6 Days to Christmas!

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Lady Q at Let Them Read Books is hosting in December.  Be sure and visit her terrific blog!

I got two books last week:

Alfred Edelman: Urban Compositions, photos by Alfred Edelman, essay by Kathleen Dean Moore, poetry by Paulann Petersen (Oregon's poet laureate), published by Pacific Northwest College of Arts.

Edelman was a Portland-based architect, photographer, and founder of Hotlips Pizza (yummmmmmmmm). This beautiful books features Edelman's photographs of urban fragments, coupled with Peterson's poems.  It is lovely.

Urban Compositions is available at The Gallery at Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland (or on line), Broadway Books, or directly from Jeana Edelman.



Murder on Board, three novels by Agatha Christie, an omnibus edition containing The Mystery on the Blue Train, Death in the Air, and What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw.

This one is going to kick off my Vintage Reading Challenge.  I still need to do my sign up post, but I am going to sign up to read 8 pre-1969 mysteries by women authors.

Review of the Day: Delights and Prejudices

James Beard was the "Dean of American Cuisine."  Before Alice Waters was even born, he was championing regional, seasonal cooking.  Long before his buddy Julia Child, he had a televised cooking program -- the first ever, starting in 1946, when home televisions were a great rarity and most of audience was men in bars (his show came on after the boxing match).

He wrote more than 20 cookbooks and became famous for his New York cooking schools.  After his death in 1985 at age 81, Julia Child wanted to preserve his home, school, and memory, leading to the creation of the James Beard Foundation, still located in his Greenwich Village brownstone.  Every year the foundation honors cookbook authors, chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, and other culinary professionals with the James Beard Award.

Beard published Delights and Prejudices: A Memoir with Recipes 1964 to explain his own food loving history from toddler-hood to his New York cooking school days. He bounces around from his childhood in Portland to Les Halles in Paris to Mid-Century Manhattan and beyond.

It is absolutely wonderful, particularly for a Portlander like me.  Beard highlights Portland's rich culinary roots, with lengthy chapters on the farmers' markets, local procuce, and abundant seafood that we here in the Rose City still enjoy.  His remembrances of childhood weeks spent in Gearhart on the Oregon coast would make anyone want to head for the drizzly beach, build a huge bonfire, and roast oysters and Dungeness crabs.  

What makes the book stand out is that Beard's bigger than life, kind of oddball personality shows through.  For instance, despite launching his career with a catering company featuring canapes and the resultant first cookbook, Hors D'oeuvre and Canapes, he was ambivalent about finger food, coining the name "doots" for all little passed tidbits.  Doots?  Now, that's funny.

He had strong opinions about food and cooking -- many inherited from his strong-willed mother -- and laid them all out.  For example, he hated chicken livers, but loved gizzards (and included plenty of recipes to prove it).  He was an ardent Francophile and particularly favored bistro cooking, but could not stand Caribbean food.

When it came to holiday traditions, he loved his mother's Christmas fruitcakes (made a year in advance), but thought cranberries were an "abomination," homemade candy "really unsavory," and Christmas cookies only good if you make them yourself and eat them right away, exhorting well-wishers to "have pity on us, all you bakers -- the spirit of Christmas notwithstanding -- and deliver us from cookies that have crumbled or gone stale."

Delights and Prejudices is outstanding among food memoirs because James Beard is a giant and, therefore, learning what shaped his talent is fascinating, but also because it inspires an examination of your own food delights and prejudices and where they came from. 

RECIPE

Huckleberry Cake

(Beard, like most Oregonians, loved the wild, dark huckleberries that grow here, particularly those that grow in the hills near the Oregon coast.)

Cream 1 cup butter and 1 cup granulated sugar together until the mixture is very light.  Add 3 eggs, one by one, beating after each addition.  Sift two cups flour and save 1/4 cup to mix with 1 cup huckleberries.  Add to the rest 2 teaspoons baking powder and a pinch of salt, and fold this into the egg mixture.  Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and, lastly, fold in the floured huckleberries.  Pour the batter into a buttered, floured 8-inch-square baking tin.  Bake at 375º for 35 to 40 minutes or until the cake is nicely browned, or when a tester inserted comes out clean.

Serve the cake hot with whipped cream, or cold. 

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other James beard book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This is my sixth and final book for the 2011 Foodie's Reading Challenge.  I can't wait to sign up again for the 2012 version.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

7 Days to Christmas!

2012 Challenge: Non-Fiction Non-Memoir

FINISHED

Julie at My Book Retreat is hosting her first challenge, geared towards reading more nonfiction. To make it more of a challenge, her Non-Fiction Non-Memoir Reading Challenge will exclude memoirs, which seem to be the most read type of nonfiction among the book blogs she follows. Instead, the focus is on learning about a variety of different topics and discovering new facts. The challenge will run from January 1, 2012 through December 31, 2012.

What Counts:
- Books can be any format (bound, ebook, audio) but must be written for adults or young adults.
- Books can cover many different topics, including science, technology, religion, sociology, business, biography, politics, economics, history, food, art/design, etc.
- How-to, self-help and travel books are permitted, as long as you actual read them cover to cover, and don't just use them as a reference.
- Crossovers with other challenges are permitted.

What Does Not Count:
- Reference books, cookbooks and instruction manuals that are not meant to be read cover to cover
- Essays and articles (individual -- bound collections count)
- How-to, self-help or travel books that are not read cover to cover
- Memoirs, journals and autobiographies
- Books written for children
- Re-reads don't count since the point is to learn something new

Levels:

Elementary - 5 nonfiction books
Diploma - 10 nonfiction books
Bachelor's Degree - 15 nonfiction books
Master's Degree -  25 nonfiction books

Details:

See Julie's challenge post.

I signed up for the Diploma level to read 10 books. I thought I read a lot of qualifying books in 2011, but when I go back and look, sure enough, most were memoirs.

MY BOOKS READ AND REVIEWED

Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe. by Thomas Cahill, reviewed here;

The Innocents Abroad, Vol. 1, by Mark Twain, reviewed here; 

What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza, great book but not reviewed;

The World of Herb Caen by  Barnaby Conrad, reviewed here;

On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking, and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution by Michael and Ariane Batterberry, reviewed here;

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman;

Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller, reviewed here;

How To Read and Why by Harold Bloom;

Evolutionaries: Transformational Leadership: The Missing Link in Your Organizational Chart, by business strategists Randy Harrington and Carmen E Voillequé, reviewed here;

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott;

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni.

LIST OF POSSIBILITIES

I am going to stick with books on my TBR shelf, to maximize cross-over potential with the Mt. TBR Challenge. Possibilities, in no kind of order, include:

The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David E. Gumpert (a Foodie Challenge book)

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by S. Wise Bauer

Because He Could by Dick Morris

Roads to Santiago: Detours and Riddles in the Lands and History of Spain by Cees Nooteboom (which could count either as my Spain book or my Holland book for my European Reading Challenge)

Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius by Barbara Belford (a UK book for my European Reading Challenge)

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjørn Lomborg (which I've been meaning to read forever, would count as one of my Chunkster Challenge books, and is another possible Holland book for my European Reading Challenge)

Frank Lloyd Wright by Ada Louise Huxtable

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano (a Foodie Challenge book)

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage by Nicholas Wapshott (a possible UK book for my European Reading Challenge)

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee (a Foodie Challenge book)

How To Read and Why by Harold Bloom

Feng Shui Your Life by Jayme Barrett

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King (an Italy book for my European Reading Challenge)

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester (a UK book for my European Reading Challenge)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects by Lewis Mumford

The Journalist And The Murderer by Janet Malcolm

Voodoo Vintners: Oregon's Astonishing Biodynamic Winegrowers by Katherine Cole (a Foodie Challenge book)

Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910 - 1939 by Katie Roiphe (a UK book for my European Reading Challenge)

Epicurean Delight: The Life and Times of James Beard by Evan Jones (a Foodie Challenge book)

NOTES

Last updated on December 28, 2012.  I read 11 books, so completed the challenge.