Potlikker

girl hunter

Figuring out how you feel about a book can be tough. After complaining about the lack of foraging or hunting books written by women, finally there is one. And so I can be happy, right? Sure thing!

Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time fits nearly into the genre of memoir I'm naming "corporate-to-culinary" or "grey suit-to-toque" because there have been dozens of such books published in the past seven or eight years, and likely thousands more untold stories of people who tire of the rat race or were dumped out of it due to the economy, and so have turned to another means of making a living, or reconciling their lifestyle with a sustainable and reconcilable of generating income. 

Georgia Pelligrini participated in the killing of five turkeys while working for a chef on a Rockefeller estate. She butchered the turkey and

the experience awakened a dormant, primal part of me, and more so, it made the kind of sense to me that I could feel deep in my marrow.

She wanted to learn more and connect more intimately with the natural life-cycle of her prey and the seasons.

Eventually she met The Commish, the commissioner of game and wildlife for the state of Arkansas who took her under his wings and introduced her to hunting and fishing in the Arkansas Delta where much of the book is set. She describes the region as one whose demographics are the same as they were before the Civil War.

This is one of those preserved places, its authenticity both inspiring and heartbreaking at once. It is where you make your own destiny and you make your own food. 

The Commish describes how the young  people leave the states which reduces the state income and thus plunges Arkansas further into poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment. She remarks that living off the land is easy when you have no choice. 

Besides the time she spends hunting and fishing in Arkansas she makes trips to other states such as one to Texas for javelina. She's made lots of friends via her blog/website and occasionally they contact her with opportunities to join a hunt. So Jim invited her to meet his family in west Texas and hunt javelina. Then there was the semi-scary experience in Montana hunting grouse with Wilbur, Kurt, and Sammy. 

From the start, I worried about Pelligrini going off with strangers. Of course, since she had a gun and above average butchering skills, I hoped she could protect herself. I'm up for adventure--foraging, hunting, skydiving, what-not, but any person must be careful when meeting people in person they've friended over the internet (although I've had the best of luck with that and invited blogpals for overnights at my home which turned out to be most pleasant experiences).

Oh, and the recipes! Mostly I bemoan the dearth of gamemeat recipes in southern cookbooks. Seriously southern cooks, if you're a bone fide southern cook, then you've dealt with some game meat and you know how to incorporate it.

But. I'm wishing for game meat now. I threw out about a pound of deer steak last year because I had not used it. Pelligrini's recipes are mouth-watering. Poached Dove and Pears in Brandy Sauce. Moroccan Elk Stew. Duck with Cherry Sauce. 

But what I loved most of all was her chapter on squirrel hunting. Apparently--having never eaten squirrel, i didn't know this--squirrel meat is nutty, sweet, buttery, and tender because the adage "you are what you eat" is true. So a squirrel who feasts on acorns is, according to Pelligrini "better tasting than any other meat in the woods." The love of squirrel meat was so great, especially in the eastern US that many marvelous guns were crafted in their honor.

There is so much to recommend this book. I learned a great deal from Girl Hunter, and that's what I love best about a book, that it imparts new knowledge and understanding. 

Pelligrini hops across the pond to the UK to spend Thanksgiving with a college classmate in the village of Ellington where they go on a hunt for woodcock and pheasant. They shoot gund worth $100,000. So several things were interesting here. I learn about aging meat. I hadn't thought about it so much before. But they used to age the woodcock and pheasant, let them hang in, oh a barn or pantry, I guess, until they turned green and their heads popped off, so they had a bit of flavor to them. And then they were cooked and eaten. 

Shooting clubs are common in British schools like debate or sailing. Being a sure shot is an essential skill that making you a well-rounded person. Guns are associated with class and sophistication. Knowing how to shoot demonstrates your high class.

Yet in the USA guns--and we're talking rifles and shotguns, not revolvers--are not associated with high class, they're associated with and the less-evolved backwoods element, think something out of Deliverance and making grown men squeal like piggies.

In the end Pelligrini hopes that if you read her book and follow her journey into hunting and fishing, that you will be inspired to make your a wild journey of your own into becoming a completely different person than you were before.

She makes a compelling case:

I am a more thoughtful eater, a more thoughtful chef, and a more awake human being. I am a fuller woman and in a waym, I am much more like Diana than I ever was... there are even days, stepping out into the morning when I think perhaps that I could rule the forest and the moon. 

kitchen daughter

Jeal McHenry writes an Asperger's character like I've never known, seen, or read before in The Kitchen Daughter. Ginny Selvaggio rocks in the kitchen. Sure, she's really annoying in the rest of her messed up life, but aren't we all? It's terrible now that I can't recall how old Ginny is, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties? She's the eldest of two sisters, though Amanda, the younger who is married with three children and lives elsewhere bosses Ginny around.

Ginny needs a bit of bossing at times because she doesn't cope well when the sticky bits of life swoop in and tackle her. Or, maybe not. Ginny still lived at home in Philadelphia with her parents. She never graduated from college because she couldn't pass that darned speech class. Her darling mother blamed her problems on her strong personality and resisted the establishment's need to label Ginny.

Now that Ginny's parents died Amanda returned to Philly to make the funeral arrangements and having all the relatives in the house sent Ginny into a cooking frenzy. She pulled a cookbook from the kitchen's shelves, cut into onions, and soothed her frazzled nerves the only way she knew how by crafting a batch of her Nonna's best Ribollita soup. As she follows the directions she reads from Nonna's handwritten recipe cards and the aroma of the soup's scent drifts up through the kitchen she notices her Nonna sitting next to the refrigerator.

The trouble is that Nonna is dead. Has been for twenty years.

Is Ginny crazy? Or, has she stumbled onto a secret? Does she possess cooking skills so powerful that they call forth the dead from their graves?

Well, it's a lovely mystery which unfolds as one reads through to the last page, especially as Amanda and Ginny battle it out over selling the house. Ginny plans to remain and care for herself and Amanda thinks Ginny should move in with her family because she cannot care for herself. McHenry's novel is filled with complex characters dealing with weighty issues.

Especially lovely are Gert, the woman who comes to clean once a week, and her son David, who she asks to deliver groceries to Ginny after her parents die. Seeing Ginny open up to the world after her parents death extends a lovely message of hope for her future. And watching her blossom when Gert asks her help with cooking at her temple for the burial society, the chevra kadisha. First she works with hard boiled eggs, then checks lentils for bad beans or stones. GInny decides she prefers the Jewish mourning process because she's thinking about it constantly.

I love the Normal book Ginny pasted from newspaper stories and comforts herself by reading when she feels especially low.  Recipes accompany each of Ginny's cooking adventures  with the spirit world so that readers might sample them and the handwritten fonts lend an air of authenticity.

But, the book's true strength lies in two parts. First, with McHenry's depiction of Ginny's undiagnosed Apserger's. The author takes us for a ride inside Ginny's mind and shines a light into the closets where difference or "peculiarity" hides. Secondly, McHenry infuses Kitchen Daughter with a cornucopia of sensuality; of aroma, of texture, of vision, and of taste. All food lovers will revel in this novel and find an kindred soul in Ginny Selvaggio who finds her balm in cooking.

sweet no. seven, a garden & gun mention

I was tickled an unnatural shade of pink yesterday when I saw that Garden & Gun's Jessica Mischner named Potlikkery as one of her top ten Best Southern Food Blogs in the land. Landing on her list is the best news I've had in weeks, and it's been a real downer lately, except for having spent a week in New Orleans, and I'll be blogging about that soon.

If you don't know G&G, well shame on you. From the moment I spied the inaugural issue on the newsstand a few years ago, I subscribed, even bought gift subscriptions for my Daddy and a BFF. And for myself, of course. But I let mine lapse because I have this ongoing struggle with my mail carrier. I took it up with the postmaster, of course. 

We have an oversized mailbox because I receive large parcels, and being a librarian I'm particular about the state my journals arrive in. I don't like dog-eared, tattered, or creased covers and my mail carrier persists in creasing magazines down the center and using them as a tool to carry my small bits of mail inside.

G&G is a lush celebration of the better aspects of southern living. Lots of jaw-dropping food, fashion, guns, and hunting dogs. The photos make my fillings pop loosen onto my tongue and dribble onto the linoleum. Plus the articles are informative, well-written, and feature the best mixture of regional writing available.

And when it first appeared at my local big box bookstore's newsstand, they were confused about where to place it. The word gun threw them off, so they place it in with all the men's magazines. Actually, they're still confused about where it belongs, and it remains with the men's magazines. 

Naturally, I'm not shy about shouldering past the menfolk to pluck a copy off the shelves. Nor would I be shy about getting a girlie magazine should I be so inclined.

You'll be pleased to learn of G&G's Made in the South Awards. Entries are due by August 1, 2011. And categories range from food to sporting to fashion to home and each winner receives $500 plus being part of the Made in the South online boutique at taigan.com. For more information visit gardenandgun.com/madeinthesouth

forage me this--fat of the land

Should you stumble upon Langdon Cook's blog, Fat of the Land--which centers around his foraging of flora and mostly aquatic fauna in Washington-- or encounter any of his writing in Outside, Gray's Sporting Journal, or other publications where his work appears, you're in for a rare treat. Several months ago that was my luck and then when I discovered a book based on his blog was published by Skipstone, I contacted them to ask for a review copy and they kindly obliged and sent their catalog which is filled with impressive titles, most of which focus on Pacific Northwest topics and therefor aren't particularly useful to someone living in the loamy armpit of Appalachia as I sometimes identify my locale.

But enough about me.

Cook's prologue sets up how his foraging began-- ostensibly to impress a woman would did not eat at McDonald's. And then each section of the book progresses seasonally. Within each section he includes one flora to three or four fauna, as a general rule. Beginning in winter Cook covers razor clams, squid, and stinging nettles and provides a recipe for each.  His coverage of each topic is thorough and he addresses each with context such as description, history, and in the case of the razor clam, how we can blame the Grandmas for their overharvest and depletion given the gentle clam's ubiquity at the dinner table. Nowadays the digging season is limited to less than a month with a limit of fifteen clams per day. Cook's description of the clam makes the mouth water. He describes them as six inches in length and as the "King of American comfort food."

Having spent a year by the sea, I know little of ocean creatures, and now I hold Cook responsible for much of my education on the subject of squid. In "Doin' That Squid Jig" I learned how to fish for them, how they move and communicate, the basics of their anatomy, a brief history of squid fishing, and Cook's recipe for Risotto Nero Con Calamari.

Each chapter was beautifully written as Cook interwove past with present and anecdote with fact. His facility with words tickled me and when he used chockablock on page 121 I was smitten. While he stars as main character in each foraging adventure he gives center stage to his friends and to fisherfolk and foragers alike from whom he takes advice, advises, or fails to communicate with altogether through no fault of his own.

Yet, as the tob-billed figure in the book, Cook never presents himself as the expert or as the person with all the answers. He references books and other people. As he embarks on each adventure he prepares to fail. Sometimes he does so brilliantly, or merely half-fails, captures a partial limit. But he tries again, perfects his technique, and refines his skills. He never quits. And so this is one of the strenghts of Cook's essays: there is no perfect foraging form; it's all free-style. 

Endowed with Cook's rich penstrokes, or keystrokes as the case may be, Dave and the homeless men who questioned him about taking their "dandy lions," and Cora and Lori, and Steve in his XXX wetsuit, and Trouthole, Warpo, and everyone else leap off the page into your lap and leave their ashy (in the case of the morel-hunting Coras from the burn site) residue, or seawater in the middle of you living room.

Reading Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager reminded me of my childhood in some ways. My Papaw Don took me foraging for ramps and we spent long afternoons together in the woods with a quasi-feral Lsha Apso--don't ask. Don made cherry wine, cooked venison stew from deer he hunted, gutted, and dressed himself, and showed me how to nail a catfish to a tree and strip its skin away from its flesh with pliers. After bringing it inside to the kitchen he breaded it in cornmeal, tossed it into a cast iron skillet, and fried it. He was a cook in the Navy. He cooked from scratch while his wife, my mamaw used a lot of boxed and canned goods, which I find perplexing.

Cook's chapter "The Inhuman," describing how he dove for Ling Cod, stabbed, and caught one, took me back to my summer working in Alaska as a seafood processor. Fortunately I worked most of the season on the frozen side and saw quite a few Ling Cod come my way. We worked twelve hours shifts and god so slap happy at times the puns fell from our mouths uncontrollably when Ling Cod was on the line: "Oh my Cod!" There were more, but I've since forgotten. It was long, long ago.

Ultimately Cook's book inspired me as well. Dandelions. I have dandelions in my yard because I don't use chemicals to treat my lawn, and his description of dandelion encrusted bread tickled my fancy. I encourage Elsa to blow the seeds into our yard all the time because a proper yard interests me not. More foraging for me, for us, actually. Elsa loves the outdoors. My plan was always to have her hiking, camping, canoeing. Now, it's to have her identifying plants, foraging, picking berries, mushrooms, etc.

the provenance of a fish & the big bad cupcake

If you're a parent, Babble is a great resource. I forget to eat properly in the mad dash that is my life these days. I think I have the work-life balance monster whipped, because I adamantly leave work at work and leave no room for blurred boundaries, no chance of work coming home with me because my home life is too important for work to intrude. 

Somehow I missed an article way back in December about 10 brain foods for moms that should help improve brain functioning, not just for moms, but for all whom are cognitively impaired. The best thing is that most of the foods listed are my favorites, like avocado, blueberries, and salmon, except that the salmon must be wild salmon and that, of course is fraught with all manner of politics. 

I tend not to eat salmon anymore because our waters are so over-fished and unless you catch a fish personally... well, I'm always a doubter, and I do not always believe what I am told about the provenance of a fish. When in doubt, cut it out. So I don't eat salmon anymore even though I love fish. 

Speaking of overfishing and our waters, I read a beautifully written and marvelous book, A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons earlier this week in which its author mentioned how unsafe rivers, lakes, and streams were to swim in. If they're unsafe to swim in, I wouldn't eat anything caught from their waters, either. What a sad time in which we live.

Anyway, despite the fact that I don't like chocolate, and that Elsa does not either, I might try this chocolate avocado cupcake recipe connected to the Babble avocado page on the brain food story. When I make out my grocery list each week I give Elsa pencil and paper and she makes out her list as well. I ask what she writes on her list. It's always the same thing:

Cookies. Cupcakes.

She likes some cookies. She doesn't really like cupcakes, though she sometimes licks a bite of icing. And she doesn't like chocolate.

Even though there is a cupcake category on this blog and Elsa has a t-shirt or two bearing cupcakes we might eat them at birthday parties or special occasions. So they truly are rare events in the scheme of things. A few weeks ago on our drive home from Grammys I was happily stunned when she told me she is a Big Bad Cupcake.

Fruit of my loins is a Big Bad Cupcake. She makes me so happy. That and eskimo kisses. And every little things she does is magic. Children are delicious, delightful. I could go on and on, but this is a food blog. I keep reminding myself.

banana nut mush

This time, I thought I had this recipe down. As you recall, a few days ago I tried the Wal-Nutty Marbled Banana Bread. And failed.

I bought another six organic bananas at the grocery store to try again, but this time, without the chocolate marbley goodness. Made it this morning to take to the annual holiday party at the library. Last year, I don't think I brought a thing. So I wanted to contribute something. Something homemade, not something picked up from a grocery store, because that's just the way I am.

We were on a two-hour snow day today, so I had the time to bake this morning. I whipped it together (using the same ingredients and instruction as before expect for all the chocolate business), let Elsa tap the baking soda and salt into with the flour and whisk it, popped it into the oven, and then got myself dressed, Elsa dressed, the car started to warm and melt the ice sheet covering it. I removed it from the oven, popped it into a basket and covered it. I brought it along in the car to cool while I took Elsa to her Grandy's house. I finished my Christmas shopping, and made my way to work just in time to turn the bread out onto the lovely plate.

Only... that didn't happen. It oozed out onto the plate. Boom. Another failure. This time, I didn't cook it long enough. I think my recipe printouts got mixed up. Thirty-five minutes is not enough time for a bread to bake. Don't know why I didn't figure that out ahead of time.

So I didn't bring the bread to holiday party. It sat on its pretty plate on my desk about a foot from my pc. I nibbled it. Even sucked down a bit of the gooey batter that hadn't fully cooked. 

Regardless, it's a delicious bread. I'll make it again. But I'll bake it at least another 20 minutes.

Try and fail. Try and fail. I'll try again. Hope not to fail. But we learn more from failure than from success.

homemade life

My dirty secret is that I didn't read food blogs for a long time. I read them when I started this blog in 2004. And then, I was so used to blogging in a vacuum, that I rarely checked other blogs to see what others wrote about. Yet, I knew Orangette and read it for a while. 

Life happens. I grew busy. I haven't read her blog of late.

But, the blogging in a vacuum  thing works well, too. So while I peruse a dozen or so food blogs a day and note trends, I'm not anxious to jump on the bandwagon because I'm, at heart, contrary. If everybody's doing it, why should I? So, there probably won't be any list of the 5 or 10 best things to buy your foodie friends for the holidays, though I'm not adverse to bibliographic compilations.

In my quest to self-educate about food writing I picked up a quality paperback edition of Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life. Reading it was lovely. Each chapter is tied to a recipe and many of them hearken back to her childhood. Yet, many are recipes she developed quite on her own. 

Mostly, it's an ode to her father, who inspired Wizenberg's food explorations. For most meals, they dined at home. Her father pounded the table and declared that they ate better than folks at restaurants. A Homemade Life is an outstanding memoir. Wizenberg covers aspects of her childhood, adolescence, and her adulthood as they relate to food. Watching the romance and long-distance courtship bloom between Wizenberg and her Brandon was a sweet treat, too.

Recipes range from comfort food like potato salad to fancy arugula salads. Plus many many of her recipes are boast a bit of je ne sais quoi due to her trips to Paris and the fact that she lived there and explored the City of Light's culinary offerings.

I'm sorry that I didn't read this when it was first published and I look forward to keeping abreast of her doings via Orangette. Perhaps my most favorite saying is "Late to the party." I use it frequently, because I am late to the Homemade Life party.

I'm dying to try her cream-braised green cabbage. Must find cabbage!

f is for foodista

So you want a grassroots cookbook that emerged from social media? Foodista: Best of Food Blogs Cookbook is for you. There was a contest for entries. Over 1500 recipes flooded the offices. Then members of Foodista voted for their favorites. Culling 1500 recipes down to 100 is no easy feat. 

As to arrangement, recipes are categorized and organized in a typical manner: Cocktails and appetizers first, soup and salad, main dishes, side dishes, and finally desserts. The editor notes that most of the recipes did not undergo strenuous recipe testing as do traditional cookbooks. However, they standardized quantities, measurements, and ingredients while trying to let the blogger's voice spring forth from her recipe.

Each blogger provided photos accompanying their dish. The majority are above average and that makes for a pretty-pretty to behold as you flip through in search of the recipe that makes your mouth tingle in anticipation.While Geoduck ceviche tempts me to no end, my physical distance from the Pacific coast, and thus the geoduck, makes replicating this recipe impossible. Wonder if it works with crawdads (aka crayfish). 

I played in creeks a great deal as a child and often encountered the crawdad. They don't have much meat though and I wonder what length of time it takes to capture a middling amount for crawdad ceviche? Must study the life-cycle of the crawdad and determine when to fish for them.

But see, isn't it awesome how browsing a cookbook can generate fanciful food ideas in ones head? 

But, back to the recipes. Mummy juice cocktail with its ginger, orange rum, and triple sec combination sounds like a winner to me. Perfect for summer days, but with record-low temperatures this week--of 12 or so--I crave a hot toddy. Most of the recipes in this book are chi-chi. They're not necessarily comfort food-type dishes. Although the chicken and white bean chili falls into that category. And the salmon head soup is very different too. Interestingly, the geoduck ceviche and salmon head soup are contributions of Landon Cook whose blog Fat of the Land tickled me to my toes.

Actually, I have to say, that there's not one of these recipes that I would not want to make. Surely all these bloggers top me in the cooking department. I'm nowhere near as inventive in my cooking as I tend to stick to comfort food.

As for Foodista, I simply have no idea which recipe to try first. Another go-round through the book may help with that decision. This collection of recipes makes a great gift for someone, if you have a gift-giving occasion on the horizon and lack ideas. 

happy turkey farfalle

Since I'm game for anything these days, including trying new recipes I find on blogs,I did just that. Pithy and Cleaver shared a recipe for Farfalle with Turkey and Broccoli that intrigued me. Well, what sold me was the photo. Gorgeous. And how do my photos compare? Not so good.

But, I'm working on that. I promise. My promise to you, and to myself, is more mindful photos for next year. So, you can find the original recipe at that blog. I followed it mostly, but made a few substitutions. Instead of broccoli, I did fingerling potatoes and carrots.Ian doesn't eat broccoli and I wanted this to be a dish we'd both enjoy, though if I was making for myself, I'd likely mix in a bunch of mushrooms. I also added a few spices to the mix. I love nutmeg. And Spanish paprika, which is spicy and smokey. And for a bit of derring-do, I threw in cinnamon. Sure, folks think about adding nutmeg to savory dishes like macaroni and cheese, or anything with a cream base, but they don't always consider cinnamon.

Cinnamon, like nutmeg, is my surprise ingredient. Eighty to ninety per cent of the time it works in a dish. Don't be afraid to try it.

Ah, the glory of grated cheese. I know, it's not a cheese grater; I normally use it for nutmeg and other spices. My cheese grater was dirty. Still hasn't been washed. I made a substitution. Grating is my favorite kitchen activity. There's a swell of satisfaction in my mind when I put product to grater and then it CHANGES shape after going through to the other side. Just a bit of sci-fi geekery there.

My adaptation for Happy Turkey Farfalle:

6 fingerling potatoes
4 baby carrots
3/4 lb farfalle or other pasta
1/4 cup diced fresh mozzarella
1/4 lb cheddar cheese, divided
4 tablespoons sour cream
1 1/2 cups shredded cooked turkey or chicken
3 T broth
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon spanish paprika
1 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 T breadcrumbs
1 T freshly grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Slice potatoes and carrots thinly. Cook them in a saucepan over medium heat for about 15-20 minutes. Set aside.

Cook pasta in salted, olive-oiled water for 6 minutes.

Dice about two thirds of the cheddar and set the rest aside.

Drain pasta and pop it into a  medium-to-large sized bowl. Add sour cream, salt, pepper, spanish paprika, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Stir and incorporate spices judiciously. Add potatoes and carrots, diced mozzarella and cheddar, turkey, and gravy and stir again to ensure equal coating.

Grate and sprinkle the rest of the cheddar on the casserole's top. Do the same with breadcrumbs and Parmesan.

Bake about 30 minutes until top has browned slightly.

best in show

Every year Holly Hughes reads hundreds, probably thousands of essays, articles, blog posts, and the like as part of her job as the editor of the annual Best Food Writing series published by Da Capo Press since 2000. I have the 2005 edition, and I know I didn't read it in its entirety and wonder, now, whether I've cracked its spine at all. 

Best Food Writing 2010 offers a snapshot of the issues and trends affecting eaters, cooks, and anyone involved in or interested in food. Hughes selected a great crop of writes to include in this edition. Names that those who study the subject would recognize: Molly O'Neill, John T. Edge, and many more. 

Organizationally Hughes started readers in the middle of a fight. "Food Fights" offers the best selection of writing on the issue that divides foodies quicker than a razor-edged cleaver: to eat meat or not, to eat locally or not, to review online or not. Admittedly, I got a bit heated up when I was immersed in writing that didn't exactly represent my point of view on food and eating. Certainly, it's only logical to read the opposition's arguments. They are good.

Jonathan Safran Foer writes about why he raises his children as vegetarians. I completely agree with his points. Vegetarianism is smart, it's better for the body, the environment, the animals. But it's a difficult choice unless you live in an urban environment whose diversity of products and eateries make it an easy lifestyle choice.

Rachel Hutton's piece on online reviews and how they affect eateries in Minnesota outlines the problems, universal problems, really, facing restaurants in the age of the online review. And Tim Carman's informative, and persuasively anti-Zagat piece, demonstrates Zagat's lack of relevance in light of services like Yelp, Urbanspoon and OpenTable. It's all about transparency, you see. Zagat keeps their ranking methodology secret whereas social networking website for foodies let anyone see the reviews and scores.

Personally, I rely on both. Zagat has never let me down, but the only two I've bought were for the same area, Miami & South Florida, 2007 and 2010 respectively. In fact, the 2010 tipped me off to an excellent Salvadoran restaurant El Tamarindo in Ft. Lauderdale. But services like Yelp are invaluable when I'm in the car in a foreign-to-me place and I want to locate an above-average meal within a mile or less, of my location.

"Dining Around" is the second section and it includes pieces written about specific dining experiences. I loved Patricia Sharpe's article "New Zion Barbecue." She lays out the history of a Baptist church in Hunstville, Texas that sells barbecue on the side. Sharpe's piece was probably my favorite of that bunch and reflects what I like to read about: Just folks serving just folks. Other pieces in the section focused on Tokyo, L.A., and sommeliers.

And while those articles were informative, descriptive, evocative, even, most failed to resonate with me and my experience. Frank Bruni wrote about egging on the sommelier at Le Bernardin's and threw around figures like $150 and $75 bottles of white Burgundy. Those bottles, those tastes in the mouth, are not something that the hoi polli would experience, me included. Just maybe it's fun to catch a glimpse of those fleeting moments of the grandiose lifestyle. For some people. 

Todd Killman's "The Perfect Chef" was first in the third section, "Someone's in the Kitchen." I loved it. Killman chronicled his obsession with Peter Chang, a Chinese chef whose wanderlust, or something, kept him hopping from restaurants all over the mid-Atlantic and southeast. Killman's descriptions of  Chang's food infected me, made me a believer, and I'd love to sample a few of those intoxicating, spicy dishes like the fried fish rubbed with cumin.

Reading Jeff Koehler's "Sardines!" reminded me of how I loved eating the tinned fish when I was a child. His quest for fresh sardines anywhere, everywhere he traveled convinced me that I, too, must eat fresh sardines. In the meantime, I'll browse my grocer's shelves and settle for canned sardines.

In that same section, "Stocking the Pantry" Molly O'Neill's profile of Frank Reese, Jr., who once modeled as the Marlboro Man, made me really consider the turkey. Reese breeds heirloom turkeys. His crusade to revive poultry breeds resounded with me and lit a spark of appreciation for his work on behalf of America's poultry viability.

I also loved reading Mike Sula's piece on "The Charcuterie Underground" which described Chicago's E & P Meats, a local company that makes bacon, sausage, and other meats in the owner's homes. It perfectly illustrates how USDA regulations work for big business, but don't address the special issues of the small, local, agricultural businesses. It reminded me of the excitement I felt when Ian brought home twenty pounds of locally-made sausage a few years ago. Sure, we get moonshine all the time, but sausage is something else. Also, my father is a meat cutter by day (preacher by night). And so I love reading about his industry.

Since we've reached the mid-way point in the book, and I'm still reading it, I'll end with that today and finish up my review with part two, tomorrow. I'm really loving this book. It makes me think. It makes me salivate. It inspires me, and I hope that once you read it, you experience the same effect.

Stay tuned.