Sunday, November 29, 2009

Fabulous Lovers Fabulous Foods or Conserve Water Drink Wine

Fabulous Lovers/Fabulous Foods

Author: Choral Pepper

Young, mid-aged or vintage, three items that interest everyone are food, romance and gossip— not necessarily in that order. Fabulous Lovers / Fabulous Food embraces all three. Moving from the fictional Lady Chatterly's clandestine assignation on to the philandering of Lord Byron or Liz's Merry-marry-go-round, imagined vignettes depicting the affairs of world-class lovers are adapted to menus and recipes designed to kindle romance in any potential lover. The recipes in Fabulous Lovers / Fabulous Food adapt to a broad spectrum of romantic possibilities stretching from a woody campsite to a palatial retreat, all accompanied by the author's amusing illustrations to further encourage a romantic mode.



Go to: AI for Game Developers or Ajax on Rails

Conserve Water, Drink Wine: Recollections of a Vinous Voyage of Discovery

Author: Ronald S Jackson

Set in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State, Conserve Water, Drink Wine: Recollections of a Vinous Voyage of Discovery guides readers through the annual cycle of wine production from the grape on the vine to the bottle of wine on a menu. The vineyards, wineries, and wine shops of this famous wine-producing region serve as backdrops for the basic steps of both grape culture and the wine production process. The book demonstrates the importance of science in the study and appreciation of wine and provides practical advice on the selection, storage, and aging of wine. It also offers readers insight into the modern techniques in grape cultivation and the production of unique wines.

Conserve Water, Drink Wine presents comprehensive information in an accessible narrative style developed around the conversations of a group of wine experts. Both the wine connoisseur and the amateur will find the book's discussions of the following topics engaging and informative:

  • making homemade wine
  • commercial wine making procedures
  • wine tasting techniques
  • health aspects of wine consumption
  • effects of rootstock, vine training, and organic viticulture on wine quality
  • historical and cultural background for food and wine combinations
  • impact of soil type, slope, and microclimate on vineyard site selection

    This wonderful guidebook has something for everyone--the beginner learns methods for choosing the perfect wine to accompany a particular dinner, while the sophisticate learns special wine making techniques for botrytized, recioto, and carbonic maceration wines. Readers of Conserve Water, Drink Wine emerge at the end of the book better-informed wine consumersand enthusiasts, even inspired to begin their own home wine production.



Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgments
Ch. 1Arrival in Ithaca1
Ch. 2The CWDW Society11
Ch. 3Visit to Venture Vineyards and Home Winemaking27
Ch. 4Visit to Heron Hill Winery55
Ch. 5Views on Wine Selection75
Ch. 6Bacchanalian Pleasures and Faults93
Ch. 7Thoughts on Wine Quality, Aging, and Fraud Detection115
Ch. 8Visit from Dr. Nicholson: Wine and Health133
Ch. 9Visit to Gold Seal Winery147
Ch. 10Impromptu Meeting165
Ch. 11Visit to the Geneva Research Vineyard185
Ch. 12Pleasures of the Table207
Bibliography227
Index237

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Peanuts or Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining

Peanuts: The Illustrious History of the Goober Pea

Author: Andrew F Smith

"Harmoniously paired with chocolate, as American as baseball games and after-school snacks, and, when ground into a creamy paste, quite possibly the best thing to happen to sliced bread - the peanut is one of the most versatile and beloved of American food icons. In this first culinary history of the protein-laden legume, Andrew F. Smith follows the peanut's rise from a lowly, messy snack food to its place in haute cuisine and on candy racks across the country." Shunned by southern aristocrats and the northern elite in antebellum America, peanuts were originally considered ungenteel and only fit for slaves and the poor to eat. But as Americans grew more keen on the portable, filling and inexpensive snack, peanuts became available at fairs, circuses, and theaters, whereupon street vendors first enticed consumers with offers for "Fresh, roasted peanuts!" Unlike other food fads, peanuts thrived, and by the turn of the century they were big business.



Go to: Health Handbook or Childhood Cancer

Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining: Tips from Marfreless

Author: Mike Riccetti

"The Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining" is all about how people actually entertain today: conversing and enjoying the company of friends, family and other guests over good drink and food. Entertaining doesn't have to be difficult, but there can be a lot to know to do it properly and seamlessly. This resource will give you the knowledge, tools and confidence to do it well. All of the basics necessary for successful party planning are covered here, and a lot more. Chock full of food and drink-related information, this book will become a handy reference used over and over when planning events and even for visiting restaurants or strolling the aisles of the local wine, beer, liquor and food stores.

Written in a straightforward, entertaining and often humorous style, the book includes the specifics needed to plan and host an event from party suggestions to invitations to music to supplies to personal preparation and handling unexpected mishaps plus:
* Plentiful tips for hiring help for your event: the cooks, caterers, bartenders, bands, valet, etc.
* Guidelines for provisioning the proper types and amounts of liquor, wine, beer and food for your event.
* Interesting, easy-to-make and flavorful recipes that you'll actually use.
* Cocktails you will really concoct, and not just for a single glass, but also for pitchers and blenders for your party.
* Tips for preparing yourself for the party and on hosting.
* Handy checklists to use when planning and purchasing.
* Tons of information on subjects related to entertaining: wine, beer, liquor, cheese, and the ever-increasing variety and number of food terms that you will encounter on menus and in cookbooks that you might be embarrassed to admit that you don't know.

The authors bring a wealth of experience, both personal and professional, to the subject. Mike Riccetti is the author of the successful "Houston Dining on the Cheap" guidebooks, and contributes to several publications oncerning food, dining and drinking, and some less important topics. Co-author Michael Wells has been in the hospitality business for over twenty years and has managed restaurants, bars, and clubs, and has also organized and operated special events in Texas and Hawaii. He is currently the co-owner of the legendary Marfreless bar in Houston.



Friday, November 27, 2009

Dining at the Linemans Shack or Opportunities in Culinary Careers

Dining at the Lineman's Shack

Author: John Weston

Mountain lion barbacoa. Margarita's yam soufflé. Pastel de Choclo, a.k.a. Rodeo Pie. And for dessert, perhaps, Miss Ruby Cupcakes. These are but a few of the gustatory memories of John Weston that waft us on a poignant journey into the past in the company of a gifted writer and unabashed bon vivant.

The place is Skull Valley in central Arizona, the time the 1930s. Taking food as his theme, Weston paints an instructive and often hilarious portrait of growing up, of rural family life under difficult circumstances, and of a remote Arizona community trying to hold body and soul together during tough times. His book recalls life in a lineman's shack, interlaced with "disquisitions on swamp life, rotting water, and the complex experience of finding enough to eat during the Great Depression."

Central to Weston's account is his mother Eloine, a valiant woman rearing a large brood in poverty with little help from her husband. Eloine cooks remarkably well—master of a small repertory from which she coaxes ideas surprising even to herself—and feeds her family on next to nothing. She is a woman whose first instinct is to cry out "Lord, what am I going to feed them" whenever visitors show up close to mealtime. Recalls Weston, "Her strength lay in a practical- and poverty-born sense that there must be more edible food in the world than most people realized," and he swears that six out of seven meals were from parts of four or five previous meals coming round again, like the buckets on a ferris wheel.

Although Weston evokes a fond remembrance of a bygone era that moves from Depression-era Skull Valley to wartime Prescott, rest assured: food—itsacquisition, its preparation, its wholehearted enjoyment—is the foundation of this book. "I did not have a deprived childhood, despite its slim pickings," writes Weston. "If I recall a boiling pig's head now and then, it is not to be read as some Jungian blip from Lord of the Flies but simply a recurring flicker of food-memory." Whether remembering his father's occasional deer poaching or his community's annual Goat Picnic, Weston laces his stories with actual recipes—even augmenting his instructions for roasted wild venison with tips for preparing jerky.

Dining at the Lineman's Shack teems with sparkling allusions, both literary and culinary, informed by Weston's lifetime of travels. Even his nagging memory of desperate boyhood efforts to trade his daily peanut-butter sandwich for bacon-and-egg, baloney, jelly, or most anything else is tempered by his acquaintance with "the insidious sa-teh sauce in Keo Sananikone's hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Kapahulu Street"—a peanut-butter-based delicacy for which he obligingly provides the ingredients (and which he promises will keep, refrigerated in a jar, for several weeks before baroque things begin to grow on it).

Through this tantalizing smorgasbord of memories, stories, and recipes, John Weston has fashioned a wholly captivating commentary on American culture, both in an earlier time and in our own. Dining at the Lineman's Shack is a book that will satisfy any reader's hunger for the unusual—and a book to savor, in every sense of the word.

Publishers Weekly

Until he was 11, Weston (The Boy Who Sang the Birds) lived with his family in an abandoned fence-tender's shack in Skull Valley, Ariz. There was no bathroom, the roof leaked, holes in the floor were covered with flattened coffee cans, and the family was constantly preoccupied with the "complex experience of finding enough to eat during the Great Depression." In this colorful but uneven culinary memoir, Weston recalls how his mother, Eloine, concocted meals out of whatever was at hand, sometimes nothing more than government beans, flour and rice, and the provisions her children obtained by poaching, foraging and raiding neighbors' cornfields and orchards. Even so, it wasn't a deprived childhood. There were dances at the Community Hall, annual Goat Picnics and Eloine's imaginative cooking: "a small repertoire from which she could coax ideas surprising even to herself," such as spaghetti with white gravy, salt pork, and raw egg-her version of carbonara sauce. After Weston's father died, the family moved to the nearby cowboy town of Prescott, where Weston discovered rodeos and Baptist summer camp and where Eloine "launched her quixotic deflection into Mexican cooking." Throughout the book, Weston skillfully draws the reader into the world of his childhood, then breaks the spell by letting his obsession with food lead him into rambling digressions about his experiences with gourmet cuisine as an adult. Even when he shares some of his mother's recipes, he can't resist adding more sophisticated versions that include ingredients unknown to his mother, such as wine, cognac, balsamic vinegar and heavy cream. These deviations undermine his theme, as do vignettes about love, loss and sexual awakening-detached narratives that jar this otherwise appealing memoir. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Weston, whose fiction includes Goat Songs and The Boy Who Sang the Birds, turns to nonfiction with this culinary memoir of growing up in the 1930s and 1940s in Arizona. Living in a lineman's shack in Skull Valley, Weston and his family knew the taste of poverty well, but Weston's mother, Eloine, always managed to create dishes out of skimpy offerings and available ingredients. Much of this memoir is devoted to her and to her necessarily inventive and practical approach to cooking. The small selection of recipes scattered throughout the book, including Basic Red Chile Sauce and Rodeo Pie, reflect the different culinary sources, including Eloine's Southern heritage and the regional Mexican influence, that inspired the foods that filled the author's childhood. Though for some readers the occasional shift to other places and times might cause momentary dissonance, Weston's writing is vivid and powerful. Recommended for libraries in the Southwest and public libraries where culinary biographies are popular.-John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ



See also: Hot Times or Suenos Divinos

Opportunities in Culinary Careers

Author: Mary Deirdre Donovan

OPPORTUNITIES IN . . . SERIES PROVIDES VALUABLE CAREER INSIGHT TO STUDENTS AND JOB SEEKERS!

The most comprehensive career book series available, Opportunities in . . . explores a vast range of professions.

Each book offers:

  • The latest information on a field of interest
  • Training and education requirements for each career
  • Salary statistics for different positions within each field
  • Up-to-date professional and Internet resources
  • And much more



Thursday, November 26, 2009

Postharvest Pathogens and Disease Management or Nightly Specials

Postharvest Pathogens and Disease Management

Author: P Narayanasamy

POSTHARVEST PATHOGENS AND DISEASE MANAGEMENT

Postharvest diseases caused by microbial pathogens account for millions of dollars in losses of both durable and perishable produce products every year. Moreover, with consumers increasingly demanding minimally processed vegetables and fruits--which can be invaded by human pathogens--there is an imperative need for suitable protective measures to provide pathogen-free commodities that are free from, or contain only acceptable levels of, chemical residues.

Providing details of both conventional and modern molecular techniques applicable for the detection, identification, and differentiation of field and storage microbial pathogens, Postharvest Pathogens and Disease Management:
* Discusses diseases of both durables and perishables during transit and storage
* Provides a basic understanding of the effects of handling and storage practices as well as field conditions and product susceptibility on the development of postharvest diseases
* Reveals, as a cautionary note, the potential hazards of mycotoxins with carcinogenic properties that can contaminate fruits and vegetables
* Contains detailed information derived from elucidative evidence and disease data in order to explain the infection process and subsequent stages of disease development
* Helps readers to avoid conditions that favor disease incidence and spread
* Includes real life examples of disease management strategies to help readers develop effective disease management systems suitable for different ecosystems
* Emphasizes the importance of integrating several different effective methods in tandem, including the development of cultivars withresistance to postharvest diseases; the selection of suitable analytical methods; and the effective use of biocontrol agents and chemicals
* Presents protocols for numerous techniques and basic methods, making the book a distinctive and highly useful teaching and research tool

Postharvest Pathogens and Disease Management offers readers insight into the principles and methods of avoiding and managing postharvest diseases of fruit and vegetable products in an efficient, economical, and environmentally feasible manner, allowing producers to sell safer, higher-quality produce to the public and prevent the losses associated with postharvest disease.



Table of Contents:
1Introduction3
2Detection and identification of postharvest microbial pathogens9
3Ecology of postharvest microbial pathogens79
4Disease development and symptom expression117
5Influence of cultivation practices and harvesting methods193
6Influence of postharvest handling and storage conditions212
7Preventive and physical methods255
8Genetic resistance of host plants for disease management284
9Biocontrol agents for disease management357
10Biotechnology for the improvement to resistance to postharvest diseases434
11Postharvest disease management through chemicals475
12Integrated systems for the management of postharvest diseases537

Go to: Comunicazioni di Digitahi

Nightly Specials: 125 Recipes for Spontaneous, Creative Cooking at Home

Author: Michael Lomonaco

Have you ever wondered why restaurants have nightly specials? There are many reasons, actually, but they all have one thing in common: spontaneity. Nightly specials are a way to cook with seasonal fruits and vegetables, the catch of the day, unexpected leftovers, and spur-of-the-moment market finds. They are also a way for chefs to experiment with exciting new ingredients, develop their own signature dishes, and road-test new ideas that may eventually become regular menu features.

If these reasons sound familiar, that's because they all apply to home cooks as well.

Because there's no set menu in a home kitchen, every dinner is a nightly special. But all too often, home cooks find themselves in a rut, recycling the same meals week after week. Nightly Specials shows home cooks how restaurant and home cooking can meet. Acclaimed New York chef and host of the Travel Channel's Epicurious, Michael Lomonaco, along with award-winning food writer Andrew Friedman, offer up 125 recipes that use fresh and spontaneous ingredients to create innovative starters, salads, entrees, sides, and desserts. All the recipes are simple, loosely improvised dishes that will inspire home cooks to be flexible and remain open to each day's culinary possibilities. Best of all they can be selected at the last minute and cooked successfully in relatively little time.

No matter what the season or occasion, you'll find the perfect recipe in Nightly Specials. Toss together salads like Cool Roasted Beets with Mint or Mango and Red Onion Salad with Basil Vinaigrette. Warm up with a bowl of Curried Pea Soup with Frizzled Ginger or Moroccan Lamb Stew. Main courses include everything fromquick-comforting favorites such as Supermarket Mushroom Risotto to show-stoppers such as Hacked Chile Lobster and Boneless Roast Leg of Lamb with Feta Cheese, Olives, and Eggplant. Desserts range from holiday classics such as Pear-Cranberry Upside-Down Cake to peak-of-the-summer favorites such as Plum and Peach Cobbler and indulgences such as Baked Alaska with Coconut Sorbet and Chocolate Ice Cream and Chocolate Truffles.



Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Simple Italian Cookery or Ice Cream Mix Ins

Simple Italian Cookery

Author: Antonia Isola

The first Italian cookbook published in America was compiled by an American who lived in Rome. In 1912, when this books was first published, Italian cooking was almost unknown in American, except to those who traveled in Italy. A popular misconception of Italian diet at the time was that it was composed chiefly of garlic and oil. This collection of recipes was published to show Americans a new cuisine. The book contains a few of the many ways to prepare pasta, or "Neapolitan Paste," and risotti. Also included are recipes for soups, meats, vegetables, and desserts.



Go to: This House Has Fallen or When States Fail

Ice Cream Mix-Ins: Easy Homemade Treats

Author: Jeff Keys

Create fabulous ice cream and frozen desserts by "mixing in" ingredients to homemade or store-bought premium ice cream. Grab a spoon, and dig in!