, weaves her decades of food knowledge throughout the book, sharing her notes on sustainability, locality, and old-fashioned DIY values.

I’ll admit I am obsessed with the new wave of seasonal collections. Particularly, I enjoy the variety of produce that pop up in these, even if it isn’t always available in rural Kansas. These are people bedeviled by produce. (My kind of people.) Shafia adds a rich reference to the home cook’s stash, reimagining tired winter vegetables into savory staples.

Poised to win a spot on my shelf of beloved, dog-eared cookbooks, Lucid Food serves up nearly 100 delectable recipes, only about a dozen featuring fish or meat. (It’s not frowned upon, don’t worry about harsh words; it’s simply not the focus here.) There aren’t photos of every recipe, but the photos included showcase lush preparations of plump, perfectly-cooked veggies with occasional animal proteins tucked in.

Shafia is one of the rare chefs able to communicate her intensity about quality, seasonal ingredients in amiable terms. No lectures here, simply facts and considerable inspiration for making dinnertime shine. And extraordinary food, with a little help from Shafia, speaks for itself.

Lucid Food
Louisa Shafia
Ten Speed Press, Softcover, November 2009
$22.50

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Review based on a free copy of the book courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Lost Symbol

Oh, come on! Everybody reads a thriller now and then, and who's going to pass up The Lost Symbol from the ever-controversial Dan Brown? Not me.This time, Brown marries science and religion in an unforeseen twist, with the part of reluctance played — inexplicably — by Robert Langdon.

The Lost Symbol is another fast-moving tale starring Brown's now-famed, both inside and outside of the book, symbologist Robert Langdon. This time, the action occurs here in the states as Robert is lured to Washington D.C. under false pretenses with a friend's carefully sealed, decades old package, one left in Langdon's care more than a decade ago, and quickly finds himself delving into the leends and symbols of the Masons. What's inside the package proves an intriguing twist. Flanked by a scientist, with helpful and explanatory cameos by several Masonic brothers, Langdon's soon racing through national monuments, interpreting the clues on an ancient artifact.

Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I read Blue Like Jazz, Miller’s first and wildly successful memoir, in what seems now another life and another frame of mind. But Donald Miller is travelling with me in a freakish parallel universe. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years tracks Miller learning to view his life through a camera lens. This hook, life as a story, snagged my inner writer, pulling me through the book as Miller sharpens his point.

The book begins as Miller is approached to edit Blue Like Jazz into a movie script, turning his (mainly internal) meanderings into events that happen to a character named Don. As a writer myself, complete with an overactive inner monologue, I appreciated the irony of Miller reshaping his memoir to translate onscreen. Reconstructing his quiet, emotional growth into visible activity seems daunting. Yet realizing that movie moments are made when the character is doing something, not when he’s thinking, leads to Miller’s extraordinary personal growth in A Million Miles.

Review: Good Mail Day

Innovative, bright ways to re-invent your junk mail and build relationships via the old-fashioned art of correspondence wait for you in this book. Gone are the days of the pony express, sadly. Yet we humans still loiter around the mailbox, rallying our hopes if the postal worker's bundle looks interesting. If I received any of the resourceful and occasionally stutter-inducing missives pictured in Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art, I'd probably give Phillip a hug. I'm not sure he would like it, but there it is. Mail as an art outlet is definitely the kind of mail you want to receive.

Enter this book. Authors Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler cover almost everything you might wish to know about paper salvaging and minimal skill, down-and-dirty crafting, leading into hardcore artistry. Included are tips for careful mailing, postal regulations that might affect your creative boundaries, guides for building envelopes and keeping your delivery person happy, even some starter postcards and "mailing seals" (I call 'em stickers) in the back. Those newly pondering a stamp-based relationship can even find a pen pal and kick-start a friendship by post, all within the bounds of this book.

Review: Martha Stewart's Cookies

Yes, yes, I was one of those twentysomethings who subscribed to Martha Stewart Living magazine straight out of college, tearing out recipes and scrapbooking them like precious family photos. It's no great surprise, then, that I'm delighted to be rid of those greasy pages in favor of this professional, tape-free collection of cookie recipes. And unlike some greatest hits compilations, this one actually includes all of my favorites.

Of the seven major cookie categories listed, I prefer. . . uh, many, multiple. I'm nearly equal in my benevolence. In the spirit of cookie madness, I'm highlighting the recipes I've already tried below, with their varied results.

Review: Cherries in Winter

Punished by an economy in turmoil, the newly jobless Suzan Colón turns to a swath of family recipes, long buried in her basement, hoping to find some comfort in hard financial times. She quickly realizes how closely her current challenges parallel those of her predecessors.

Childhood tales seam pleasingly into past, future and recipes, a family history powered by food. Already highly relatable in content, Cherries in Winter feels like a worn-in leather armchair, its comfortable manner ensures a steady friendship with any reader who happens along. Her gracefully wrought 'lessons' of economy and cookery, things she learns from her mother and the sheath of unearthed recipes, brim with honest disclosures, both moving and humorous by turn.